Command & Control

Geography to the rescue

26 February 2009

Jack Dangermond, founder and President of ESRI, explains how public safety agencies can leverage web-based Geographic Information Systems.

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For the man who has done more than anyone to put Geographic information Systems (GIS) on the map - if you pardon the pun - geography is a lifelong passion.

Jack Dangermond, the President of ESRI, says that GIS - technology that he has painstakingly developed since the late 1960s - helps save money and helps government managers make better decisions.

“The evidence suggests that over the current and past downturns, GIS is a tool that is seen by management as progressive and important for running government,” he says.

Dangermond founded ESRI in 1969. The company has subsequently grown into a major provider of GIS software and geodatabase management applications.

He has overseen the evolution of GIS from a research technology in academia to a planning tool in government, from an expensive mainframe-based system to an affordable application running on PCs.

He has also witnessed the growth of a whole generation of GIS professionals, who use the tool to systematically create and share geographic data for various applications.

Dangermond is keen about the next phase, which is just beginning: GIS is being implemented in a server/web services environment. “This allows the creation of geographical knowledge by a professional, which is put onto a server that serves millions of users,” he notes. “And the technology that allows that sharing to occur is server-based GIS - a common geosptatial infrastructure.”

Dangermond is also a firm believer in GIS as an important tool in public safety. “Most big cities in America and many in Europe and Asia use GIS to do crime analysis,” he explains. “That involves putting instances on maps to show crime patterns. That knowledge, plus analytics, is very useful in developing targeted plans and deploying resources.”

The famous case of the capture of a Norwegian paedophile is a good example of GIS in action. The paedophile was caught after having been operating in the country for 30 years. Dangermond looked at a map where the incidents were marked, the police applied hot spot analysis with geo statistics, and snared the culprit within three months.

“This case is a classic example, but it has been repeated thousands of times,” says Dangermond. “It proves that GIS is not only helpful in resource allocation, but also for catching bad guys.”

GIS also helps determine the appropriate location of facilities. A classic example is the allocation of fire engines and fire stations according to response times. They are calculated based on geo analysis to maximise the efficiency of a fire response and minimise time delay.

The third area is disaster response. Dangermond points out that effective collaboration is very important. “The response structure for the region affected by hurricane Katrina was very poorly cooperated. It is a real failure in US history,” he comments. “A lot of it had to do with the fact that there was no common data base to provide situation awareness.”

“It took the authorities three weeks to get all the data pieces together and to assess the situation and the damage. While that was useful, an immediate response was really what was needed”.

Dangermond makes the argument for a common space infrastructure so that emergency workers from various organisations can respond efficiently and in time. “One of the biggest benefits of GIS is in enabling a response to a citizen’s needs at a time of emergency,” he says. This is closely aligned with the emerging trend of web-based GIS.

But there are obstacles. One is the typical government funding model. Each agency is responsible for its own funding and competes for budget from senior management.

The emerging trend is to allow each department to build its own data sets within its databases and integrate them through web services and through server-based architecture - so data sets are shared between departments. This calls for an infrastructure that allows integration based on standards and a strong network. Dangermond says such federated architecture is already emerging in many American cities.

Data sharing clears the path for an “active mashup” – a collection of mapping applications and web services that are combined into a single mapping application. Taking advantage of a variety of pre-developed services and functions, agencies can dramatically bring down development costs and data costs for their applications. And performance is greatly improved.

“Active mashup is part of the vision for the server-based enterprise system,” says Dangermond. “However, the mashup itself is not the real hero; server architecture is the real enabling technology.” There are various possible models, such as a federated system with minimised leadership and a system where everything is centralised. But Dangermond favours a combination: a federalised GIS collaboration in the departments with a central leader like the GIS centre.

Dangermond is sceptical about putting everything ‘in the cloud’. But he is optimistic about what cloud computing can offer. Some analytics can be computed in the cloud, as well as other services such as a library where people can easily store and retrieve data objects, and share data with others. What might not be affordable to one agency may well be available in the cloud. In this way GIS allows people to spread the cost within the agency. Resources in the cloud can be paid for in a shared environment making it more affordable.

Although government pays for the collection of data, the cost of maintaining it in the cloud remains controversial. Dangermond calls it a ‘free way’ or ‘toll way’ issue. The industry veteran is an advocate for government to allow the private sector and general public to have free access to this information.

“The government gets a massive return on investment for sharing its data openly. And it’s not only a money issue. It is a public policy one as well,” says Dangermond. “With better planning, non-govenment organisations leveraging this data save on fuel and reduce their carbon footprint, thus accomplishing another important government mission.”

“We should perhaps be paying the private sector to use government data to make smart decisions,” says Dangermond. This leads to the bigger issue of national security, highlighted by the news that terrorists used Google Earth to plan the Mumbai attacks. But Dangermond won’t take the bait. “Terrorists don’t need GIS to figure out how to bomb a building,” he says.