Welcome back everybody. I'm glad that you came out of the halls back in here to start the session. I'm going to talk about two of my favorite subjects this afternoon: geodesign and geoinformation products. Sometimes we call these maps. So geodesign is the first subject that I want to cover. How many of you know what this concept means? Oh, three, four. All right, it's a very interesting idea. Many years ago, like centuries ago, Japanese masters would go to landscapes like these and they would craft a sensitive solution for putting buildings into landscapes, and they created a kind of harmonious thing that we've all come to idealize as a beautiful man and nature relationship. About 50 years ago, maybe 60 years ago, there was a landscape architect quite famous in the United States called Ian McHarg. He wrote a book called Design with Nature. Design with Nature was a set of plastic overlays that McHarg invented as a methodology for designing with nature. I don't know what's happened to my slides, but somehow maybe somebody magical in the back room will get my slides back up there. Hint hint. Anyway, he inspired me as a young man. I was a young landscape architect as a student. I was studying computers and I also loved Ian McHarg's work of trying to link the science side of geography with design.
So you following the idea: using maps I could integrate nature and overlay these maps and interpret them with suitability interpretations, and then do geographic design sketching on it. This is kind of a popular idea, this notion that I could create out of my mind — this is what designers actually do. They still don't have my slides back here though, hint hint, somebody run back there and get my slides going because it doesn't work. Link the science side of what you were trained in with the design side, which is what artists do: they create something out of nothing. Like this room was designed, it was conceived of and then built. President Clinton this morning talked about he doesn't want to just talk about the outcome of meetings, he wants to see projects done that are meaningful projects. And this is what Ian was talking about: how can he bring the scientific information into the world of the designer so that people would create considering tsunamis or considering flood plains or considering hotspot biological areas like that. When I got out of school, I started this organization, Esri, and we said we'd like to really build these tools that other people could do geodesign with. Unfortunately, I kind of got sidetracked. I didn't do geodesign; we built GIS and people made maps and they did all kinds of interesting projects with this. It's become kind of an interesting standard platform all around the world for conservation work or for economic development or for forest management or planning. And many of you frankly are users of these tools from little small scales all the way out to looking at global climate change. This has become a framework for understanding our world. And now actually at the very time of this conference, we're seeing emerging a new kind of GIS. This new platform is open. It allows all the individuals who've been doing GIS in the past to share their information in the cloud and then mix it up, sort of like I talked about yesterday. Professionals could share, and policy makers and citizens could get connected and realize a better understanding of the world. And now right at this very moment, people are taking this platform and extending it out with various portals so that one country or the World Bank or the European Union or US government or here in Abu Dhabi, we can share information into this network. And they're all doing it with different portals, many faces but one fundamental sharing environment in the background. The other thing that's occurring today is we're beginning to measure everything that changes on the planet through online measurement systems, sensor networks, social networks that are geo-referenced tweets. And this information is being synthesized into layers of knowledge that people can actually use. But I just have to tell you, geodesign doesn't fit exactly into this, at least it hasn't in the past.
It's not enough simply to measure and to fly around like Superman on a globe and see things. It doesn't do it all for me. It doesn't connect with the way that real projects get built. We need to learn how to take geographic knowledge, these measurement sets, connect it with a design process so people can interactively sketch or design and understand the consequences of these designs and then bring it into action, realize plans. Exactly what President Clinton said this morning: it isn't enough just to measure, we need projects that make a difference, that are sustainable projects that integrate all the science into it but play right into the actions of individuals. Geodesign is a kind of systematic process. It starts with three steps which are all about science: measuring the overlays, like measuring the environment; then modeling the environment through process models like climate forecasts or soil erosion or land use change; and then actually interpreting the environment with things like we call them suitability maps — where is it best to locate and where is it not. Then the next three steps deal with design: they look at designing alternatives for urbanization or locating stores or alternatives for conservation planning or alternatives for economic development, and then quickly almost interactively measuring the environmental impacts or consequences of those designs as a foundation for decision makers that could make decisions. This is a process which is iterative and rapid, which results in kind of an adaptive way of seeing the world and working with the world. Geodesign is not just for big organizations; it starts with individuals. There are right now — okay, the world is changing, isn't it? We hear that from almost every speaker. How is it changing? It's changing through little actions: like a building is placed here, or a forest is cut here, or a place is preserved. These are projects individuals are doing, that companies are doing, and indeed as a group our whole society is doing it. Geodesign I think will be an evolutionary step. It'll link the science side like Ian McHarg talked about with exactly what we do, so the footprints that we lay down consider the implications of what we do. And making that link and doing geo accounting, environmental accounting of the consequences, is I think the missing link. Once we understand this, I have a lot of confidence that the world will change. It means we need to share the data, what this conference is all about, but that isn't enough.
The second thing I want to talk about is geographic information products. This is the medium within which we communicate. Some people like to call them maps. Good information products require good design. They require thinking. This is not just the measurements that we're talking about; we're talking about understanding the fundamental issue that the measurement is designed to respond to, like where do I locate something, or this is where the nuclear radiation is going on, or this is climate change realized, and then the appropriate data that feeds it, and then analytics sometimes that manipulate the data, and then finally compelling graphic design that tells a story that communicates to you. So I know many of you make maps. How many of them are really, really good maps, like people make a decision from them or people really get understanding? Let me just bottom line it and say good products help us understand and then support action. That's the bottom line of this. Let me look at a half a dozen examples. First, good information products are timely. This is a map of the tsunami right after the Japanese earthquake, and these hour-by-hour forecasts of when the tsunami would hit saved lives in Hawaii because the executives there realized in five or six hours the tsunami would hit. They evacuated the areas and it really made a huge difference. This next product unfortunately didn't have the impact that it needed to. This is Fukushima, this is the radiation coming out of the plant. Many of you probably read that 4 kilometers around Fukushima were evacuated because that was thought to be the big dangerous area, but the GIS people there showed with diffusion models that the big plumes are going to drop far beyond 10 kilometers. Those areas were not evacuated and the stuff dropped on the food supply and some of the stuff you read about right now. Well, this map was not disseminated. That's the point. Good information products not only graphically communicate but they get out there. A third dimension of good information products is that they communicate importance. For example, these suitability maps in South Africa for conservation show hotspots in the areas that are ranked most important for setting up for conservation. They lead to action. These information products support decision-making, like where to locate wind farms or where to drill for oil, that leverages not only the data but analytics that interpret the data and deliver it for the decision maker. So it isn't just measurement, it steps beyond that. Good information products sometimes deal with time. For example, land use change here in Louisiana, New Orleans showed change over the last 40 years, or on the right global climate change forecasts that are occurring in time and space. And these maps show situation awareness. Again President Clinton talked about the need for that this morning. The map on the right shows Haiti aid funding — this is where the money went. Or the map at the bottom is the Clinton initiatives where the money is going project by project. Bigger the circle, more aid is being disseminated. These things inspired many money maps to be made tracking situations. The map in the upper left is even more interesting: it's showing where the money is going, like for education or health care, versus where it should go, the need map. These show awareness and people get alive because somebody sat down and designed it, they didn't just throw some measurements together to do it. Finally, good information products can show designs for the future. And this gets back to geodesign. In this case, the future of Lithuania — the whole plan the population bought in — and the city of Portland, Oregon, a beautiful geodesign that creates a sustainable town. And somebody who's going to speak in a couple of minutes about Gambia, a geodesign for working with villages in Tanzania.
So what am I trying to get across? Good information products are the key. It isn't just measurement, it's that link between the decision maker and all of this data that's coming. And that means timely knowledge that's communicated effectively. It means communicating what's important. It means talking to the issue of what a decision maker has to deal with. Illustrating through time, because we're becoming more able to measure and communicate time, and then show results. Everybody in government says 'I want performance measurement.' Okay, what does that mean? Show me where the money is going and how effective it is. And then finally my favorite topic: geodesign, the act of stepping into the game of creating the future, not just being at the effect of all the bad news. We got too much bad news. We have to start creating the good news. And that means I think geodesign. Well, this afternoon I want you to stick around because we have a lot of storytellers, some of my favorite in the world, starting with a speaker that's going to follow me. I think they get it. They're positively motivated to tell a better world, to tell a better story, to make a better world. So thank you ladies and gentlemen for coming back. But just hold on, we got a great cast of characters following. Thank you very much.
