Focus Summit on new field that couples GIS and design By Carla Wheeler, ArcWatch Editor Although the word GeoDesign and its definition may be newly coined and evolving, Esri president Jack Dangermond observed that the concept of incorporating geographic knowledge into design isn’t new as he addressed attendees at the world’s first GeoDesign Summit in January 2010. “GeoDesign is going on. It has been going on for hundreds of years,” he said, pointing to examples in farming, urban planning, and site selection for stores. For example, farmers have always taken geography into account when deciding what crops would be appropriate to grow on their land and where to locate their farms (e.g., near a water source for irrigation). Dangermond and a group of thought leaders from academia and a variety of professions believe it’s time to better integrate geospatial technologies such as GIS with design to deal with the planet’s most pressing problems. To jump-start that process, the 2010 GeoDesign Summit, sponsored by the University of California, Santa Barbara; the University of Redlands; and Esri, was held January 8–10 at Esri’s conference center in Redlands, California. More than 170 academics and professionals from fields such as geography, architecture, GIS, urban planning, engineering, conservation, and forestry attended the event. Besides listening to keynotes and Lightning Talks (i.e., presentations lasting only a few minutes) on GeoDesign and how it’s being used, attendees participated in “idea labs” for creating agendas for topics such as GeoDesign theories, education, future technologies, 3D visualization, and analysis in design. The Wikipedia entry they created to define GeoDesign reads, in part: “GeoDesign is a set of techniques and enabling technologies for planning built and natural environments in an integrated process, including project conceptualization, analysis, design specification, stakeholder participation and collaboration, design creation, simulation, and evaluation (among other stages).” www.esri.com Thomas Fisher, dean of the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, spoke passionately about the need for geodesign in his Keynote Address. The entry continues with a quote from “GeoDesign: Fundamental Principles and Routes Forward,” the presentation Michael Flaxman made at the summit: “GeoDesign is a design and planning method which tightly couples the creation of design proposals with impact simulations informed by geographic contexts.” “We are at the beginning of what many of us see as a new field,” said Thomas Fisher, dean of the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, in his Keynote Address. With the world facing what he called “exponentially increasing stress on the systems we depend on” such as natural ecosystems and building infrastructure, there’s a great need to use spatial data and technologies in planning and design to tackle problems such as those associated with global warming, threats to species, and poorly designed infrastructure. Continued on page 18 ArcUser Spring 2010 17