Speaker Profiles

Keith Wishart
Measuring the intangible benefits of GIS.

Wednesday 24th September, 14.30-15.00

Rightly or wrongly it is often claimed that the “real” benefits of GIS are improved service, better decision making, prestige, more flexible access to data or some other so-called soft benefit. In this paper I will argue that not everything must be measured in economic terms but that intangible benefits can be measured in a meaningful way that further reduces uncertainty in any business case. The central principle is that if improved service and better decision making are things that are important to us then they must be detectable by one method or another.

The aim of the paper is take a systematic and practical approach to identifying and quantifying all the benefits of a GIS business case. Furthermore, the paper will present a solution (the Benefits Dependency Network) to another oft cited GIS business case issue: how do you make the case for GIS when it is (just) an enabler of a larger system?

Finally, I will argue that this approach needs to be taken in order to quantify the biggest intangible of all – namely the value of geographic information itself. In the context of the current debate on access to GI, this is surely one of the most vital issues for the industry to have clarity on.

Charles Kennelly
How the GIS industry is failing to deploy systems that genuinely deliver the full
potential benefit of GIS.

Thursday 25th September 09.35-10.45

The session will include:

• Nature of GIS use today with a few examples as screenshots
• Barriers to full usage, many of which we create; examples being UI, deployment models, map centric approach, lack of GIS science in a usable form, lack of access to appropriate models, little awareness of modelling confidence, misuse of metadata, cost of data capture and maintenance
• Example of system that I consider to be an example of what can be achieved. I will demo this via videos to avoid things falling over live.
• Finish on positive note that many of the technological and understanding barriers have been removed, now up to us to take things forward.

Dave Tong & Emily Martin
Solutions centre

Wednesday 24th September, 13.30-14.15

ArcGIS 9.3 continues to expand the use of GIS, providing many new tools and enhancements to improve GIS workflows. This session will introduce the new features of 9.3 Desktop, whilst covering some of the highlights through short hands-on workshops.