The Summer issue of ArcNews is now online, and there’s an excellent feature by Jack Dangermond on the promise and potential of GIS for design. Jack has been focused strongly on the evolution of GIS for design for more than a year, and has picked the theme, “GIS: Designing Our Future,” as the theme for the ESRI/User Conference this Summer.

In this feature he outlines a compelling vision with roots that go back to the beginning of GIS. The following paragraph does a nice job of summarizing the vision.

“The key to developing a true understanding of our complex and dynamic earth is creating a framework to take many different pieces of past and future data from a variety of sources and merge them in a single system. GIS is a sophisticated technological tool already in widespread use by planners, engineers, and scientists to display and analyze all forms of location-referenced data about the health, status, and history of our planet. GIS enables a GeoDesign framework for analyzing and managing anthropogenic earth issues by allowing users to inventory and display large, complex spatial datasets. They can also analyze the potential interplay between various factors, getting us closer to a true understanding of how our dynamic earth systems may change in the coming decades and centuries.”

Read the full feature here.

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