Volume 26 • No 11 • 2003
ISSN 0742-468X • Since 1978
On-line Since 2000
ESRI: The GIS ID?
Now that the 3rd ID (Infantry Division) and the Air force, Navy and Marines have marched through Iraq and the 4th ID captured Sadam, is there anything else to do? There is this littlb matter or the terroist attacks, lack of infrastructure, huge debt, and a country without a government. But worry not, the ESRI ID is on the march.
Look! Up in the sky! It’s a G, it’s an I, it’s an S
Not that many years ago, the infrastructure planning for a nation was done with pen and ink (OK, so there was some use of Vellum). but put away your drawing boards. This is the information age, and infrastructure requires planning, and that requires GIS. Hearing the call to arms, ESRI recently provided teacher training to Iraqi nationals from the Ministries of Planning, Mines, Housing and Construction, and Water Resources in support of the country's redevelopment efforts.
As I would expect, ESRI donated software and supplemental training materials to the country so that the trainees could return to their respective ministries
and support the national GIS initiative by training additional GIS
technicians. ESRI, is after all, a complex miss of hard nose business, and unprecedented generosity in the GIS, if not IT community. They know how to build long–term profitable relations.
According to ESRI spokesman, Jim Baumann, “The GIS initiative in Iraq is being spearheaded by the Humanitarian
Information Center (HIC) for Iraq, which was set up by the United Nations
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and operates in
cooperation with a number of humanitarian groups. …”
Andrew Alspach, project manager for the HIC, added “The donation by ESRI
of Makram Murad-Al-shaikh’s time to come to Jordan and conduct the training
sessions for Iraqis, as well as the comprehensive training materials and
several specialized ESRI Press-published books, is greatly appreciated by
the HIC and, more important, the Iraqi trainees. This collaborative effort
to build GIS capacity at the Iraqi Ministry level will, hopefully, be
expanded to other organizations and provide the first step in rebuilding
Iraq's spatial infrastructure.”
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