DATA MANAGEMENT

Put your spatial data to work

ArcGIS is a complete solution for spatial data management

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Map showing an analysis of social media usage data in the Bay Area, illustrating spatial data management in service of a site selection workflow

What is spatial data management in ArcGIS?

Organizations are working with more spatial data than ever—tied to assets, infrastructure, customers, and operations. Making the most of location data requires technology built to understand it. Spatial data management in ArcGIS unifies this data for easy access, integration, analysis, and sharing across the enterprise.

Designed for spatial data

ArcGIS, the world’s most powerful geographic information system (GIS) software, is built to handle the volume and velocity of spatial data.

Open and interoperable

ArcGIS is the industry leader for open and interoperable spatial data management.

Integrates with other enterprise software

ArcGIS integrates seamlessly with common business systems.

Learn more about ArcGIS
Drone captured imagery and terrain data comes to life using location data management in this animation

See your data in a new way

3D-animated data creates a visualization of Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado, illustrating the power of spatial data management to bring data to life.

Get more from your spatial data with ArcGIS

Use an all-in-one system for greater efficiency, productivity, and returns.

DATA INTEGRATION

Connect data from every part of your organization and external sources

ArcGIS works directly with a diverse array of data sources, widely supports open standards, and enables interoperability of all spatial data types and formats.

  • Gain a centralized, secure view of data from a variety of sources across the enterprise
  • Connect, manage, and access data from databases, data warehouses, and APIs
  • Integrate data with business systems like Microsoft, Autodesk, and SAP

DATA EDITING

Make editing easier and reduce errors

Create accurate spatial data and edit it from any device using streamlined data editing processes.

  • Edit spatial data on the go with mobile-friendly tools 
  • Support multiuser editing with conflict management
  • Automate data quality assurance processes with apps and built-in checks

DATA PREPARATION

Get data ready with less effort

ArcGIS includes powerful tools to clean, transform, and prepare spatial data—reducing manual effort and accelerating time to insight.

  • Simplify ETL workflows with built-in tools including no-code solutions for cleaning, formatting, and integrating datasets
  • Automate complex data preparation tasks with scripting and modeling tools

DATA SCALABILITY

Adapt quickly, scale with ease

ArcGIS scales to meet your organization’s evolving needs, whether that’s adding more users or analyzing massive amounts of spatial data.

  • Grow with a modular storage system that scales with changing capacity and organizational needs
  • Easily configure access and permissions to support more users with flexible data access
  • Scale with a fully managed SaaS or self-hosted options including cloud-native software on Kubernetes, VMs in the cloud, or on-premises servers

A person using a laptop work with large amounts of spatial data

DATA SHARING

Store data securely, collaborate effortlessly

ArcGIS stores data securely and enables teams to share spatial data across departments and systems, fostering collaboration while delivering control over access and integrity.

  • Meet enterprise-grade security and compliance standards
  • Configure data access with fine-grained permissions
  • Share data securely with other organizations

A sharing interface appears over a map of building footprints in Scene Viewer—a dedicated web app for visualizing geospatial data in 3D

Ready to try ArcGIS?

ArcGIS adapts to the way you work. Talk with someone about options for getting started with spatial data management.

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ArcGIS is built for spatial data management

Esri’s ArcGIS is a comprehensive geospatial platform than can meet the spatial data management needs of large and small organizations.

  • ArcGIS Online

    FOUNDATIONAL PRODUCT

    Secure and scalable SaaS that delivers spatial data management, mapping, and analysis capabilities over the web in an Esri-managed environment

    Explore ArcGIS Online

  • ArcGIS Pro

    FOUNDATIONAL PRODUCT

    Full-featured, professional desktop app with advanced tools for spatial data management, mapping, data visualization, analysis, and data science

    Explore ArcGIS Pro

  • ArcGIS Enterprise

    FOUNDATIONAL PRODUCT

    Provides spatial data management, mapping, and analysis capabilities within an organization’s own self-hosted infrastructure or in a cloud environment of choice

    Explore ArcGIS Enterprise
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Elevate spatial data management workflows with expert resources

Access to ArcGIS includes much more than spatial data management software. Tutorials, certifications, technical support, and community help you succeed with spatial data management.

  • Technical support

    Esri’s world-class support team helps organizations ensure their success, with additional options for premium 24/7 support.

    Learn more about support

  • Training

    Online and classroom training offerings and certification programs fit any schedule, role, and experience level.

    Search training classes

  • Community

    An active network of geospatial professionals share tips, chat, and collaborate via local user groups and global online forums.

    Join the Esri Community
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See how others are managing data with ArcGIS

Organizations across industries have adopted ArcGIS as their enterprise spatial data management system. Explore some of their success stories.

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Frequently asked questions

Spatial data management involves collecting, storing, editing, integrating, maintaining, and sharing spatial data to support informed decisions. Spatial data management is a form of data management tailored to meeting the needs of spatial data, also known as geospatial data, location data, and GIS data. Spatial data management serves as a foundation for data workflows, providing a centralized location for working with an organization’s data even when it originates in other systems.

With ArcGIS you can manage virtually any data type or file format. Some examples of data that are supported by ArcGIS include:

  • Vector data: Points, lines, and polygons represent features with specific locations or areas, such as buildings, roads, rivers, or incidents.
  • Raster data: Raster datasets map continuous phenomena such as imagery, elevation data, and scanned maps.
  • 3D data: Industries like urban planning, government, and AEC use 3D data—including meshes, lidar, CAD, and BIM—to make informed decisions. ArcGIS efficiently renders large-scale 3D content on desktop, web, and mobile platforms.
  • Nonspatial data: Data such as addresses or postal codes reference locations but aren’t inherently spatial. These include tabular formats (CSV, Excel, database tables) and unstructured text (JSON, XML, document-based files). They can be linked to ArcGIS and enhanced with location details for better analysis.
  • Real-time data feeds: ArcGIS supports the ingestion of high-velocity observation data from Internet of Things (IoT) platforms, sensors, and other streaming sources. These feeds are processed and analyzed in real time to enable dynamic situational awareness, immediate decision-making, and actionable insights across spatial and temporal contexts.
  • Graph data: ArcGIS models relationships between entities, both spatial and nonspatial, to facilitate semantic search and network analysis.

ArcGIS offers flexibility regarding database type and deployment options. Databases may be deployed on-premises, hosted and managed by Esri, or managed by third-party providers. Spatial database solutions are available for various storage requirements. Users can connect to existing databases and share data for mapping and analysis purposes. If no database exists, ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Online provide spatial databases designed to store and scale data as needed.

Yes, ArcGIS enables integration with various internal and third-party sources, including enterprise business systems, relational databases, cloud data warehouses, and web services. It supports popular databases like Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, and IBM Db2, and cloud data warehouses like Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery, and allowing users to access and manage data directly without migration.

Yes, even people who aren’t GIS experts can use spatial data and the resulting insights, often by means of easy-to-use apps and dashboards that can be configured to surface key information when it matters most. If you’re new to geographic information system (GIS) technology, explore our What is GIS? page.

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