Today, November 14th is GIS Day, a celebration of geographic information systems (GIS) technology. All over the world events are taking place to showcase the various applications of GIS technology from research to natural disaster management to natural resources planning to asset management to education and communication. See the map of events taking place today.
Esri President and co-founder Jack Dangermond started GIS Day in 1999 to demonstrate how GIS technology is making a difference in society. The power of geographic information is being demonstrated everyday with new location-based services. Every time someone uses a Google Map or a location-based application on their smartphone marks the importance of being able to easily access geographic information. Every time crisis management is improved and lives are saved because of the global sharing of location data is a celebration of the evolution of geospatial technologies from GIS to earth imagery to GPS to location-based applications to Big Data location analytics.
Events like GIS Day provide an opportunity to bring the GIS community together and remind us of all the powerful applications that geographic data helps to fuel. But as individuals and organizations we should strive to discover the location dimension of everything, everyday.