With the theme of Integrating Everything, Everywhere, GIS professionals from around the world gathered in San Diego, California, for the world’s largest annual GIS conference—the 2025 Esri User Conference (Esri UC). The conference brought together more than 15,000 GIS practitioners, experts, and thought leaders as well as more than 14,000 virtual attendees, who explored and celebrated the latest advances in GIS technology.
“I want to learn about everything and dive deeper with Esri products,” said first-time attendee Samuel Nelson, a program analyst for the District Department of Transportation in Washington, DC. “To see the vast array of applications of Esri products and use cases across industries and all the services [Esri offers] is a great inspiration.”
The conference showcased the latest in Esri products and gave attendees from around the world the chance to network with peers and learn from product experts through technical sessions and product demonstrations. Esri President Jack Dangermond opened the conference by sharing his vision for the future of GIS, describing recent developments in ArcGIS technology.
“Our world is evolving rapidly. These challenges suggest that we need a new approach that integrates our collective knowledge [and] creates a better future,” said Dangermond. “[All of you are] applying the concepts of geographic knowledge to making the world a better place.”
The opening day of the conference included product demos; updates about new capabilities and features for Esri technology; and notable examples of work from the GIS user community on an array of topics, including infrastructure, airport travel, and health. Here are several stories presented at the Plenary Session that illustrate the power of GIS.
Innovating with Geospatial Technology
Aurecon—an international design, engineering, and advisory firm that strives to shape a sustainable, modern world with purpose—is developing HumeLink, a massive energy infrastructure project that will construct new transmission lines across southern New South Wales, Australia. While developing HumeLink—which aims to bring renewable energy to consumers—the GIS team had to determine the best way to communicate hundreds of map layers and attributes to the design team to find the best corridor for each transmission line.
To address this issue, the firm built the Root Planning assessment tool, which enables the GIS team to map and quantify data layers, like soil and slope, into risk and opportunity scores. From there, the tool creates a corridor of least impact, according to Martin Russell, director of GIS, Environment & Planning, Aurecon. The data is displayed in hexbins for simple visualization.
“We believe it’s essential that these simplified maps can be interrogated in detail while telling a simple story,” said Russell.
Another tool the team developed is Aurecon Air. This collaborative platform for regulatory reporting and public approval is supported by ArcGIS Enterprise for Kubernetes. The platform uses interactive dashboards, charts, and 2D and 3D apps to communicate with stakeholders across the project team.
The development of these tools has enhanced collaboration and improved project coordination and delivery. “The key to this complex project is to make our delivery simple and well understood through a suite of digital design tools powered by GIS,” Russell said.
When Health Care Meets Location
CVS Health, a provider of health care and pharmacy services, detailed how the organization leverages the power of GIS to make the world of health care easier to understand and navigate. When the state of Texas suffered a major power crisis in 2021 due to winter storms, CVS had to quickly coordinate disaster response across dozens of teams with siloed data.
This crisis led to the development of the Crisis Command Central application. The app is designed to put assets into a geographic context and provide real-time visibility into the operations and any potential hazards across the business via a tool made with ArcGIS Dashboards. Now, when a severe storm occurs, the CVS team can check a dashboard to see which stores are operational, which colleagues are affected, and which medication deliveries are vulnerable.
CVS Specialty, the specialty pharmacy branch of CVS, uses the same GIS technology to track, manage, and reroute medication in the face of extreme weather, explained Matt Anderson, the lead director of clinical social data intelligence at CVS Health. This is critical because delayed shipments can put the health of consumers at risk.
The CVS Health mobile app serves as a comprehensive tool for managing various aspects of health and wellness, including prescriptions and in-store shopping. This app also brings location-aware enterprise data into the everyday consumer experience. The geographic context helps inform daily transactions by integrating data and real-time weather information so that consumers have store and services information available at their fingertips.
According to Eric Hamilton, assistant vice president of clinical analytics at CVS Health, innovative developments like this empower operations leads, care managers, analysts, and anyone with an idea to explore, act, and drive change.
Making Airport Travel Safer in San Francisco
At San Francisco International Airport (SFO), GIS experts have integrated multiple systems into the airport’s GIS to build a 3D digital twin that allows them to map and manage more than half a million assets.
The airport is essentially “a small city that never sleeps”—according to Josephine Young, the airport’s director of infrastructure information management—and has more than 700,000 features in its GIS. These features include natural gas and jet fuel lines, airfield lights, planes, parking garages, and more than 15,000 rooms.
The new Airport Integrated Operations Center is a centralized software system designed to enhance operational management and coordination. It is integrated with the SFO Integrated Dynamic Twin, which is a digital twin—a virtual representation—of the airport. Supported by this dynamic digital twin, the airport’s new operations center “will act as the nerve center of the airport . . . to make sure that there’s a seamless guest experience,” Young said.
A map of airport lights, part of the Integrated Dynamic Twin, allows electricians to easily identify light bulb types before making repairs, explained Guy Michael, GIS principal at the airport. This streamlines airport maintenance and allows technicians to make repairs more quickly.
“This saves time, increases safety, and minimizes impacts to our operations,” he said while demonstrating how building information modeling (BIM) is integrated into the new digital twin, which spans the entire airport and is updated in real time.
Remote Sensing for Wildfire Management
In California, an integrated and automated remote sensing system, developed by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) and powered by ArcGIS, helps airborne research data specialists protect people and resources from wildland fires—before, during, and after fire events. This innovative application of GIS technology won the Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) Making a Difference Award, presented by Dangermond.
CAL FIRE uses remote sensing and GIS technology to map fire perimeters from airplanes flying 10,000 to 12,000 feet above fires. This information goes to fire analysts and incident commanders to determine where a fire is located and where it may go.
CAL FIRE research data specialist Logan Hansen described how a flight app—powered by ArcGIS Pro, and part of the award-winning system—provides the CAL FIRE team with custom geoprocessing tools, features, and layouts.
“The flight app helps me take [ArcGIS] Pro anywhere—even into the skies,” he said, adding that a separate cloud-based app distributes the fire perimeter information to operational specialists, public-facing web pages, and more. A dashboard indicates fire incident progress while a map shows spread predictions and risk forecasting.
“Whether it’s an operations chief making strategic decisions on an incident or a family who needs to know if it’s time to pack a go-bag, behind every perimeter we push from the air is the same goal: Help people act sooner, smarter, safer,” he said.
Embracing the Future with GIS
The 2025 Esri UC demonstrated the transformative power of GIS technology across various industries and showcased innovative applications of GIS, highlighting their potential to drive positive change and improve operational efficiency.
“[Attending Esri UC is] a great way to be exposed to all sorts of different and cool technologies, ideas, and techniques. It’s a fantastic way to learn,” said Alyssa Gunning, GIS analyst II for the City of Rocklin and a second-time attendee of the Esri UC.
With its emphasis on applying geographic insights to real-world problems, the conference underscored the growing importance of GIS in addressing complex challenges and creating a better future.