In the world of GIS, there is one thing that’s certain: There is a ton of geospatial information and data being stored in databases and in the Cloud all over the world.
To the trained scientist, extracting and analyzing all of this is second nature. But, to the GIS professional, who is more a business person even an end-user, it will take a lot more effort to understand and make use of all of these different datasets.
For example, datasets are very often not interlinked with one another, thus making analyses of them very difficult to the untrained eye.
In order to make this possible, a leading GIS firm that is known as Esri and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently announced that it has launched a new product line called the “Engagement Portfolio.”
This new product includes all sorts and types of global maps and mobile apps which gives everyone free and easy access to U.S. forestry-based data. Free analysis tools are also provided. The key differentiating factor of this product from the many other GIS products is that all of the datasets are interactive with others.
So, for instance, if multiple datasets are being examined, many “what if” scenarios can be planned, with the effect being that the manipulation of one dataset immediately is transmitted to the other datasets. According to John Steffenson, Director of Global Business Development of Natural Resources at Esri, “Interactive access to data helps everyone make better decisions about our fragile ecosystem . . . the Forest Service’s new Engagement Portfolio transforms the agency’s wealth of data into information products that anyone can relate to and that powerfully convey the value of the nation’s forests.”
With this new product comes a new database as well, which is known as the “Forestry Inventory and Analysis.”
GeoTel is a telecommunications research and GIS mapping firm that researches and provides telecom datasets for more than 5,500 cities in the United States and worldwide. GeoTel’s expertise includes specialists in economic geography, geospatial engineering, web GIS, and telecommunications GIS Data infrastructure.
