The Science of Where seems, seems like a new phrase to many of you. It's actually
an attempt to capture, get a sense of, describe the kinds of work that you do.
You know in the very beginning of GIS almost from the very beginning, GIS was
applied to science, to biology to ecology and to economics, and to social sciences
of various types. But it wasn't until about 1993 I think it was when Michael Goodchild
wrote a paper called GI science. I forget
what the title was Michael, you're here someplace in the audience but I can't
recall what it was, but it was, it changed the game. The world began to
realize that, that GIS is a science in its own right. It incorporates many other
sciences, like geography, data science, analytics, modeling, computer science, the
science of visualization, decision support science. It actually integrates
all of these that kind of it's like a meta science. Well without going to
abstract on you I'll also simply say what is it? What is The Science of Where?
Simply stated it's the science of geography, and the technology of GIS.
And those maps - those examples that I showed you over the last couple of minutes are
the evidence that this is a science, this is a framework for applying science.
The Science of Where is the framework for applying science to almost everything.
That's very powerful notion for me. So why is this science so important
right now? I'll suggest a couple of reasons the first one, is you and I are
living at a time in a world which is increasingly challenged and we see this,
we hear this, we read about it. Growing population, some people would say
overpopulation. The issues of climate change, loss of nature, social conflicts.
These are, these are not trivial things ladies and gentlemen these are, these are
for us as individuals, perhaps troubling and also our organizations because our
organizations, the organizations that you work in are all being confronted with
this evolving changing world, and for me the evidence is quite clear we're going
to have to do, we're going to have to do everything we possibly can, to better
understand, as Richard Saul Wurman would say, and also form better collaboration.
Gaudi's quote: get close, collaborate, all of us together to address these, these
things in exactly the kind of style that UPS made their tremendous advancements, doing.
Our world at the same time is undergoing a massive digital
transformation, we are automating everything as, as Jack's presentation
showed. We're measuring everything, everything that moves in changes with
with, with satellites and drones and, and the IOT, and we're wiring them together
the kind of fabric across the planet. Our field, The Science of Where is providing
our world with a fundamental language ladies and gentlemen this is your
language, and that language is about, all about understanding and also managing
inside of organizations and between and among organizations the future of the planet.
And it doesn't really matter where you are in the stack of things
GIS provides us not simply a language, but it provides us a fundamental
framework, where in we can organize our maps and our data, we can integrate it
we can do all the data compilation and then visualize it then analyze the
relationships and patterns we could do predictive analytics. We can also do
design and planning on it. We can make decisions based on it and then take
those into action, and from my perspective this seems like the only
technology that actually has a shot at being able to address those very
challenges that you and I are facing as individuals. It has the opportunity and
is implementing in many of your organizations, the concept of
transforming how we think and how we actually carry out our thinking into
action. Creating a more sustainable future. And that's a high aspiration
I suppose it's a high aspiration for you. It's, it's particularly a high aspiration
for me. Can we make a difference with our work and turn this around and my view is
yes we can! Now GIS is a technical platform we know
it all of you are the practitioners of this platform, for managing, analyzing and
applying geographic information. It's a practical platform for managing our
systems of record, whether they be small in small communities that are
organizations or businesses, or mammoth like mga
managing the system of record for the planets' topographic information. GIS is
also a system of engagement for interacting with people and at its heart
it's a system of insight, where we can do spatial analytics, look at relationships,
see things in whole. We can approach problem solving in a more holistic way
because this platform integrates people and processes and all the data about
them. Isn't that just an amazing notion, that you ladies and gentlemen
are working with, all the dimensions of information,
and using the power of where to integrate it. This is what keeps me awake
at night. This technology notion that is so
impactful across our organizations, and I suppose you're aware of it. It's changing
rapidly, with all the new data sources, floods of data and the advances in
computing, not just faster machines but also whole new architectures distributed
computing machine learning, micro services on the horizon, and then there's
the GIS innovation itself which will see a lot of in the next few hours and days.
This is ramping up. I like to call this ramp up this pattern, a web GIS pattern
and my sense this momentum is going to expand your ability and power to be able
to apply the science everywhere. This Web GIS pattern is a modern GIS
architecture I would say I'll change that I'll say it is the modern GIS
architecture. It's, it's not only conceptually interesting, it's actually
helping you do your work better and that's the bottom line initially for me.
It's helping, it's using web services, leveraging web services to integrate
teams and individuals and departments and actually whole organizations with
shared knowledge and therefore collaboration. So this is I would say,
improving productivity and efficiency, and that pattern has just taken off I'll
show you some system statistics of it in a few minutes but it's, some people
object to me saying this but it's growing exponentially. My good friend
Marriotta keeps saying now Jack that has, that has mathematical meanings. Yes I
know it does, but I have to tell you, that it's growing exponentially.
Web GIS, simplifies, working with all types of data. I want to tell
you why it's growing. First it simplifies working with data. It, it brings data
together I would say it normalizes data that's the wrong word but it, by using
web maps, and web scenes, and web layers it can access any kind of data type.
Imagery, maps, real-time data, lidar into a common language. Speaking about real-time,
real-time information, is where it's going. The complexity of our cities and
our nature, well they're being wired up with things
like the IOT, we can stream in information now and not look like not
take old geologic maps that don't change very often.
No the maps are alive, recognizing the complexity and situations that we're
dealing with, and this isn't just a map, now we're dealing with real-time
information and able to do space-time work in meaningful ways. Apps are
bringing GIS to life in many ways, it's bringing the power of GIS to everyone,
extending the reach to field people, connecting them to their organization
and business apps and your apps and social media, story maps and dashboards,
across your organizations and beyond. Smart mapping - the innovation of using
computational and computation and logic, to create Maps automatically as well as
exploratory data analysis are simplifying the use of analytics but
also just opening up the opportunity for everyone to create really beautiful maps
and understand things better. This web geo's pattern is also affecting
my old field, the planning and design field. It's changing how designers think
and do their work, it's integrating science right into the design process.
People now can get data off the web as services, do interactive designs look at
scenarios, analyze and evaluate the consequences of them, and then share
disseminate the results. Web GIS is not only helping you do your work better,
it's also advancing analytics and geo enabling data science. It's advancing
analytics in the sense that it's opening up new tools like for exploratory data
analysis and we'll see this later today. It's also opening up for geo enabling
data science by, by new innovations like a Python API that can be integrated
directly into the toolbox of data scientists, doing our integration and
just frankly providing analytic services open for not just the GIS professional,
but across the board types of analysts. Web GIS is also connecting everybody, the
sort of system and engagement with identity, identities, people connecting
with their organizations, and with, with their community in real time. This is
supporting not just quick communication, but also new forms of collaboration
using mapping as a way to, to engage and talk with each other to carry on a
conversation. And speaking about communities, web GIS is beginning to
engage community engagement, haha. Is that the right way to say it? It's beginning to
enable community engagement. It's organizing and managing all the little
community interactions. Our work in the city of Los Angeles was something called
the GIS hub, is making this very clear to us that citizens want more information
about their city. And leaders, the managers, the mayor wants to hear, hear
from the citizens. They want more input, so we've been working on technology
which I'll share a little bit later today, around policy initiatives where we
can stand up with GIS a set of policy initiatives that communicate with
citizens and get their feedback. Crowd-sourced engagement, more about that
later in a moment or two. What I've been trying to describe, what I'm trying to
sense, from these explanations, what I'm trying to explain from these explanations is, is
that there's change occurring within our community. I hope you guys get a sense of
it and appreciate it. That we think, I'm beginning especially to think that GIS
is going to enable a whole new scale of GIS. Interconnecting our separate systems
with web services, expanding collaboration, at the technical
level and with shared services, and creating systems of systems. And we
already see it, not just within organizations like a city is sharing
between planning and engineering departments, but take for example in Las
Vegas, the water agency there is now sharing their, their information with the
utilities, and they're doing this as web services, so in the work of utility
organizations, they don't dig when they shouldn't. Doesn't that make sense?
I mean sharing information across and between organizations. Senator rich on
our Capitol Hill is now sharing Geographic data with the state of Idaho
and back and forth. Politicals, agencies, agency to agency, across the US federal
agencies across many cities and departments. This pattern is beginning to
emerge.
Let me pause for a moment and simply give my sense of what all this means. GIS
is now capable, it now provides the means, to do your work better that's clearly
where we're focused, and also for you to apply the full, the full, the full like
Lauren showed the full power of The Science of Where, everywhere. Everywhere
inside your organization, and beyond. So this excites me.