Esri Introduces Powerful Location-Based Solution for Communities

Esri, the global leader in spatial analytics, has announed the launch of ArcGIS Hub, an innovative product for forward-thinking communities to direct their open data toward deeper citizen engagement, with apps, data, events, and meaningful collaboration focused on specific civic initiatives. This technology lets citizens, businesses, academic institutions, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) take advantage of their governments' spatial analytics capabilities to collaborate on data-driven policy initiatives.

Communities can now launch engaging initiative sites through applications –for example, the Vision Zero project features dashboards that show where local traffic fatalities are occurring at the highest rate. Citizens can then provide feedback via surveys and crowdsourcing tools that help the city target areas where traffic lights are needed or where additional protections for pedestrians and bicyclists should be built.

Local priorities

As a public engagement solution, ArcGIS Hub also includes government data and spatial analytic capabilities that were previously only accessible to internal staff. Members of the public can now collaborate with government officials to help enact solutions to meet challenges such as fixing aging infrastructure, attracting new businesses, mitigating the effects of rising sea levels, and managing increasing urban populations.

This is a revolutionary new product because it helps turn the data and goals of a community into policy, said Jack Dangermond, Esri founder and president. ArcGIS Hub provides a resource where citizens and local businesses can use or build their own apps that address local priorities. Initiatives such as Vision Zero to eliminate traffic fatalities by 2025 can seem daunting to achieve, but now communities can harness the power of data and collaboration to supercharge civic initiatives and move beyond planning.

ArcGIS Hub serves as the next step for cities looking to become smart communities. It extends the capabilities of a government's location intelligence technology into the hands of citizens and makes it possible to address, measure, and solve complex civic challenges fast and cost-effectively.

To be the next forward-thinking community to adopt ArcGIS Hub, see here.