Ambientare GeoTech Improves Workflows with ArcGIS Enterprise for Brazil’s Infrastructure and Environmental Projects

Brazil is the largest country in South America and the fifth largest in the world. With five major geographic regions—each with distinct landforms, climates, and ecosystems, including the Amazon Rainforest—the nation’s ecological diversity is a key concern of the work performed by Ambientare GeoTech, a strategic environmental technology consulting agency. 

Ambientare’s work focuses on environmental licensing and implementing Brazil’s Environmental Control Plan to monitor and manage over 60 environmental and infrastructure projects throughout the country, including new highways, transmission lines, and mines—before, during, and after construction. Due to Brazil’s vast land area and diversity, the nation faces numerous challenges like deforestation, land degradation, and the need for effective management of natural resources. 

The team of over 200 professionals at Ambientare had been managing their geographic information system (GIS) workflows by desktop. Personnel relied on email attachments, PDFs, static map books, and computer-aided design (CAD) files to access information, but these methods were slow and inefficient, ultimately delaying critical infrastructure project deliverables. “Staff were saving data in folders on their computers, and it would get lost sometimes,” said Carlos Eduardo, GIS analyst at Ambientare. 

Scattered across different file types, the data was not easily sharable with regulators or clients. Ambientare experienced difficulty collaborating and communicating with stakeholders effectively. “We sat down with the coordinators and really tried to understand the problem,” continued Eduardo. “They needed to know quickly what they could expect at each location, how many staff they need to send out, and if they need to cut across a river or get on a boat to access a project.”
 

Ambientare staff wanted to generate standardized data with faster field-to-office connectivity from a single platform to coordinate work. In 2022, the team began using ArcGIS Online but needed a comprehensive geospatial platform for the volume and specialization of their data requirements. In 2024, the company implemented ArcGIS Enterprise for their web portal, enabling them to house a single link per project. “The work behind the curtains isn’t really seen,” said Eduardo. “It was a challenge to get everything that wasn’t organized at all and create data governance and a schema for it.” 

The web portal was designed with clear visuals so GIS and non-GIS staff can access applications efficiently. One specific feature of the portal includes two separate views: one tailored to coordinators or management staff and one for specialists like biologists, geographers, and archaeologists to access schedules, documents, diagnostics, and live field layers in one location. “It’s two ways of looking at the same data—the micro view and the macro view,” continued Eduardo.

Socioeconomic, engineering, and environmental data are fed into the portal from ArcGIS Survey123 and ArcGIS Field Maps, applications mobile staff use for inspections and surveys. On the front end, a standard application model was created using ArcGIS Experience Builder. This allows users to access key performance indicators, project data at a glance, and diagnostic information. 

“This information integration capability has created a mature corporate GIS with numerous functionalities within the company, such as the entire management of activities and requests for new demands, which are all done through the GIS portal,” said Marcos Vilela, director of geotechnologies at Ambientare.
 

Ambientare’s web portal is now used by individuals as well as shared across departments in weekly team meetings. 

“Shifting from manual, desktop cartography to a live ArcGIS Enterprise portal cut the time to a first environmental diagnosis from weeks or months to about a week, realizing an estimated 30 percent productivity gain on core deliverables,” said Luiz Garonce, commercial director at Ambientare.

All the solutions Ambientare implemented from Esri are considered out of the box, only requiring light customizations when needed.

“Everything staff need is in one place—that is the most important thing,” said Eduardo. “They don’t have to look through 10 folders to figure out the most updated version, that is the main gain.” 

This new ability to make decisions faster also helps the team build trust during client meetings.

“Our primary objective is to be more competitive while delivering better outcomes in complex, specialized environmental consulting for our infrastructure customers,” said Vilela. “GIS became our single project environment—one version of the truth—and the whole company works in sync.” 

Today, Ambientare staff work from this central web portal that hosts every project and dataset. It has created a trusted, authoritative common operational picture, so remote crews’ observations appear in near real time, allowing office staff to integrate changes quickly. Additionally, the ArcGIS Enterprise portal has made onboarding new personnel easier because they can find what they need in centralized hubs for their specific job function. 

“In almost two years, we’ve changed the way we work, placing GIS at the center of analysis and decision-making within the company. All this while still having enormous growth potential,” said Vilela.

Having seen great success with GIS technology as a way to optimize operations, Ambientare is looking at more ways to apply this innovation in the future. Leadership staff understand the value of GIS and see its potential to help them in sustainability initiatives. As Brazil experiences increased frequency and intensity of the effects of climate change, Ambientare seeks to apply species distribution to its GIS models. 

Vilela added that the agency also plans to automate reports and analysis using generative AI to preformat fields, enabling specialists to spend more time refining results. “These steps will elevate quality and let us deliver more tailored, insight-rich solutions.”