International Leaders from New Zealand, Mexico, Abu Dhabi and Australia Provide Insights to Spatial Data Strategies at Esri Senior Executive Seminar #esriuc

Maurice Williamson, Minister for Land Information, Parliament, of New Zealand spoke with enormous passion about educating his fellow ministers about not only using GIS but managing all government entities with geospatial information. “I feel evangelical about this whole frontier,” said Williamson. “I have got the religion.” Williamson is focusing on developing a national spatial data infrastructure and raising awareness at senior levels within government that GIS is vitally important. But he faces a common problem. “One of the barriers of advancement [in GIS] is the lack of skills and quality of people in the marketplace,” he said. Williamson cited Eagle Technology that is developing a web based learning portal to make GIS software widely accessible to all schools in New Zealand.

Carlos Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo, Governor of the State of Guerrero, Mexico and the former mayor of Acapulco spoke of the poverty within his state. Demographic data he showed put his state near the bottom of most statistics in basic services. Most support comes from the federal government but by the time the state uses funds to pay for basic services and debt finance, little is left to support services for the people. The state of Guerrero is using GIS for land registry for property tax assessment as well as to inventory of public buildings such as schools, health centers, other government buildings. The gains his government has reaped by using GIS comes in the form of additional income which he has turned back into building new schools and health facilities.

Greg Scott, Group Leader for the National Mapping and information Group, Geospatial and Earth Monitoring Division for Geoscience Australia spoke about maturing Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) are driven by a specific business needs. He listed several initiatives that are working.

Business driven requirements for SDI include climate change and coastal vulnerability; disaster risk reduction; urban sustainability; environment; water security; and energy security. “We are seeing the requirement for the support of these activities becoming much more specific,” said Scott.
As an example, he mentioned projects for urban sustainability which are now part of the Super Science Initiative. The Australia Urban Research Infrastructure Network has received $20 million over 4 years with the intention to ensure cities have strong, transparent and long term plans in place to manage growth, climate change, housing and urban congestion to support greater sustainability.

In the area of energy security, a national assessment of the problem the government established the Clean Energy Initiative with $5.1 Billion in funding that included the Carbon Capture and Storage project, and the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy. It also includes the Solar Flagships Program, a $1.5 billion program to provide the foundation for large scale, grid connected, solar power generation and developing an energy spatial data infrastructure to support these efforts.

In the area of water security a program called Water for the Future received a $12.9 billion water investment program, which is a 10 year plan designed to secure water resources.

Scott said that SDI is in good shape but that the greatest barriers to a national, formal SDI is perceived cost and that “complexity and organizational and cultural issues” must be overcome.

Abdul Karim Al Raeisi, the GIS executive Manager, Abu Dhabi Systems and Information Centre said that the Abu Dhabi government policy is focused on sustainable development. The government is looking at how people can collaborate using geospatial information. Abu Dhabi’s e-society initiative has a goal that by 2030 they want to achieve a spatially enabled e-government.