Tag Archives: GeoDesign Summit
A 250-Year Plan for the Planet
Four years ago, designer and technologist Bran Ferren issued a challenge during the first Geodesign Summit: Become better storytellers using geodesign.
Ferren, the chief creative officer of Applied Minds LLC, returned to Esri in January to keynote at the fourth Geodesign Summit and reiterate his first call to action and deliver another: Develop a 250-year plan for the planet enabled by geodesign to create a vision of the future.
“Geodesign combines geography and data with modeling, simulation, and visualization to tell stories and (show) the consequences of your actions,” Ferren told more than 260 architects, urban and transportation planners, GIS and design professionals, educators, and others at the most well-attended Geodesign Summit to date. He sees great potential for geodesign to ultimately help find solutions to complex problems. “It is still in the shiny object stage but it will be very important,” he said.
What’s New in GeoDesign?
Esri recently created a new group called GeoDesign Services. Under the Professional Services umbrella, the GeoDesign Services group—headed by long-time Esri employee Bill Miller—is tasked with exploring and extending the capabilities of GIS technology as related to GeoDesign and applying that technology to a variety of GeoDesign projects. I recently spoke with Shannon McElvaney, a Project Manager in the GeoDesign Services group, to get an update on what’s currently happening in the GeoDesign realm.
