Jack Dangermond (Esri) talking about GIS as the intelligent nervous system for the planet

Dave Laurier travels to Palm Springs, USA and speaks with Jack Dangermond. Jack is the co-founder, together with Laura Dangermond, of the Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri), a privately held Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software company.

Together they talk about the world's challenges today which are big and complex and the GIS acting as the intelligent nervous system for the planet can help solve those challenges.

For more information about Dave Laurier or Avineon-Tensing please visit our corporate website at https://www.tensing.com  or read the blog about this episode (Dutch)  at https://www.tensing.com/blog/talking-spatial-gis-als-ruimtelijk-zenuwstelsel 

Transcript

Tensing Talking Spatial 

Dave Laurier: [00:00:00] Hello, Jack. Welcome. 

Jack Dangermond: Well, thank you very much for coming all the way out here to sunny, California. It's nice and warm here for your listeners. It's a beautiful experience going on. We have a few thousand people from around the world who are building great geospatial solutions. So you should really enjoy it here.

Dave Laurier: Absolutely. 

Jack Dangermond: Once in a while, take a swim or something. 

Dave Laurier: If I find a time getting away of all the cool things that are being presented here. Yeah. 

I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with me here today. Because, like you said, we are at the Esri partner conference. It's a busy time for you. 

I thought this was the ideal location to have this conversation because over two years ago in December, 2019, you and Michael Goodchild published an article on building geospatial infrastructure. And a couple of months later, At this very same venue in March, 2020, you presented your vision around a geospatial nervous system for our planet, [00:01:00] the geospatial cloud. 

Now, because of the COVID 19 pandemic and the huge impact there, there has been somewhat less attention for this vision in which spatial infrastructure plays an important role to solve major problems. The greatest challenges that our world is facing. And that vision, I expect touches a lot of young people in the geospatial industry and also beyond our industry, I would say.

So I would really like to readdress it together with you. 

Jack Dangermond: Okay. 

Dave Laurier: Starting from the viewpoint of these GIS professionals. For many years, they've been dedicated to providing insights about everything that happens on our Earth so that people can make better decisions. And most of them are also very intrinsically motivated to contribute to the health of our planet.

It means that there's a huge opportunity ahead for GIS professionals to make a positive impact. [00:02:00] So please help us understand this holistic approach that you mentioned in the article, this approach to the acquisition distribution and processing of geospatial information and help us understand how GIS professionals can contribute to that.

And to do so I would like to ask you to take us back to 2019, when you and Michael were developing this vision and writing this article and explain to us why you felt at that time that an updated vision on geospatial technology was necessary. 

Jack Dangermond: Well, let's go back a few more decades if you don't mind, 

About 1991 or 92, I can't recall which I began to realize. Through the good work of geospatial professionals. We're beginning to measure virtually everything that changes on the planet. And we talked about and wrote articles about a kind of instrumented planet.

Not just [00:03:00] in real time, but also in static ways, we are transactionally measuring and updating this big database, but it's being done in fractured ways. You know, this agency does that measurement, this agency measures cadaster. They all have these independent systems. But geography, it turns out, the science of our world is a logical framework for bringing these different layers of information or sets of measurements together.

So I suspect it was in 1992, and I simply said, we're moving to a world with a nervous system, founded on digital geography, a kind of framework for bringing all of our information together. Of course, I had no idea about what would happen with the web or the internet. These were just fantasies. But over the years systematically, this, this vision of a nervous system of the planet began to emerge.

If you look [00:04:00] at the human nervous system, what is it? It's of course the brain. And then it's a whole bunch of sensors, what we see and what we smell and hear and so on. That comes into the brain, the brain cognates, and then we react. You might say stimulus-response. And as we wire-up the planet with all of the GIS components - now made available through the web - what is emerging is, is kind of a, I wouldn't call it a brain that's not it. But it's certainly a system that allows us to bring in and adjust and then integrate (key word), these measurements into a massive GIS system. And it's fed by distributed work that GIS professionals are doing. So it's no longer just one GIS professional, but it's the responsibility of GIS professionals to create data and then be able to make it available in open formats. 

In the Netherlands [00:05:00] there's a long history of having open data and open tools that can actually leverage this kind of ingestion of knowledge. So I, I could talk all day about this, but let me sort of summarize the great challenge of GIS professionals is to, is to create these systems which help us understand.

That's kind of a foundation, you know, understand where to locate, understand where to drive, understand changes in our planet. All of these things are about understanding things. So my good friend, Richard Saul Wurman - who started Ted by the way - often says Jack you're in the understanding business. I thought that was interesting. Characterizing all the GIS professionals who do such a wide diverse group of things. And he said, you know, Jack also understanding precedes action. And it took me a while to think about that. That is our work collectively as a GIS family is about this [00:06:00] whole cycle of measuring, analyzing, visualizing, doing geo-design on top of geographic science and then acting. 

It's this foundation that is so exciting to me to see happen at a larger scale than just a project. I mean, when we first began to do GIS, it was make a map on a computer, and then it was doing a project that was supported by maps in computers. And then it was analyzing the relationships and patterns and processes geographically in a computer. And now as we sort of extrapolate along this history, it's about connecting our collective information as services - so-called nervous system - and making it available for other people to mash up and use our collective information, to be able to make decisions. 

What's [00:07:00] driving all this, you might say, well, same driving forces that made GIS come into into reality, which is users need to have geographic information to make better decisions.

So better decision-making is one. Also communication is one. Also being able to create efficiency is one. Like you know, one of my customers is UPS. Last year they saved $400 million routing their trucks better in home delivery. That's one application, one user. So making things more efficient.

Smart cities. This is a big vision in The Netherlands. How do we make our cities smarter by routing and creating greater efficiency? How do we have politicians make better decisions? How do we communicate with our citizens so that our citizens understand what's going on through maps? How do we communicate with each other in different disciplines? [00:08:00] 

You know, geography is the great integrator actually. It's like your mind, you know, you see this observation, that observation, you bring it together and you make a conclusion. Well, geography, the foundation of our planet, is this amazing science that is all about integrating. And the purpose of integration like your mind is to see. See things holistically so that we can respond with holistic answers.

And I hope this is communicating to you that: hey, let's look around! The world's challenges today are big and complex. And they require holistic thinking. They require collaboration and fundamentally they require the integration of information from multiple disciplines. Geography is the answer for this. 

So those of you who chose this as a profession, I want to say: Good job! And your, your [00:09:00] future is, is paved in a whole pathway of contribution to not only the organizations that you work in, but to the world. Because right now, considering the challenges of climate change or issues of social conflict like the tragedies that are occurring in Ukraine today are all about requiring rational thinking and science-based information and integrative thinking and holistic solutions doing what I sometimes call geo-design. That is designing considering all the geographic science and factors, not just physical science, but social science, all the factors come together using geography. And GIS, the digital version of geography, is the thing that provides the fuel. So you who are GIS professionals can be proud of the huge footprints that you are making.

Unfortunately they're kind of [00:10:00] quietly in the background and nobody knows about them. I mean, the fact is you GIS professionals are running the world, you're running the Netherlands.

Dave Laurier: And they are too humble right? These GIS professionals? 

Jack Dangermond: I like humility, actually, because you can do more. I like the humble contributions that science and the academy provides in terms of fueling the amazing work in the public sector and in the private sector, in the education space, in the research space. I just say there's few people on the planet who really know what everybody's doing with respect to this technology.

I have this really privileged situation and, I can hardly sleep at night because I see what people are doing: they're contributing positively to creating a more sustainable future. And this nervous system vision is what's going to [00:11:00] happen. So you can say,  well Jack, I know you've been in GIS too long but I have been around a long time and I've seen lots of trends.

And my sense is that the nervous system will probably happen. It's not just a vision, it's not being driven by any one thing. It's just the natural consequences of various advancing and integrating technologies. The notion of, thousands and millions of organizations sharing their information in such a form in the cloud as services that can be easily discovered like we do with Google search and then subsequently mashed up like overlaying maps and integrated, modeled, visualized and then used in common practices by [00:12:00] organizations. That's all going to happen. I know it's going to happen. It may be beyond my, my lifespan, but I, I feel it in my wooden shoes as my mother used to say, this is going to happen. 

Dave Laurier: Yeah. And I think the GIS is like uniquely positioned there because you mentioned the keyword "integration" a couple of times if you want to stack all these layers of information. Then probably the sole system that we have, the sole technology system that we have at this moment that's capable of doing that with a common denominator of location is a GIS.

Jack Dangermond: It's an important point that you make, which is that almost no technology has as its main mission integration. I mean, you can interrelate, maybe. You can interconnect, but the vision of integrating different layers of information to see the whole doesn't really exist outside of the science of geography and the use of location as a dimension. [00:13:00] 

Michael, my good friend and colleague (Goodchild) who I co-authored this paper with first introduced me to this idea there's actually two roles that GIS has in integration, that keyword. One of them is integrating the information or we might say it, the science level of information integration. So we can look at the relationships and patterns, the kind of network of how it's all interconnected on our planet. And here are the new nervous system is quite interesting. 

The second application, the word integration is that GIS integrates people. Because from different disciplines, they can look at the whole - like your brain - from different perspectives and for different environments for using GIS. So no better example is than in a local government where we have this emerging enterprise vision of GIS, which is one integrated system, now [00:14:00] becoming distributed on the cloud, bringing in lots of data with many different users. So these different users use and share common information and common services and they see and leverage each other. They kind of collaborate both directly and indirectly through the virtual environment of GIS.

They can, they can collaborate: discipline to discipline and person to person. Engineers are now collaborating with planners and environmentalists. So they're looking at the consequences of their footprints when they're doing design and build projects. And there are great engineering companies in the Netherlands for example, that I've been working with and seeing their work, it's quite extraordinary. They are moving from transactional projects to the idea of collaborating through geographic information with other agencies and interests, the Dutch cadastral, the environmental agencies, the [00:15:00] transportation agencies, the water, all of it coming together in engineering practices.

Were there, the engineering companies are actually ingesting and collaborating together to create a better whole. So let me just summarize a couple of concepts. 

GIS and the nervous system really is applying the philosophy of the geographic approach. This is a way of thinking geographically and a way of applying geographic information to the way that we actually create a future. It's a geo integration we might call it. 

And there's geo-analytics, which are supporting the geographic approach to problem solving and thinking. This is all the thousands of spatial analysis tools that can be brought together on a GIS.

And there's the idea of geo visualization. This is a language now,[00:16:00] through maps and some of the inventions of my colleagues, story maps, telling the stories about geography

Dave Laurier:  Very Powerful

Jack Dangermond: Very powerful geo communication. And that fuels another geo thing: geo-collaboration.

Dave Laurier:  That's beautiful. Actually, I've heard you say today also on the stage where you mentioned, it's not just about technology. It's about people. It's about processes and workflows.

Jack Dangermond: Right. Exactly. And what the world now is missing - tragically - on many frontiers is the ability to geo-collaborate. And to be able to do geo-collaboration, you have to have trust. collaboration happens they say at the speed of trust. Well, GIS provides us a trustworthy foundation.

We haven't seen the infiltration of crazy stories of misinformation you know. That hasn't [00:17:00] happened in the world of professional mapmakers and GIS professionals. So it is a source of truth and this truth is trustable. And the more it takes on a role of being a foundation for our various organizations and our various countries and the world in general, I strongly believe that it will mean transformation in the way that we behave. 

Now I strongly believe that, but I also strongly advocate it and I really want to send my appreciation a message to you for letting me talk to your audience, because I think. It's very important that we go beyond just being technology appliers and project by project work.

We see the context of this work and the context of this work can really create a more sustainable future. And [00:18:00] we're right on the edge at this point, as most of you know. With climate change and with loss of biodiversity

Dave Laurier: Yeah, there's lots of tipping points

Jack Dangermond: Lot's of tipping points! And Holland is a center of focus for sustainability.

I see this in the practices and the work that you do as a, as a society and as individuals. It's a great footprint for the rest of the world to copy. But it can especially be multiplied and amplified through the lens of being able to show these best practices through the web and through footprints at examples in cities, in organizations, in the academy, in government of various types.

Holland is already a smart country. I'm Dutch, of course. So I can say that. Is that phrase slick for me to say? But I mean it. You know, it's an example country and yes, there's lots of work still to be done in establishing geo [00:19:00] collaboration among the agencies. And being able to create new creative solutions to the kind of issues that we're facing and buildings and engineering and, and resource management and transportation.

But I'm hopeful that through the good work of the people that are listening here, you will stand up and respond to these challenges. You know, I, I have I have high hopes for everyone listening that's you're up to it! You know, my mother had a great friend. She once told me Jack, and as I was just a little kid, seven or eight years old, she said, Jack, you're going to live a charmed to life. I thought charmed life, what the hell is she talking about marble life, but it stuck with me. 

So I want to simply say in closing this message to everybody listening here, David, that I expect great things of you. To take your life and have a purposeful life to make it meaningful, to use this [00:20:00] science and this technology that's evolving and build a better platform for sustainability, not just there, but also be a shining light for everyone around the world to copy.

Thank you very much, David.

Dave Laurier:  Wow. That's really a beautiful ending, Jack. Thank you for your time. It's been an amazing story. I hope it inspires a lot of young professionals in the GIS space to continue their work or to either go and study GIS and and join this movement. Yeah. 

Jack Dangermond: It's kind of a movement, isn't it?

Dave Laurier:  Yeah

Jack Dangermond: It is actually but it's a movement that has an amazingly important social purpose. Perhaps there's no other time in the history of the world where it has been so important. I mean, to address the issues of overpopulation and overconsumption, of climate change. I mean I actually believe and have hope that we can create a sustainable future.

And that belief system comes to me from seeing all of the footprints of what [00:21:00] GIS professionals are already doing. They inspire me all the time while they're not scaled up to the scale that we need to scale things up to for the whole planet. It gives a glimmers of light of what's going to happen in the future.

Once again, David, thank you very much. 

Dave Laurier: Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure talking to you. And I look forward to yeah. See you continue the great work that you're doing. Thanks very much. Thank you.


For more information about Dave Laurier or Avineon-Tensing please visit our corporate website at https://www.tensing.com  or read the blog about this episode (Dutch)  at https://www.tensing.com/blog/talking-spatial-gis-als-ruimtelijk-zenuwstelsel