Working Beyond Borders: GIS for Geospatial Collaboration

In today’s world, organizations face a multitude of problems that require an unprecedented need for tools to share information and work better together.

In Working Beyond Borders: GIS for Geospatial Collaboration, see how government, industries, and others, are using location intelligence and GIS to interconnect people across jurisdictions and sectors, to respond to some of our most critical issues, such as climate change, sustainable development, racial equity, emergency management, conservation, and public health and safety.

Readers will also see how organizations are integrating geospatial infrastructure to improve efficiency, drive innovation, and empower every day decision-making in communities around the world.

Edited by Jill Saligoe-Simmel and Maria Jordan

Applying GIS 

The Applying GIS series explains how to become a spatial thinker with ideas and strategies for building location intelligence into your profession, industry, or discipline. Each book is divided into relevant topic areas that include real-life case studies that will inspire new ways to solve complex problems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Esri Press
• Release date: Feb 6, 2024
• ISBN: 9781589487635

Book preview

Cover of Working Beyond Borders: GIS for Geospatial Collaboration, part of the Applying GIS series. Edited by Jill Saligoe-Simmel and Maria Jordan.Title page of Working Beyond Borders: GIS for Geospatial Collaboration, part of the Applying GIS series. Edited by Jill Saligoe-Simmel and Maria Jordan. Published by Esri Press in Redlands, California.

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e-ISBN: 9781589487635

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On the cover: Image by Porcupen.

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Contents

Introduction ix

How to use this book xiii

Part 1: Governing collaboratively 1

Data cooperative enables collaborative transformation in York Region 4

Esri Canada

Ireland provides its residents a greater sense of place 8

Esri

Open data gives Los Angeles a boost in community collaboration 13

Esri and the City of Los Angeles

What is the business value of location data? 17

Esri

Part 2: Providing decision-ready data and technology 25

California created a knowledge base with GIS 28

Esri

DHS data hub: Open data for economic resiliency 30

Esri

Weaving the geospatial fabric of the world with authoritative data 33

Utah Geospatial Resource Center

Planning is key to building a collaborative hub: NC OneMap 37

Esri

Climate change prompts Grenada to create national digital twin 41

Esri

BP shares eight lessons on digital transformation 46

BP

Building a cadastre system that monitors working lands in Azerbaijan 57

Esri

Part 3: Engaging communities 61

In the Philippines, a shared disaster imagination supports resilience 63

Esri

Nebraska’s ArcGIS Hub site bridges gap between citizens, government 67

Esri

Marking 50 years, United Arab Emirates maps growth and quality of life 71

Esri

ArcGIS Hub enables communities to rapidly share up-to-date data on COVID-19 78

Esri

Prague: Extreme-heat events spur climate action, using geospatial tech 84

Esri

Portugal’s security services share data, configurable apps to aid public safety 90

Esri

Part 4: Building capacity 95

White House portal helps communities assess exposure to climate hazards 98

Esri

Along the Mekong River, development creates sustainability concerns 103

Esri

Regional Data Platform strengthens collaboration and cooperation 110

Harvard Kennedy School

Singapore builds a massive maritime spatial atlas to manage climate change 116

Esri

Africa GeoPortal brings together a continent of GIS users 121

Esri

Next Steps 126

Contributors 131

Introduction

Collaboration is a fundamental tenet for most organizations. A collaborative environment builds trust and confidence in how work gets done and helps staff work better together to achieve shared goals. In today’s world, collaboration extends far beyond the boundaries of an organization’s structure or jurisdiction. Governments, businesses, academia, and nonprofits are breaking through barriers that limit effective data sharing and collaboration between people who are often addressing similar issues.

Many organizations use geographic information system (GIS) technology to understand and solve problems, ranging from the local to the global scale. Geospatial thinking is a mainstay for decision-making in today’s world. Maps and geospatial analytics offer potent ways to understand, manage, and solve complex problems. Location helps answer not only questions such as where things are, but what they are, how they relate to each other, what they mean, and how they change over time. Geography creates a familiar landscape where people can visualize issues to cooperate regardless of perspective or objective. GIS is anchored to an underlying infrastructure designed for collaboration.

Geospatial infrastructure is a system that connects people, processes, data, and technology. At its core, a geospatial infrastructure adheres to the fundamental principles of Web GIS, taking advantage of the internet and cloud computing to share data and collaborate through an interconnected network of systems and portals.

When organizations integrate their geospatial infrastructures, a system of systems emerges that enables them to interconnect and work across borders, jurisdictions, and sectors. Integrated geospatial infrastructure is an emerging implementation pattern that melds spatial data, geospatial technologies, and supporting systems and processes to enable informed decision-making across industries and levels of government. Today, organizations are forming alliances and changing the rules of collaboration by incorporating geospatial engagement through mapping and GIS applications.

With geospatial infrastructure, organizations can better manage geospatial data cooperatively and create online destinations, such as hubs and open data portals, in which partners and other organizations can participate, contribute, and benefit from shared knowledge and authoritative information.

This book provides a glimpse into the ways that governments, businesses, nonprofits, and others are building collaborative environments using GIS. The book is divided into four parts: governing collaboratively, providing decision-ready data and technology, engaging communities, and building capacity. Each section suggests the next steps readers can take to investigate, create, and use geospatial infrastructure for improving collaboration.

Governing collaboratively

Part 1 introduces integrated geospatial infrastructure as a technology enabler containing components that build trust and ensure reliable communication among partners. Real-life stories show how organizations approach collaborative governance by accommodating an adaptive and interconnected web of people, processes, data, and technology. Collaborative organizations are responsive to their communities of interest and representative of their participating partners. Collaborative organizations work together to define elements of leadership, vision, strategies, policies, and reporting on performance indicators.

Providing decision-ready data and technology

The stories in part 2 demonstrate how organizations provide geospatial data that is findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable to support decision-makers, users of different disciplines, and partner organizations. This section introduces the concepts of geospatial hubs, portals, and applications that drive collaboration. Decision-ready data and technology elevate the value of geospatial data and support breaking down administrative barriers and eliminating data silos, giving users access to the information they need.

Engaging communities

The stories in part 3 describe how collaborative organizations recognize the need to empower their audiences with knowledge and understanding through geospatial information and technology. With a geospatial infrastructure in place, decision-making improves, and collaboration becomes the standard behavior between people and organizations. GIS, as a system of engagement, enables everyone to get the information they need, making collaboration across organizations possible.

Building capacity

Part 4 demonstrates how the promise of geospatial collaboration continues beyond the implementation of GIS, making geospatial data, maps, apps, tools, and solutions more accessible to individuals and organizations that might not have the resources or expertise to access them on their own. Geospatial collaboratives offer training programs from basic concepts to advanced techniques, including workshops, online courses, and conferences. Additionally, these collaboratives provide mentorship opportunities to young professionals, developers, students, and staff, supporting innovation and creativity within the geospatial community.

How to use this book

This book is designed to help you add geospatial thinking to decision processes and improve collaboration. It is a guide for taking the first steps toward integrating geospatial infrastructure among organizations and applying location intelligence to common problems. Using the information in this book can help create a more collaborative environment between you and your department, your partners, and partnering agencies and organizations. You can use this book to identify where shared data, maps, spatial analysis, and GIS apps can support your work and then, as a next step, learn more about those resources and strategies.

The concluding section of this book offers a basic strategy for taking the next steps in applying GIS collaboratively in your community of interest.

Learn about additional GIS resources for geospatial collaboration by visiting the web page for this book:

go.esri.com/wbb-resources

Part 1

Governing collaboratively

Organizations need cohesive, reliable systems and people to operate efficiently and effectively. To do this, organizations enact different forms of governance for employees, assets, and daily interactions between business units, offices, and leadership. In simple terms, governance is a formal