ESRI: Changing world.

© Jyoti Bachani
University of Redlands
Jyoti_Bachani@Redlands.edu
909 748 0545
909 748 8763

ESRI: Changing world.

Case Synopsis

Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) is a privately held, debt free, company that is a global leader in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) software used for visualization and analysis of geographic data by institutional users across the globe. ESRI has pioneered this technology for four decades as it pursued its founder leader Jack Dangermond’s mission to change the world by making it spatially enabled. Since 2000, the world has changed. The new Internet companies have put electronic maps with live data and interactivity on the internet enabled desktops of
GIS produces electronic maps that have layers of information representing different themes, or feature, of the map. For example, the information could be about roads in an area, or cables buried underground, or lakes or cities, in the same area. These provide a stack of information about the same geographic area, and can be turned off and on, to control the amount of information about an area that can be visible. Most organizations' have data with spatial components that are not utilized in this manner. By connecting this data to a physical location, for example, by displaying all store, factory, distribution center and warehouse locations with addresses on a map where it can be visually analyzed, the company can plan routes for deliveries, or analyze traffic patterns and thus unlock this spatial data to make better decisions.

There are three underlying technologies that work together within any GIS system. These are: a database, a visualization system and a spatial analysis system. Many GIS systems rely on Oracle database as their core. Visualization technologies allow for mapping of the data contained in the database on to electronic maps, similar to Yahoo Maps or Google Earth. The spatial analysis system is the engine that brings together the data and visualized information and allows for spatial analysis to be conducted