Securing Our Environmental Future
Effective management of our natural resources is essential for the preservation and sustainability of our natural environment. Measuring and analysing these resources, whether in the field, or back in the office, requires access to relevant information and the tools to analyse the data.
Using location intelligence to assist in the decision making processes when managing the environment ensures better resource management both within and outside an organisation. A GIS can link data sets together by common locational data, such as addresses or latitude and longitude, which helps members of the public, private environmental companies, and governmental departments share their data. By creating a shared database, information can be collected once and used many times, helping to compare environmental data sourced from different locations, and over time.
- Find out how organisations from around the world are using location intelligence in environmental management
A New Perspective on Water Management
Water is becoming an increasingly precious commodity across all states of Australia. As a corporate member of the Autralian Water Association, ESRI Australia supported this year's National Water Week, with the theme for 2009 being 'Securing Our Water Future'.
One of the most fundamental challenges facing the water sector is the shift from decades of previously unlimited access to cheap water to increasing periods of drought. This has made it vital to not only look at the ways we use water, but also investigate how we can better protect, rehabilitate and improve water environments such as streams, wetlands, waterways, beaches, and estuaries.
To address these key challenges, it is of critical importance that water utilities, regional water authorities, and state and federal government agencies are equipped with comprehensive information to help better maintain and manage water catchments, networks and systems. With so much of the information relating to water containing a location reference, using GIS is a logical way to organise and manage location-based information from various sources and corporate databases, and gain a new perspective on water management.
- Read how location intelligence can play a key role in helping to secure our water future
Location Intelligence and Climate Change
Scientists for years have been using sophisticated computer models such as general circulation, atmosphere-ocean interaction, and radiative convective process models in an attempt to visualise the future of earth's climate. The output of a particular model can be enlightening, but combining data from multiple sources, both past and future, gives us the best chance for a comprehensive and accurate vision of what the future holds for our planet.
The key to understanding our dynamic climate is creating a framework to take many different pieces of past and future data from a variety of sources and merge them together in a single system. Information technology brings together data from these many different sources into a common computer database. A Geographic Information System (GIS) is a sophisticated technology tool used by planners, engineers, and scientists to display and analyse all forms of location-referenced data including meteorological information. GIS creates a new framework for studying global climate change by allowing users to inventory and display large, complex spatial data sets. They can also analyse the potential interplay between various factors, getting us closer to a true understanding of how our dynamic climate may change in the coming decades
and centuries.
- Is the Earth getting hotter or colder?
- Is the stress human populations are putting on the planet contributing to climate change?
- What potential factors may significantly impact our ability to thrive and survive as a species?
- What additional sorts of environmental monitoring can we be doing today to improve climate change tomorrow?
Only through careful observation of the data, application of scientific principals, and by using the latest technology do we have any hope of truly understanding the stressors and impacts on the incredibly complex system of Earth's climate.
From conservation organisations to international agencies, find out in the GIS and climate change best practices document how scientists across the globe are using GIS as an integrative platform that gives those researching and analysing our environment and climate unprecedented vision and flexibility.