Geographic Insight Continued from page 13 Getting Aid Where It Is Most Needed ARRA emphasizes projects that aid short-term recovery and encourage long-term revitalization. The so-called shovel-ready projects included in ARRA are candidates for immediate action that could greatly benefit from GIS. As Jack Dangermond, Esri's president, has noted, "Lurking in the [stimulus] bill are lots of GIS answered questions such as where to build bridges." Analysis of these projects would help prioritize them more effectively to maximize the benefits from these expenditures. Governments and businesses have been using GIS to streamline processes and improve decision making for decades. This technology was originally developed in 1962 to handle a million-acre Canadian land-use/planning mapping project that would not have otherwise been fiscally feasible. The capabilities of GIS have expanded greatly in the intervening years. For example, an Australian energy infrastructure management company called Jemena uses GIS to view its assets relative to utility line crossings, land-use zoning, and rights-of-way, as well as critical or sensitive infrastructure such as airports, schools, or hospitals. Jemena uses GIS to manage a system that supplies gas to more than 1.6 million customers in Melbourne and Sydney. StateStat monitors the performance of state agencies and generates reports and maps. GIS is more than a visualization tool; it is an information system that provides a geographic framework for managing data, understanding phenomena, and modeling solutions. As GIS technology has matured, more powerful tools have been developed, particularly in the area of appropriately applying statistics to geospatial data. These tools generate insights that could not be obtained by other methods, whether the question being answered is why a wetland area is deteriorating or why a particular area has high rates of foreclosure. 14 ArcUser Summer 2009 www.esri.com