Esri India leads its India User Conference

Esri India has concluded its flagship event, Esri India User Conference (UC), on 11th September. Centred on the theme, “GIS: Inspiring What’s Next”, and spanned across three cities – Kolkata, Hyderabad, and Delhi-NCR, the 19th edition of the User Conference has witnessed participation of over 80-plus speakers and 2,500-plus GIS users. Attended by thought leaders, GIS professionals, policy-makers, scientists, researchers, academicians and business leaders, the conference highlighted the ways GIS can be leveraged to develop and deploy innovative location intelligence solutions by harnessing the futuristic technologies, including Big Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things.

Esri India’s journey towards the next phase of digital transformation in GIS will augment the location intelligence solutions to customers’ advantages and strengthen its citizen services portfolio. With the growing understanding of GIS and the government initiatives around infrastructure, effective governance, digital transformation, disaster management, and urban development, the focus on digital geography and predictive analysis through Deep Learning is on the rise.

Agendra Kumar, President, Esri India, says, “GIS is transforming and moving past the traditional system of managing and analysing the geographic information. The three powerful mechanisms that are part of GIS are integration, analytics, and mapping & engagement. Through the User Conference every year, we, at Esri India, aim at bringing the brightest minds of GIS ecosystem on the same platform to help and advance the pace of transformation to the society of tomorrow.”

The key speakers at the UC included Agendra Kumar, President, Esri India, and Dean Angelides, Corporate Director – International Operations, Esri Inc., who highlighted the trends that are shaping the GIS industry and the way GIS is enabling digital transformation in government, business, NGOs and academia. One of the session speakers at the Delhi-NCR UC also included reverent Dr P.G. Diwakar, Distinguished Scientist & Director, Earth Observation & Disaster Management, ISRO, who shared his views on the ways GIS is enabling innovation.

Other notable speakers across three cities included Jagan Shah, Director, NIUA; Abhinav Chandra, Secretary, Department of Planning; Dr T.K. Sreedevi, Commissioner and Director of Municipal Administration Department, Telangana; Vishnu Chandra, DDG & Group Head – RS & GIS, Utility Mapping and Urban Development and Additional Financial Advisor, National Informatics Centre (NIC); Akhilesh Kumar Srivastava, Chief General Manager (IT), NHAI; Dr Tapati Banerjee, Director, National Atlas & Thematic Mapping Organisation (NATMO); and Anand Raisinghani, Head – Platform & Data Management, SAP India, who spoke about the benefits of using GIS technologies across sectors.

Partners of Esri India such as SAP, TCS, AgNext Technologies, Sarmap SA, UrtheCast & Deimos-Imaging, and Aeris India demonstrated their technologies by setting up demo zones. These zones cover deployments across focus areas for Esri India like smart cities, smart governance, environment management, citizen services, and emergency management.