REDLANDS, Calif., July 11, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Esri recognized more than 170 organizations during the Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) Awards ceremony yesterday at the Esri International User Conference (Esri UC) in San Diego, California. The SAG Awards acknowledge vision, leadership, hard work, and innovative use of Esri's geographic information system (GIS) technology.

"The SAG Awards identify the people and organizations that are using the power of geography to improve our world and drive change," said Esri president Jack Dangermond. "At Esri, we are deeply inspired by the passion and innovation of our users. They deserve recognition for solving challenges and for their invaluable contributions to the continued evolution of geographic science."

The organizations honored at the Esri UC are from around the world and span industries including agriculture, cartography, climate change, defense and intelligence, economic development, education, government, health and human services, telecommunications, and utilities.

The SAG Awards ceremony was held at the San Diego Convention Center on July 10, 2013. For more information about the 2013 Special Achievement in GIS Award winners, including project information and photos, visit esri.com/sag.

About Esri

Since 1969, Esri has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS technology, Esri software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. Esri applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world's mapping and spatial analysis. Esri is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at esri.com/news.

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SOURCE Esri

Examples of award winners include:

San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District

Project Goal

The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) decided to use GIS to perform key analysis regarding Federally Mandated Title VI Compliance, Analyzing Minority Populations, Low-Income Populations and English Language Proficiency. The goal of this project was to use GIS to define Title VI compliance criteria and create an automated portal for BART employees to perform this key analysis on the fly for any project, thus saving millions in external consulting costs.

Business Problem Solved

Title VI Analysis is performed for a wide variety of projects. For instance, when BART decides to build a new station, Title VI analysis is done on the surrounding area to ensure that BART is not applying any adverse burden disproportionately on any particular group of people. This analysis involves mapping a project location, creating a specific geographic buffer, and compiling census data into a report. With the help of GIS, this solution is now performed entirely in-house, thus eliminating a costly consulting charge previously charged for each report.

Technology Implemented

ArcInfo 10.1, ArcScene 10.1, ESRI Community Analyst, US Census Data, ACS Data, MTC GIS Data, ABAG GIS Data. Custom Reporting using ArcMap and Microsoft Excel.

Downtown DC Business Improvement District

Project Goal

The DowntownDC Business Improvement District (DBID) was looking for a solution that would integrate new technologies with the capability to easily report and track concerns in the downtown. The DBID identified nearly 50 different items that needed to be monitored in the public space and created a disposition matrix on each one. Furthermore, the project included developing a multitiered solution with various modes allowing for general reporting, unique inventorying of permanent assets, and GIS inventorying through dynamic map services. The DBID also needed the ability to verify each condition reported prior to disposition assignment and in doing so prompted the creation of a desktop application to couple with the mobile app.

Integration with the existing 34 DBID GIS layers, along with general mapping capabilities were also needed. The DBID is able to not only monitor and track conditions for a single asset but attach multiple conditions to an asset using a unique ID number.

Business Problem Solved

There are many public space-related issues and concerns that affect the DBID; its properties; and those who live, work, and visit the downtown. Throughout the existence of the BID’s history, the method for identifying, reporting, and monitoring these types of problems were typically done in ad hoc fashion. As a result, conditions that persisted would tend to get sent hastily to city agencies with little information and accuracy with the ideal of being resolved quickly. Furthermore, these locations were often inconsistent with the condition reported, leaving other parties unable to address the concern. Also, the BID would input these items into an Excel spreadsheet and manually geocode each individual entry when creating maps.

By utilizing this technology, revamping our internal process of reporting, and deploying a specialized Quality Assurance Team, the DBID can better assist other relative parties and nonprofits to better share data, collaborate, and improve accuracy of information.

Technology Implemented

The DBID help developed a solution that integrates a functioning database using ArcGIS, a mobile field application using the iOS platform, and an Amazon cloud-based server, which allows us to enhance GIS mapping, regular reporting tools, and monitoring capabilities, enabling the BID to better report problems in the public space to affected government agencies. Prior to this, information was inconsistent, inaccurate, or unorganized, preventing it from being as useful as intended.

The BID currently manages 34 GIS asset and location layers, which serve as a foundation to what we do daily, which is now aided by this technology. As a result, we are now able to report problems on 48 different assets (14 of which are variable conditions) with up to 63 different conditions. Using the software, customized tools, and iPhones and iPads, the DBID is able to enhance the perspective of the public space, analyze data, produce maps, and most importantly improve decision making.