Guiding Good Governance MAPPING THE NATION
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Protecting and Securing Our Nation | 60 Germany’s Networked Soldiers Gain a Collaborative Edge with Shared Maps | 62 Alabama: Advancing Public Safety with High-Tech Maps and Shared Awareness | 66 Demining with Drones: Lessons Learned in the Desert Prove Useful Elsewhere | 70 Butterflies and Bombs: How the National Guard Plays a Role in Species Conservation | 74 Improving Space Planning and Resource Optimization | 78 Planning and Designing Better Communities | 82 A New Urban Vision for Atlanta’s Most Popular Suburb | 84 What If the Urban Utopia Was Something We Could Actually Build? | 90 Arlington, Texas: A Study in Effective Municipal Storytelling | 96 In Washington, DC, Planners Envision More Housing in Historic Districts | 100 From California to Florida, Maps Help I-10 Cities Solve Common Problems | 104 Guiding Good Governance | 10 Key Bridge: Cross-Agency Collaboration Quickly Reopens Baltimore Shipping Channel | 12 The Future of Voting—Accurate and Transparent—in Saint Louis County | 18 Geospatial Digital Twins Offer Unmatched Clarity for Complex Systems | 22 Cloud-Based Approach Revolutionizes Interagency Imagery Data Sharing | 28 Keeping Communities Safe | 34 The New Wildfire Reality: Mapping a Response | 36 Rain and Rescue: Fort Lauderdale’s Battle Against a Record-Breaking Downpour | 40 Ready for Anything, Iowa’s Scott County Trusts GIS in Emergencies | 46 How a Crime Atlas Is Changing Policing and Crime Fighting in Austria | 52 Drone Mapping Boosts Response to Australian Flood Damage | 56 Foreword | 6 Introduction | 8 Contents 4
Operating Farms and Timberlands More Efficiently | 164 The Best Wine in the World Receives Care and Correction Guided by Smart Maps | 166 Federal Crop Insurance Program Gains a GameChanging Geospatial Awareness | 172 Seeds of Change: Ernst Seeds Uses Data-Driven Approach to Restore Habitats | 176 Tech Meets Ecology: Digital Twin Enhances Longleaf Pine Restoration | 180 Safeguarding Habitats and Wildlife | 186 Breakthrough Map Reveals Supply Chain of the World's Most Trafficked Mammal | 188 From 22,000 Miles Up, A New Sensor Can Track Air Pollution to Its Source | 196 How Tennessee State Parks Reached Real-Time Operational Awareness | 202 A 300-Year-Old Map and GIS Guide Rewilding in the Scottish Highlands | 206 Saving the North Atlantic Right Whale: Marine Spatial Planning and Awareness | 210 Building and Operating Modern Infrastructure | 110 Tampa Mapped Its Most Dangerous Roads to Reduce Deadly Incidents | 112 "Sponge City": Using Water to Improve Social and Ecological Outcomes | 116 France Inspects and Maps 45,000 Bridges to Prioritize Repairs | 120 In Lithuania’s Capital, Drones, Maps, and AI Unite City Functions | 124 Singapore Port Implements a Digital Twin to “Know Exactly What’s Going On” | 128 Mitigating Risk and Increasing Resilience | 132 Oklahoma City Addresses Extreme Heat Using Dynamic GIS-Powered Tools | 134 Coral Reefs at a Crossroads: "Every Coral We See Is Fighting" | 140 Threatened by Sea Level Rise, Tuvalu Safeguards Its Sense of Place with a Digital Twin | 146 Assessing the Needs of the World’s Most Food-Insecure Countries | 152 Afghanistan: Geospatial Analysis Conveys Current Conditions Under the Taliban | 158 5
Foreword The Geographic Approach to Good Governance Nations strive every day to ensure that their communities are prosperous, secure, and resilient. Achieving these attributes requires collaboration between local, state, tribal, and federal jurisdictions, with a knowledge that all issues happen somewhere. Using the common denominator of location, governments rely on the power of geographic information system (GIS) technology to understand the contexts and drive economic, societal, and environmental improvements. GIS integrates knowledge from within, across, and among government partners to map the dimensions of every challenge. Maps, and the stories they tell, raise awareness and guide evidence-informed decision-making. Together, GIS and maps help to reveal patterns and trends, model scenarios, and craft place-based solutions. The geographic approach creates good governance. GIS helps agencies and organizations understand enterprise data in its real-world context. GIS uncovers the needs and proclivities of people with economic and demographic data. Community development can be analyzed for impacts. Ecosystems can be modeled to preserve or restore critical habitats. Department operations, such as managing a fleet of vehicles or a group of people working in the field, can be monitored to find efficiencies and ensure their safety and security. Networks can be optimized, including electricity, water, and transportation. Disaster response can be coordinated with real-time maps that display activities. This story collection, Mapping the Nation: Guiding Good Governance, documents how thinking geographically guides important governing decisions. New Patterns of Data Sharing The ultimate awareness that GIS can provide governments is called a digital twin. This combination of reality capture and real-time data inputs shows what’s happening, forecasts what might happen, and models scenarios to mitigate risk. With a GIS-powered digital twin, we gain new insight into how every part of a system interacts with and affects the others. The Key Bridge Collapse story describes the creation of a digital twin to coordinate the response to a tragic and complex cargo ship collision that cut off the busy Port of Baltimore. A constantly updated map, including a detailed 3D web scene of the bridge pieces, kept everyone informed of progress. The data fed purpose-built apps for use by specialists across federal, state, and local governments. The digital twin eliminated siloed information and broadened interdisciplinary collaboration. Connections between GIS portals gave each agency control of their own data and access to data from collaborators. This pattern of data sharing was new to these agencies, and it has been repeated in subsequent hurricane responses. As Lt. Commander Ian Hanna, lead of the Coast Guard’s Response GIS Support Team, said: “This is the way we should be doing business. Instead of exchanging things like memory sticks or email attachments, we can connect. It makes it so much faster and more efficient. Everybody could use the data for their mission and be aware of what was happening.” Empowering Transformation Over the nearly 60 years of GIS use in government, it has guided waves of digital transformations at agencies and organizations that understand the power of geography. I am continuously amazed by how governments are applying GIS and how its use measurably improves their own organizations and the communities they serve. Fundamentally, it facilitates more informed conversations and tighter collaboration, with full transparency that eliminates duplication of effort. Using GIS, professionals advance science, make communities more livable and efficient, improve public safety, secure nations, protect natural spaces, enhance human health, and mitigate conflicts. Good governance starts with geography. Now is the time to work together to strengthen our nation and create the world we all want to see. Warm regards, Jack Dangermond 7
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A geographic approach provides a way of thinking and problem-solving that integrates and organizes all relevant information in the crucial context of location. In much the same way that geography integrates the physical, biological, and social sciences, GIS integrates knowledge. With GIS, layers of data can be draped over maps and modeled to reveal relationships and connections across space and time. GIS provides a means to compartmentalize the dimensions of every challenge, prioritizing what to do where and when based on evidence and analysis. With GIS, government agencies, companies, and institutions around the globe use the power of geography to guide their course. Mapping the Nation: Guiding Good Governance serves as a comprehensive guide to understanding the pivotal role of geospatial technologies to enhance governance across various sectors. At the heart of effective governance is the ability to make informed decisions. Geospatial technologies provide a critical toolset for policymakers who utilize GIS to analyze and communicate policy decisions. This technology fosters data-driven governance that is transparent and accountable, ensuring that leaders can make decisions that are effective. In the realm of humanitarian aid, geographic knowledge enhances the effectiveness of aid delivery. GIS users map crisis points and target resources where they are needed most, ensuring timely and efficient aid that saves lives and restores communities. Introduction Empowering Digital Transformations of Increasing Depth and Detail GIS plays a guiding role in protecting and conserving our resources. By monitoring changes in land use, vegetation, and wildlife habitats, conservationists can better manage natural resources and plan for sustainable development, preserving biodiversity and natural habitats for future generations. For public safety, geospatial technologies help in planning and response management. During incidents, GIS has become instrumental in managing a crisis by facilitating communication and coordination among various state agencies and local governments. In defense and security, geospatial intelligence is vital for both strategic planning and operational decision-making. GIS supports the security forces by providing detailed situational awareness and helping in the planning of operations. GIS helps in the planning and execution of infrastructure projects, from roads and bridges to broadband networks, ensuring that developments meet the needs of the population. Resilience is a thread that runs through all uses of GIS in governance. Whether it’s through managing urban growth, assessing food insecurity, or planning for clean energy expansion, GIS provides the tools necessary for sustainable development that meets today’s needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own. Mapping the Nation: Guiding Good Governance highlights the importance of GIS across various critical sectors. By integrating geospatial data into policymaking and strategic planning, leaders can address complex challenges more effectively, making governance more responsive, transparent and effective. 9
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11 Guiding Good Governance Good governance with GIS technology is fundamentally about using geographic data to enhance decision-making processes, ensuring that policies are effective. Many states exemplify this approach through adept use of GIS to address a variety of challenges. The strategy, known as results-based governing, involves the use of GIS to visualize complex data on maps, making policy analysis and communication more transparent. It’s a way to ensure that initiatives focus on achieving actionable results rather than just outputs. GIS extends beyond policy implementation. It’s a tool for uniting communities around shared goals, enhancing public engagement, and ensuring that government actions are aligned with the needs of the populace. The Key Bridge collapse response marked a significant change in how stakeholders shared data and coordinated activity across federal, state, and local agencies. A GIS-powered common operating picture was created, which facilitated rapid coordination and enabled the reopening of the Baltimore shipping channel much faster than anticipated. GIS tools such as real-time dashboards, 3D visualizations, and purpose-built apps were developed to manage the response and communicate progress to the public. These tools allowed for efficient data sharing and visualization, crucial for managing vessel traffic and coordinating salvage operations. In Saint Louis County, the integration of GIS technology has improved the accuracy of the voting process. The system uses iPhones in ballot boxes to track their movement toward the Board of Elections office. This technology, coupled with various web maps and mobile apps, ensures that election officials, candidates, and the public are well-informed throughout the election cycle. It helps visualize every step of the process, enhancing the efficiency and reliability of election administration. The US Forest Service spearheaded an effort to increase access to its trove of more than a petabyte of aerial imagery and raster datasets. This culminated in a cross-agency geospatial data sharing service that provides cost savings, increases capacity, and delivers more efficient data management of high-resolution aerial vimagery and raster data. The cloud-based approach is transforming interagency imagery data sharing by allowing the US Forest Service and other federal agencies to manage and share high-resolution aerial imagery and raster datasets. The Interdepartmental Imagery Publication Platform (IIPP) enables agencies to access a broader range of imagery while maintaining control over their data. This collaborative system not only cuts storage and labor costs but also promotes innovation by allowing agencies to use shared data and expertise to address significant challenges. By making geographic data more accessible and understandable, GIS fosters informed decision-making and effective public communication, building support for initiatives. It also unites communities, enhances public engagement, and ensures government actions align with public needs. Innovative applications, such as resilience mapping and efficient service delivery, further demonstrate the positive impact of GIS on governance and public engagement.
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13 Guiding Good Governance Key Bridge Cross-Agency Collaboration Quickly Reopens Baltimore Shipping Channel In the early hours of March 26, 2024, the cargo ship Dali crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, severing the main span and sending massive steel girders crashing into the Patapsco River. Eight bridge maintenance workers fell into the water and only two survived. The bridge sits at a vulnerable pinch point—spanning a narrow channel where large ships enter the Port of Baltimore, the ninth-busiest US port. In the days and weeks following the incident that forced a closure of the port, global supply chains and port revenue suffered, and more than 50,000 workers were impacted. Estimates calculated a daily cost of $192 million in economic activity. However, the port’s strategic location facilitated a swift response. Proximity to the US capital meant oversight by leaders of federal agencies and the White House. Additionally, being on the busy East Coast meant quick access to necessary equipment and personnel. Responding agencies each quickly connected their enterprise GIS to the others’ to seamlessly share web maps, web services, 3D scenes, and other data. Within just six days, a new channel was opened for shallow-draft vessels. By the 30-day mark, half the channel’s width was cleared, allowing deepdraft vessels to pass. In 76 days, the original channel was fully restored. “By working together, we turned months into weeks— and bounced back faster than many could have ever anticipated.” — Wes Moore, governor, Maryland Supporting Individual Roles for Cross-Agency Collaboration In the first 24 hours of the bridge collision and collapse, first responders focused on a search and rescue mission. Then, the US Coast Guard, which oversees waterways and bridges that span navigation routes, An aerial view of the wreckage after the cargo ship Dali crashed into the Key Bridge.
14 “The first 72 hours, everybody was sending me data over email,” Hanna said. “I was spending all night processing that and then posting it onto the dashboard. It was not sustainable.” “We set up a call with the Army Corps, NOAA, and others on how we wanted to share data,” Adams said. “We created a partnered collaboration group, with restricted access. We were all seasoned on data sharing details surrounding natural disasters and what that means in terms of data governance.” With portal-to-portal GIS connections, each agency maintained full control over its authoritative data. Shared GIS data layers included bathymetry, water levels, the temporary channels, and ultimately the cleared main channel. A 3D web scene visualized details of the salvage crews working to free the grounded ship and remove pieces of the bridge (see sidebar). Administrators provided access to anyone who needed to see the data, from divers doing the salvage work to surveyors mapping the channel and White House officials monitoring the progress. took the lead. Its Marine Transportation System Recovery Unit started working to reopen the Port of Baltimore as quickly as possible. “At the start, we pulled together bridge blueprints from the 1970s. By the third day, we built a GIS dashboard to focus on creating new channels,” said Lt. Commander Ian Hanna, lead of the Coast Guard’s Response GIS Support Team. “We knew it was going to be a while for the main channel to reopen.” The Coast Guard set up a Unified Command Center at the Maryland Cruise Terminal. They added all key data to a real-time GIS dashboard, including vessel locations provided by Esri partner Spire. This dashboard became the center’s common operating picture, with a constant flow of new inputs to keep all stakeholders informed. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) incorporated sensor data from buoys, which monitor water currents, and depth data from multibeam sonar surveys to update nautical charts. The US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) added bathymetric channel surveys to monitor changes as pieces of the bridge were removed. Personnel and data from the Maryland Transportation Authority, the City of Baltimore, and other state agencies joined the effort. Soon, the individual agencies wanted to create their own purpose-built apps to coordinate missions and feed updates into the common operating picture. Amilynn Adams, a marine transportation system specialist with the Coast Guard, built a site with ArcGIS Hubsm to connect vital data and share the purpose-built apps from each agency. The Key Bridge Response Common Operating Picture was in place early on, and it constantly evolved. Users could query a wealth of data layers to see progress and understand the complexity of this critical salvage operation.
15 Guiding Good Governance Keeping the Map Updated To open the auxiliary channel, NOAA surveyed an area called Sollers Point at the north end of the bridge. The water was deemed deep enough. The Coast Guard designed the auxiliary channel and dropped buoys for vessels to follow. “That discussion centered around data on ArcGIS Online, because we could display the survey data, where the buoys were going to be, and have everybody look at it and approve it,” Hanna said. A process like this would typically take months. The Army Corps surveys the channel and dredges if needed. The Coast Salvors preparing to move a large piece of supporting steel on April 22, 2024. Guard designs the channel and places buoys in the water. NOAA updates the nautical charts. “If we’re trying really hard to speed our typical process, we can do it in a couple of weeks,” Hanna said. “In the Key Bridge response, we shortened the whole process to less than 24 hours.” In this case, salvage crews removed debris, the Army Corps and NOAA surveyed, and everyone could see progress on the same day the survey was taken. “We had a call every day to discuss the data that was going up, who was able to see it, and the data we expected
16 to come in,” said Jared Scott, GIS program manager in the Baltimore District of the US Army Corps of Engineers. “When someone had a question or tapped me on the shoulder because they had a dataset, we had answers from the portal. I could show them how to use it to make their data visible to whoever needed it.” NOAA connected its navigation response team to conduct hydrographic surveys. “They make a product, which is traditionally a PDF map, that everyone looks at to see if there are any obstructions,” said Leland Snyder, maritime geographer with NOAA. “The hub site was that on steroids. It brought everyone together very quickly.” With a constrained channel, a new level of traffic coordination was needed. “We built some tools to manage the schedule, using automatic identification system (AIS) data to highlight where vessels were coming in and out. It allowed the patrol commander to watch the scene,” Hanna said. An additional auxiliary channel, created in less than 30 days, was designed specifically for sugar barges from the Domino Sugar Refinery, a mainstay in the Port of Baltimore for more than 100 years. The sugar was stacking up and needed to get to market to keep goods flowing and the factory running. NOAA made regular updates to navigation charts as the situation evolved.
17 Communicating Progress with an Interested Public The Key Bridge collapse headlined global news for weeks, with sustained public interest until the debris was gone and the main channel reopened. Press briefings relied on GIS maps and 3D visualizations to convey the changing conditions. “By the time it was said and done, we had done thousands of media interviews,” said Cynthia Mitchell, public affairs specialist for the US Army Corps of Engineers, Baltimore District. “We relied heavily on maps and visuals to help people understand the complexity. Officials wanted details. Having images and maps helped us build trust very quickly, knowing that the information we had accurately reflected the work.” Everyone involved recognized the benefits of the cross-agency collaboration achieved with GIS. “People saw what we did, they experienced it,” Hanna said. “They could touch it, poke it, prod it, and were able to see how we made connections.” “We leveraged a lot of things that came out of the so-called COVID years,” Scott said. “The ability to virtually plug in from anywhere worked really well.” “We created many apps that I feel made an impact,” Snyder said. “One called nowCOAST lets you visualize data we’ve never visualized this way before. It was a great achievement.” This level of collaboration has attracted attention from other agencies, signaling a need to better coordinate in the wake of other events such as natural disasters. FEMA, for instance, could take a similar approach to overseeing storm cleanup after hurricanes. Those involved in the Key Bridge response stay in regular contact, with data integration that supports day-to-day operations. “Just the other day, we got a call from the National Data Buoy Center that there was a buoy adrift in the Atlantic Ocean,” Snyder said. “I talked to Ian to connect the person at Coast Guard who will go and retrieve it. We just gave him access to the data, because the trust between our portals is already established.” “This is the way we should be doing business,” Hanna said. “Instead of exchanging things like memory sticks or email attachments, we can connect. It makes it so much faster and more efficient. Everybody could use the data for their mission and be aware of what was happening.” NOAA Navigation Services collected surveys of the channel to aid response and recovery efforts. Guiding Good Governance
18 The Future of Voting—Accurate and Transparent—in Saint Louis County After polling centers close on Election Day in Saint Louis County, Missouri, each site’s two supervising staff members place an iPhone in the ballot box, secure it, and travel by police escort to the county’s board of elections office. The iPhone uses GIS technology to deliver real-time location data that is displayed on a map. Eric Fey, the county’s democratic director of elections, monitors the progression of each box as he waits with his colleagues to receive the night’s final votes and announce election results. In Missouri’s most populous county, election officials use location-based tools to manage data, monitor operations, and communicate results for each election cycle.
19 Guiding Good Governance Before using location data, Fey knew that the ballot boxes were on their way but couldn’t pinpoint their precise location. Meanwhile, he would field phone calls from candidates, county personnel, and journalists who wanted updates on results. Now, Fey and his team have a dashboard that takes away the uncertainty. “As ballot boxes come back, we know when we scanned them back into the office and when we broke the seal to take the results back to our tabulation room. We can zoom in on specific collection points to see which ones are accounted for and how many are outstanding. We know every part of the process and can visualize it,” he said. The iPhones that track ballot boxes work in concert with other GIS-powered tools. Together, they provide a complete operational picture throughout the election cycle. A suite of web maps and mobile apps keep officials, candidates, and constituents updated throughout. Then the cycle repeats. Moving from Paper to Smart Maps Fey is often asked what he does when there isn’t an election. His answer is surprising: there is always an election. In the coming 18 months, Saint Louis County will host six elections, not including any special elections required by individual city charters. The most populous county in Missouri, Saint Louis County is home to nearly one million people with more than 700,000 registered voters. What makes the region unique is its jurisdictional complexity. On top of the county’s two congressional districts, there are seven county council districts, seven state senate districts, and 30 state representative districts. The county’s 87 cities each have their own elected officials. Voters also elect officials for 24 school districts, 25 fire districts, and a plethora of other special purpose districts. “We end up with this crazy spaghetti web of local governments and precincts, and it’s our job to make sure people get the correct ballot,” Fey said. “This is a big challenge in election administration. Everyone knows who they want to vote for, for president or governor. But in larger jurisdictions, when you get down to state representative and county commissioner, if someone gets the wrong ballot, they might not even know it.” When Fey started working for the county in 2015, board of elections personnel were using colored pencils to redraw district lines on paper maps based on new census data. If these boundaries are redrawn incorrectly or aren’t accurately translated into a voter database, errors occur and elections must be rerun, which is costly for municipalities and their constituents. To solve this, the board of elections’ GIS specialists work with judges and redistricting bodies to create digital maps of voting districts. Now, the maps are available on the Redistricting Hub on the board of elections website. The resource aggregates all county districts, outlines their boundaries, and shows any changes. Most redistricting processes happen every 10 years, but if boundaries need to be redrawn, the maps must reflect changes immediately. With the Redistricting Hub, these changes can be easily made and communicated to constituents and stakeholders, including politicians whose district locations and makeup may have shifted. The In-Person Absentee Check-ins dashboard allows election board staff to see election progress and what communities are participating.
20 Optimizing Election Preparation In 2023, new laws in Missouri made it easier for people to vote. Voters can now visit any polling center—instead of an assigned location—or vote as absentees. The Polling Place Lookup tool helps voters find their nearest polling center. For those choosing to vote as absentees, the Absentee Voting Lookup tool highlights satellite sites and calculates driving times to locations where voters can drop off their ballots. Voters can also use the Saint Louis County Sample Ballot Lookup tool to explore the candidates and initiatives specific to where they live. Location technology helps the board of elections prepare for these changes. Fey’s team used information from previous elections to determine where to place new sites for early voting. “Data from the November 2022 election showed us where people were voting. We could also see that there were some dead zones where we didn’t have a polling center. Because there wasn’t one, those people just didn’t vote early, they waited until Election Day—that was a big learning moment for us,” he said. St. Louis County Board of Elections provides several map lookup applications, including this Polling Place Lookup app. On Election Day, the app shows line counts and estimated waiting times at each polling place. The board of elections is also responsible for distributing voting equipment to nearly 300 polling centers across the county. Prior to implementing GIS technology, warehouse employees would sit down with paper maps and draw out delivery routes. Now, workers optimize delivery routes to find the quickest routes considering traffic conditions and the shortest to minimize travel distance. The absentee department coordinates voting for residents of nursing and retirement homes, which includes delivering ballots to nearly 100 facilities. “The team [had previously] relied on employees with years of knowledge about the process and it was always confusing,” Fey said. “A few years ago, they went to the GIS analysts and asked for help. That’s when I realized our thinking had really changed. Now we have a dashboard to track and manage the nursing home visits we make. It’s made the job so much easier.” Setting Expectations On Election Day, GIS apps keep county officials and constituents informed in real time. Throughout the day, voters can use the Polling Place Lookup tool to monitor wait times at each location. A volunteer counts the voters in line and logs the number in ArcGIS Survey123, which then populates on the web map. “On Election Day in 2020, we had 365,000 hits to the line tracker app on our website. That’s about as many people who voted on Election Day in Saint Louis County, so it was very popular,” Fey said. The poll books voters use to sign in are connected to Fey’s office and automatically populate a map that shows where and when people are voting. Fey and his team monitor polling place wait times to anticipate problems. If a device malfunctions or another error occurs, Fey can locate a mobile team member closest to the issue and dispatch them to troubleshoot.
21 Guiding Good Governance “Situations can develop rapidly on Election Day and GIS gives us the ability to visualize what is happening. With these tools in place, election days seem somewhat less fraught than they used to be when we could only guess at what was happening in the field.” — Rick Stream, Republican director of elections, Saint Louis County, Missouri Looking Forward: Anticipating and Innovating As election results come in, they’re displayed on maps on the board of elections website. Using data, maps, and mobile tools throughout the election cycle grants a high level of transparency and authenticity to the county’s processes. When Fey needs to answer a question, he has authoritative data to point to. This information matters when addressing allegations of foreign disinformation campaigns, voter fraud, or voting St. Louis County Election Board staff can run reports to display election results for each office, and residents can click to follow the contests of interest to them. machine security. “New folks are coming into election administration with IT competencies. They want to emphasize outward-facing transparency and make processes more accessible to the public—GIS is a great tool for that,” Fey said. After each election, staff members aggregate and analyze all the collected data and Fey looks for potential process improvements. If he notices more mobile workers were dispatched to certain areas, he takes note. If a certain polling place is popular, he can allocate additional resources to that location for the next election. Fey’s office compiles a biennial report filled with maps after every general election. Every elected official receives a physical copy. The reports help officials visualize the regions where they did and didn’t receive support. The maps speak to the large amount of data the board of elections collects and synthesizes. In the future, Fey and his team want to take historical election data and display it on interactive maps for constituents, researchers, and journalists to explore. He’s also hoping to enhance real-time data collection on Election Day to include interactive maps with live results, down to the precinct level. They are ahead of the curve. According to the National States Geographic Information Council, the majority of states are in the early stages of integrating GIS into their election processes. Fey noted that, by focusing on hiring GIS personnel and investing in the tools they need, the board of elections created a culture where people use location data to solve problems and innovate. “It’s these little improvements,” Fey said. “Every little piece builds on something else.”
22 22 As complex systems multiply, geospatial digital twins offer the opportunity for unparalleled clarity and analysis.
23 Geospatial Digital Twins Offer Unmatched Clarity for Complex Systems Weary travelers lost in San Francisco International Airport (SFO) can access a map of the facility on their smartphones. The map, built with GIS technology, provides the information to get them where they need to go. But there’s much more to the map—it guides operations. These additional layers, accessible to the people who run and maintain the airport, reveal the airport’s dazzling complexity. All 1.8 million square feet of the international terminal are included. Every individual component—from the 15,000 doors to the 2,000 trees—is present and accounted for. Peel back those layers and peek underground. You’ll find the 400 miles of labeled subsurface utilities, including water, electrical, and wastewater. The airport’s exteriors are pictured, gathered through lidar and other methods, seamlessly integrated into the GIS. For operations detail, BIM find their place on the map. Closets, walkways, plumbing—it’s all there, ready to aid in repairs or long-term projects. Informative GIS layers, such as the location of wireless access points, augment the detailed BIM information. And this is just the static map information. Indoor tracking shows the position of critical equipment. Outside, the current locations of maintenance vehicles are revealed. From the public version to the sensitive high-security layers, it’s all the same GIS-supported map. But it’s more than that. This is SFO in its entirety: the permanent parts, the semipermanent, and those items always on the move. So let’s not call it a map. What SFO has built is a geospatial digital twin. Guiding Good Governance
24 The Evolution of Digital Twins The concept of the digital twin is not new, although it has undergone radical alterations. The earliest digital twins appeared in the manufacturing world, as far back as the 1980s. They were a way to measure the performance of factory machinery and processes, down to the level of individual components. Although helpful for understanding plant operations, the utilities of these early digital twins were limited. An analyst could note strengths and weaknesses in the system, and detect problems and bottlenecks, but would struggle to apprehend its totality. San Francisco Airport (SFO) travelers now have an app to guide them through interior spaces. Modern digital twins provide this totality, without compromising granularity. Just as the human body relies on the interconnection of systems such as the respiratory system and the cardiovascular system, complex systems in organizations function through constantly flowing interactions. A modern digital twin recognizes that interactions among systems are just as important as the individual systems themselves. The Complex World as It Is How does a geospatial digital twin create the conditions for this nuanced view?
25 Guiding Good Governance First, by offering clarity of vision. From the time GIS first debuted over a half-century ago, the technology has pioneered the concept of digital twins. The visual language of GIS is the map. Just as a paper map is, to varying degrees, an “analog twin,” many GIS-derived maps can be thought of as digital twins. GIS maps contain details about attributes, data can be traced to its source, and they transcend the static maps of the past. GIS can produce realistic digital twins because the technology can now seamlessly integrate immersive 3D environments, including details obtained via drones and reality capture techniques. Geospatial digital twins go further than 3D models by adding the dimension of time. Like the systems they mirror, digital twins evolve. By compiling information regarding the past and present, digital twins can be used to query what happened when and even what’s likely to happen based on past patterns. Advanced analytic techniques reveal trends and hot spots. No Two Twins Alike As more people have grasped the potential power of geospatial digital twins, use cases have multiplied. It is now possible to speak of many categories of digital twin: • Design and construction digital twins help manage complex infrastructure problems, while providing a through-line that connects the present with the future. In Brisbane, Australia, a digital twin aids in the construction of a new subway. The same twin also depicts areas above ground, so that the rail authority can track how the underground project impacts economic development above it. When the project is complete, the same twin will guide daily operations. • Digital twins have become an indispensable tool for architects and urban planners. The technology helps them imagine and experiment with alternative scenarios without any disruptions to the real world. What would a proposed promenade look like, given current walking and pedestrian traffic in the region? How high should a bridge be, based on various flooding scenarios? Real-time IoT sensors are used to monitor methane emission levels at the facility and analyze potential risk to onsite personnel.
26 • Digital twins of utilities networks provide a detailed physical view of systems that are often concealed from view. In the United Kingdom, the wireless provider Vodafone now uses a digital twin that covers 245,000 square kilometers of its network. • Environmental digital twins have emerged to understand ecosystems and how they function. Perhaps their most valuable attribute is the way they link natural systems with human-made systems, revealing how each affects the other. The Cross River Rail project will deliver a new 10.2 km line through Brisbane’s inner city, featuring twin 5.9 km tunnels running under the Brisbane River and CBD. Four new underground stations will be built as part of the $5.4b project, in addition to the upgrade of eight existing stations.
27 The Common Denominators The most exciting digital twin model to emerge attempts to combine all the above into something that mirrors the complexity of entire cities, or even nations. Grenada, for example, has built an impressive country-level digital twin that helps the Caribbean nature understand and prepare for extreme weather events. The mirroring ability of digital twins can obscure qualities that are more prosaic, but no less powerful, than the ability to mirror dynamic systems. Digital twins foster collaboration and communication. They provide a common view for stakeholders to understand how systems may evolve. And their visual intuitiveness is a way explain progress to communities, regulatory agencies, or anyone else who may be affected by evolving systems. Finally, there is the power that has long made GIS an optimal way to organize spatial information. The many data flows that comprise complex systems may originate from disparate sources. Oftentimes, the only thing these groups of data share is that they have a spatial component, a shared location. GIS-based digital twins honor this similarity while visually emphasizing it. Geospatial digital twins offer something that approaches complete contextual awareness. By helping us visualize the crosspollination of data flows, these digital twins connect abstract data with concrete experience. Geospatial digital twins offer the ultimate contextual understanding by answering the constantly shifting question of “where?” For engineers, Vodafone’s digital twin of downtown London, England, enables signal propagation modeling to tune the signal to the neighborhood and user demand. Guiding Good Governance
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29 Cloud-Based Approach Revolutionizes Interagency Imagery Data Sharing Guiding Good Governance The US Forest Service spearheaded an effort to increase access to its trove of more than a petabyte of aerial imagery and raster datasets. This culminated in a crossagency geospatial data sharing service that provides cost savings, increases capacity, and delivers more efficient data management of high-resolution aerial imagery and raster data. For 20 years, the US Forest Service has served highresolution aerial imagery to more than 12,000 people who use GIS technology to analyze images to answer questions about forest health. Imagery has helped the Forest Service revolutionize the way forests are monitored and managed, including detecting pests and diseases earlier, assessing habitats for endangered and threatened species, conducting research of forest dynamics and ecosystem processes, and monitoring and managing wildfires. A move to a new data center resulted in an unsustainable 1,300 percent cost increase, which left Forest Service administrators searching for a way to continue to use imagery to enhance operations. Instead of searching for ways to lower the cost, imagery experts had an idea. What if they could team with other federal agencies to make the leap to the cloud? They reasoned that a cloud approach could eliminate data duplication across agencies while unlocking new capabilities. It could also help agencies make the best use of the pipeline of high-resolution imagery the federal government procures from a network of providers. “At the start of this, we had a feeling of skeptical optimism,” said John Gillham, a contractor working as a project manager
30 The bare earth digital elevation model (DEM) service from IIPP with the on-the-fly processing template turns the layer into a multidirectional hillshade service in ArcGIS Pro. for the Forest Service. Gillham and Dave Vanderzanden, enterprise data and services program leader at the Forest Service, originated the project at the US Forest Service’s Geospatial Technology and Applications Center. The duo reached out to geospatial administrators at various federal agencies and received guarded enthusiasm for the concept. Their queries revealed a widespread dissatisfaction with current imagery hosting options and a desire to use more imagery to understand landscape changes across the country. With support from the Forest Service, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the US Geological Survey (USGS), the first cross-agency geospatial data sharing service—the Interdepartmental Imagery Publication Platform (IIPP)— launched in May 2024. Rob Dollison, the National Map delivery services lead at USGS, related how IIPP has provided a learning opportunity for all. “We’ve been able to share the process of building an image service in the cloud, and the Forest Service has done a lot to organize and host historical imagery,” he said. “We each brought expertise to the table.” Advantages of the Cloud The government’s cloud-first pledge, and innovations in cloud-native technologies, finally made it feasible to create a shared data source for imagery. With the cloud, each agency can maintain control of its own data while gaining access to a larger trove of imagery for its users in this collaborative system. “Interestingly, the cloud-first strategy wasn’t our top consideration when we started four years ago,” Gillham
31 With support from the Forest Service, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the US Geological Survey (USGS), the first cross-agency geospatial data sharing service— the Interdepartmental Imagery Publication Platform (IIPP)—launched in May 2024. said. “We did an exhaustive analysis of 10 different hosting environments and scored those against eight criteria. The cloud popped out as the topmost viable option for costeffectiveness, capability, and expandability.” The IIPP site is hosted on Amazon Web Services using Esri’s ArcGIS Enterprise on Kubernetes. Its cloud-native architecture scales quickly based on demand. “Kubernetes helped us design a system that doesn’t cost more than necessary when it’s not in use, and it can handle an onslaught of anywhere from 12,000 to 50,000 users,” Gillham said. In a test of its dynamic scaling capabilities, a new server was automatically added within seven minutes to meet a spike in demand. The containerization approach of Kubernetes reduces the technical complexity of the system by bundling the code and dependencies needed to run it, which makes provisioning a new server automatic and quick. “There’s just nothing else out there that can do that,” Gillham said. “We’re going from a system that would take two months to get another server added compared to under 10 minutes now for as many servers as we need to meet the demand, all automatically.” Kubernetes also allows agencies to maintain full autonomy in a shared system. “We come from a publishing group ourselves that hosts data, and the last thing we want is to lose access and control,” Gillham said. “When we reassured everybody that IIPP partners maintain full autonomy over their data, it helped relax some concerns and more agencies became interested.” A Platform for Sharing and Consuming Imagery The typical pattern has been for each agency to host its own copy of the same data. During the scoping process for IIPP, the team found that six agencies hosted duplicate sets of the high-resolution images that the US Department of Agriculture collects for the National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP). Since 2004, the Forest Service has served all NAIP imagery, which amounts to half a petabyte of imagery. Discussions have been ongoing with the Farm Production and Conservation (FPAC) Business Center, which processes and shares images through its Geospatial Enterprise Operations (GEO) division. FPAC GEO had coincidentally been making a migration to Amazon Web Services, too, which makes further efficiencies possible. “When their NAIP data becomes cloud optimized, we’re hoping FPAC GEO will be able to make it available to us, at which point we can eliminate our copy,” Gillham said. “When we’re connected directly to FPAC source data, then the minute they update that data it’s instantly updated for all our users. That’s an efficiency government should always strive for.” This cloud-to-cloud data sharing switch illustrates the efficiency gains that increase imagery sharing. It not only removes the cost of storing imagery more than once but also reduces labor costs to manage the data at each agency. The IIPP team has been talking with nine federal agencies to answer questions and address past data- and costsharing challenges. An IIPP governance charter has been established to define roles and responsibilities, and a working group sets standards for how data is published and used. IIPP has a publishing tier for agencies that want to host data, and a consumer tier for agencies that want access to published datasets. Guiding Good Governance
32 The three founding agencies have begun publishing data to IIPP and are planning rollouts to their users. By the end of 2024, the aim is to have all users on board and to begin to welcome more agency partners. In addition to unlocking access to streaming imagery for all agencies, the hope is that more agencies will be compelled to publish and share their own datasets with the wider community. “With this joint shared system, we’ve lowered the cost and learning curve to get into publishing, especially in the cloud.” Gillham said. Gaining Interest Among Agencies The first goal of reducing the cost of hosting imagery has been achieved. Next, IIPP aspires to expand its imagery serving service to all interested federal agencies. State government partners may be next, and public access has been discussed. “The minute we cut over to the new system and turn the old system off, the Forest Service stands to save about $5 million per year.” — John Gillham, project manager, US Forest Service The new NAIP Plus service, one of the NAIP services available for many years, is wall-to-wall NAIP imagery for the contiguous United States, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.
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