GIS will play an important role in planning, implementation and monitoring of projects.

Agendra Kumar, President, Esri India

“Geographic Information System (GIS) has been and will increasingly be the integrating factor to bring together data from multiple systems to provide the critical location information which is intrinsic to any
infrastructure project,” says Agendra Kumar, President, Esri India. Excerpts from the interview…

What is your outlook on the critical role that will be played by construction software and digital technologies?

Infrastructure development has been recognized as one of the key drivers of the Government of India's plan to make India a 5 trillion dollar economy. The planned expenditure under the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) of about 100 lakh crores in infrastructure projects over the next five years will be a game changer for the country as well the economy.

All critical infrastructure sectors such as Energy (24%), Roads (19%), Urban (16%), and Railways (13%) which amount to more than 70% of the projected capital expenditure in infrastructure in India have been pioneers in adoption of ICT.

These sectors have also been the first to define digital transformation road map which focus on digital systems, use of AI, IoT, mobile, UAVs and cloud computing to meet their requirements of increasing efficiency.

Geographic Information System (GIS) has been and will increasingly be the integrating factor to bring together data from multiple systems to provide the critical location information which is intrinsic to any infrastructure project. From providing basic local environmental and socio-economic information to near real-time sensor data for real time monitoring, integration of 3D and BIM technology in construction and AEC project life-cycle, GIS will play an important role in planning, implementation and monitoring of projects.

What is your road map in for the year 2021?

Use of GIS is transcending beyond within departments to across the enterprise and further beyond to the hundreds of thousands of GIS organizations worldwide. In 2020, we saw a new GIS pattern emerge, one where all of our geographic information systems combine into community hubs. This is further driving an idea of geospatial infrastructure that represents an interconnected virtual model of the entire planet - people, processes, data and technology- and all the organizations that use GIS within it.

This is a transformation that affects all industries, organizations, and individuals, because the better informed we are in making decisions about our institutions as well as our planet, the better off we can be
as a global community.

We continue to enable this vision of geospatial infrastructure making it easier for our users to manage, analyse, and share data, and collaborate through an interconnected network of systems and portals.

We will continue to enhance our software's functionality in key areas like mapping, spatial analysis, network modelling, geodesign, and collaboration. We continue to design software packages that are open and interoperable. By adhering to industry standards, our technology can integrate seamlessly with many other IT and business systems such as BIM/ ERP / CRM / BI enabling systematic workflows that cover the planning and design, engineering and building worlds.

Esri invests nearly 30% of its revenue in R&D to ensure users have access to latest technologies like AI/ML, data science, IoT, Cloud, BIM integration within GIS, mobility, VR/AR along with latest advancements in drone / UAV data integration.

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