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technological tools and apps to help inform and enable societies to adapt and rebuild. Widely sharing these map-based resources are helping people and industries regain control and certainty. Going forward, geospatial data and Location Intelligence are going to be critical for economic recovery — from being able to continue tracking the spread of the virus and its impact at any given time, to supporting cit- ies and nations that are trying to understand what is the new normal for their essential ser- vices and management of everyday public life. Who should lead the way and how As we move ahead, It will be important that resource-rich organizations act as enablers in ensuring that people have equal access and support to create or adopt solutions that work specifically for them. "For example, in ArcGIS Online, users have created over 35 millions layers worldwide. We estimate that as many as 40-50% of these items are publicly shared," adds Dangermond, highlighting that since the The ability to access information from anywhere at any time has never been more important. Our companies and governments, are now operating from thousands of locations where they hadn't been before Ola Rollén Hexagon CEO beginning of 2020, extraordinary efforts worldwide sprang up as a global response to the coronavirus pandemic. "GIS prac- titioners and heroic people everywhere joined together to implement and apply community GIS in virtually every nation and global region as well as at local levels. One of the most impactful traits of GIS information is the user community's strong interest in sharing — we all need access to each other's data." Governments, businesses and trained developers can commit to creating and offering open-source approaches to infor- mation sharing, system development and data management, says Painter. For example, users in underdeveloped countries could use a free and open-source desktop GIS tool to work with geospatial data, analyze datasets, connect to external tools and publish and share geospatial information. User-friendly environments such as these give stakeholders efficiencies and confidence to build knowl- edge and develop systems and plans that best serve their communities. Likewise, geospatial manufacturers can provide support and tools that enable developers to create specialized appli- cations that bring the best value to their working environments. For instance, a trained developer could create simple, cus- tomized workflows to aid in locating and tracking virus hotspots and concentrations of infected people. "On-demand access to real-time, accurate geospatial data and Location Intelligence for all is critical for a coordinated, global response to any shared crisis," adds Rollén. Providing access to technology is akin to providing opportunity, but that's possible only through partnerships and collabora- tions. "Governments, big and small busi- nesses and societies would do well to partner in that and provide the hardware, soware and infrastructure to allow local innovation to happen. Creating tools and applications to gain knowledge is one of the best ways to build strength and resilience to beer respond to an 'unknown enemy' like a future pandemic," emphasizes Painter. "It's definitely possible to work together and learn from each other's experiences and experiments, but there is no one-size-fits-all response. With the diversity of solutions needed across geospatial applications, the idea is the same. COVID-19 is an opportu- nity for sharing best practices to aid in future situations where we are experiencing the same challenges at different times for differ- ent reasons," feels Rollén. Dangermond thinks that the geospatial community must work to ensure technol- ogies are open, interoperable, and readily accessible worldwide. ese goals include effective configuration and use of COTS tools, adoption of best practices, and open information sharing across geospatial organ- izations, because shared data layers are easily integrated in to GIS. e COVID-19 pandemic may have caused tremendous disruption to the global society and economy, but has also acted as a wake-up call, a unique opportunity to enhance efforts around democratization of technology, so that we can collectively be prepared to take on future challenges. If the Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis', (as stated by John F. Kennedy) with one brush stroke standing for danger and the other for opportunity, perhaps it's time to shi focus to the second stroke of the brush. Avneep Dhingra Associate Editor - Policy & Public Affairs avneep@geospatialmedia.net www.geospatialworld.net | May-June 2020 17 As we move ahead, it will be important that resource-rich organiza ons act as enablers in ensuring that people have equal access and support to create or adopt solu ons that work specifically for them

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