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Geoinformatics_06-2009
event further integration of components of the esri platform esri international user conference 2009 the yearly international user conference of esri in san diego is for many people the most important gis event in the world. from july 13 to 17, esri users were welcomed in the san diego convention center for everything that has to do with gis: workshops, an exhibition, user group meetings and an update on the most recent developments on the esri platform. this platform consists of desktop gis, server gis, mobile gis and online services. from the plenary sessions it became clear that these components are converging more and more and to a greater degree supplement each other. by eric van rees jack dangermond, esri president, welcomes attendees to esri s 29th annual international user conference. this year s conference theme was designing our future , in which policy measures are used to fight climate change. the two guest speakers on the opening day s afternoon program, economist hernando de soto and biologist willie smits, talked about durable development and how to design the future. smits spoke about reforesting in indonesia to keep up the mark of the orangutan population, de soto on the use of gis to formalize landownership in peru, to fight poverty. in the workshops that followed during the rest of the week the conference theme returned with a special climate change gis program . the first day of the user conference consisted of software demo s, esri client stories and award ceremonies. in the morning program, the enterprise award, the making a difference award and the president s award were handed out. this last award was meant for governor martin o malley of the state of maryland. gis is deployed here for many means: civilians are informed in the field of safety, green manage- ment, where to go for a new driver s license and how long it will take before this license is ready. a live demo showed how this all takes place: through an easy to use web interface and with the aid of easy to use drop down menu s that gis users will recognize as api s from silverlight and flex. all relevant projects near one s house can be requested, and for questions one can directly email the project leader concerned, with just one mouse click. later that day, dr. henk scholten received a lifetime achievement award for his work for edugis, geodan and the vu amsterdam (free university). in a short talk he mentioned the importance of maps and geodata for the dutch, as demonstrated on many paintings by vermeer, a famous dutch painter. the geographical point of view can be used in many sciences and is not only limited to geography alone. this opinion is also the starting point in his recent book geospatial technology and the role of location in science , later that week presented at the geodan booth at the exhibition. also shown was a short video on the importance of a shared view for all parties (map and data) in case of an emergency, such as a flooding. to make this happen, geodan, microsoft and esri netherlands joined hands and developed a product called eagle, which was also demonstrated at the exhibition. arcgis 9.4, arcgis explorer and mobile gis the new release of arcgis desktop is slated for the first half of 2010 and previews were shown last year and this year in the plenary session. what is striking is that developments concerning web-gis are finding their place in the arcgis architecture: think for instance of sharing of maps and data on the internet or in other esri apps. to meet the demand for more geographical data, esri provides more and more (free) geodata on the web. mobile gis is seeing a new impetus with gis-apps for blackberry and i-phone, so that users can share arcgis-maps with others to show their work. september 2009 64
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