Every year, an ever-increasing number of geospatial professionals descend on San Diego for the annual Esri User Conference. This year was no exception: Over 20K professionals focused on various aspects of geographic information systems (GISes), including location intelligence, came from all parts of the world to talk shop. The weeklong conference is designed not only for ESRI to showcase its own products, new features, and roadmaps but for its users to also contribute to the conference in the form of user-submitted presentations, panels, map galleries, and special interest groups. The opening-day plenary is meant to inspire, with amazing inspirational speakers. There was something for everyone, from public-sector GIS professionals to enterprise business leaders. The week also included the Business Leadership Summit, a one-day event focused on evangelizing the value of location in businesses. Some exciting takeaways and announcements included the following.
Increased Location Data Enables Untapped Location Intelligence For Sustainability
In today’s world, the availability of more data than ever plays a crucial role to quench our thirst for a more sustainable future. Location data (static and real-time), coupled with advanced analytics and AI, empowers individuals, enterprises, and institutions to make informed decisions. Mobile devices and IoT sensors on homes and cars make individuals and systems both creators and consumers of a constant stream of data tied to location, making location intelligence even more important. They unleash the untapped potential for more precise strategies to understand consumer behavior, market in real time, call for environmental action, plan future cities, and manage our resources optimally. It underscores the necessity for geographically enabled decisions and initiatives that can lead to a greener, more sustainable future for all. But the promise of location has so far not yielded the kind of wide-scale adoption in the commercial sector as it did in the public sector. AI opens up another aperture to make this a reality.
No Surprise: AI Takes Center Stage At The Plenary In The Form Of AI Assistants
Esri is leveraging generative AI (genAI) to make its knowledge base and software easier to use. What sets Esri apart is the use of genAI to open a very skilled art of map-making and geospatial analysis to nonskilled people through AI assistants. Using AI assistants, users can use natural language prompts to ask geospatial software to create a map of median housing prices, home sales, or any other demographic information. Behind the scenes, the assistant converts the prompt to code and retrieves the right datasets and the right fields to make a thematic map — how’s that for democratization of knowledge? They even demonstrated combining these maps with computer vision techniques to geolocated photos to take the multimodal experience to a new dimension, an area that Esri must leverage and one that can contribute to the wider adoption of location in businesses.
GeoAI Has Been Around For A While, So Why Now?
What is truly unique about Esri’s AI is the concept of geoAI, which can create geo-objects such as a roof, trees, cars, roads, etc., allowing insurance companies to better assess damage from hurricanes, utility companies to manage overhanging vegetation on utility corridors, or search and rescue teams to rescue lives following a situation like a hurricane or earthquake. The promise of big data (real-time) from sensors, combined with cloud processing and now genAI, will lead to a whole new dimension of AI commonly referred to as sensory AI. Multimodal AI will not only integrate language and visual content but will also unlock 3D real-world objects that can be visualized and rendered with physical properties to create a living digital twin. How far Esri pushes this remains to be seen. In the short term, the combination of GeoAI and AI assistants is set to expand the user base, making sophisticated analysis and decision-making tools accessible to a much wider audience.
Indoor Mapping, BIMs, And Drones, Expanded Through Strategic Partnerships
Enterprises managing assets, be they buildings, campuses, or infrastructure, know the importance of indoor maps and building information management (BIM) systems. Strategic partnerships with giants like Autodesk and Microsoft are designed to grow this area of significant importance. Particularly, the partnership with Autodesk is a natural one and can be symbiotically useful for both companies to go beyond system integrations. At a press-only event, leaders from the two talked about their cocreation plans and the trust that this partnership is built on. For consumers and enterprises, it means a seamless integration of two critical platforms, removing the need to convert complex data back and forth. With the partnership with Microsoft and its Azure Fabric, Esri positions itself at the core of Microsoft’s ecosystem, leveraging cloud capabilities to enhance geospatial analytics and AI-driven insights. This collaboration not only extends the reach of Esri’s cutting-edge GIS technology but also reinforces the importance of geospatial data in driving innovation across various sectors, facilitating a more connected, efficient, and sustainable world.
