More than 2,100 people attended the seventh annual Esri Federal User Conference (FedUC), February 1-3, 2005, in Washington, D.C. Jack Dangermond, Esri president, welcomed the federal community and described a context for the conference, "GIS Sustaining Our Nation." He cited examples of increasing challenges related to population, urbanization, globalization, and environmental change and noted how the language of geography is used to observe, measure, and analyze these conditions. His presentation focused on the evolving role of GIS for geoprocessing and analysis, integrated work flows, and distributed GIS services for intelligent collaboration.

Attendees represented all parts of federal government. Their work was summarized in a series of slides showing projects and efforts in tsunami relief support, weather forecasting, hydrological modeling and flood analysis, earth observation and coastal mapping, marine ecosystem monitoring, topographic mapping, human health and the environment, the census, law enforcement, and Web-based publishing of geographic data.

An Enabling Technology

GIS—as the language of geography was explored in more detail, focusing on the building blocks of data models, geodata sets, work flow models, maps and globes, and metadata. Through distributed architecture, these are being implemented in desktop tools, on client/server systems, and through Web services networks. This was demonstrated in a live enterprise presentation by John Calkins, Esri, which looked at some of the serious challenges facing the international intelligence community. The demo featured a comprehensive GIS application that used desktop tools, ArcGIS Server, ArcGIS Engine, and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)-based Web services, as well as the Northrop Grumman large format Touch Table. The analysis relied on the accuracy, precision, consistency, and completeness of data to increase certainty about conclusions being drawn. Calkins commented on the value of metadata to know the "currentness" and said, "GIS professionals need to take advantage of metadata, topology, and sensitivity analyses as they model our world to deal with questions on quality and certainty."

The Future

In his opening address, Dangermond described some of the current and planned productivity enhancements for ArcGIS software. He described how these "networks" connect people and resources for virtual collaboration and how services-oriented architecture allows GIS to be deployed anywhere. "Web services," he commented, "are emerging as most important." He pointed to the growing use of ArcWeb Services-which provide on-demand GIS with 100 generic services with images, basemaps, routing, street data, weather, flood risk analysis, and geocoding-by Web developers, GIS users, and solutions users. Dangermond also noted the coming of "GIS smart clients," such as geographically enabled cell phones that can connect to a server and clip data based on the location of the cell phone. "It's like having all the data with you," he said. He concluded, optimistically, that the vision of GIS for the nation is possible, applications are growing, and GIS is becoming a system of systems. "Web services are providing integration, and interoperability is enabling organizations to work together," Dangermond noted, "and GIS professionals, like you, will lead this."

For more information, contact Kim Burns, Esri (e-mail: kburns@esri.com).