1 week Ago By Marianna Kantor, Contributor
Mapping is now the secret hack that has become a super-power for untangling, and then fixing, some ...
More of the knottiest problems we face every day. T he problems were clear and wildly varied: In shopping centers across the U.S.
, one of the nation’s largest sporting goods retailers confronted three threats, any one of which posed a survival risk: the turbulent post-pandemic retail landscape, the relentless advance of online shopping, and plummeting consumer interest in single-category retailers like Toys R Us, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Sports Authority. In the U.S.
and abroad, a leader in defense and aerospace wanted to strengthen corporate security and employee safety by visualizing thousands of risks in real-time. In Salem, the capital of Oregon, the city launched its own fleet of drones aiming to change how it managed everything from public works maintenance to emergency planning. And in tiny Dickinson, Texas, 10 miles south of NASA’s Mission Control in Houston, city officials and businesspeople staved off economic stagnation by reimagining their 12-block downtown in a way no Texas city had before.
Launching a retail renaissance. Strengthening corporate security and employee wellbeing. Deploying a municipal drone force.
Pioneering new approaches to urban planning. Every one of these problems was tackled using the same master key—not just tackled, solved. How? Geography.
GIS. Geographic information systems . In simplest terms: Maps.
Mapping is now the secret hack that has become a super-power for untangling, and then fixing, some of the knottiest problems we face every day. From fast food to farming, from the energy transition to supply chain disruption, from economic development to environmental management, mapping reveals both problems and solutions in unprecedented detail. Using geographic information system (GIS) technology and artificial intelligence, or geospatial AI , maps have become as sophisticated as the computers we use to make them.
At the same time, they are easier than ever to use. How can a map solve a multi-layered enterprise-level problem? In the case of one of the nation’s biggest sporting goods sellers, maps became a key myth-buster, upending common notions about modern consumers. The conventional wisdom in the early 2020s, reinforced by the pandemic-driven surge in online shopping, was that retail is a zero-sum game.
The belief was that online sales cannibalize brick-and-mortar stores, especially for individual retailers. Yet for this sports retailer, maps showed exactly the opposite: Ecommerce added to in-store sales, and vice versa. Precisely targeted new stores actually increased both brick-and-mortar sales and ecommerce sales.
That’s partly because the company had a strong culture of using maps and spatial analysis — doing meticulous GIS work before opening a new store. Company analysts use GIS to assess the performance and sales area of each of its hundreds stores to spot critical shifts in customer habits. And the company uses every mix of data it can — for instance, layering US Census data on sporting goods sales onto maps alongside its own loyalty club sales data.
These maps uncover hidden opportunities for new stores and revenue streams. The critical insight — that in-person and online shopping can be symbiotic — sparked a wave of innovation for the sports retailer, including opening three new styles of stores. The result: 80% of online sales are now delivered by the stores themselves.
Brick-and-mortar and ecommerce merge operationally. Market share is up 20% since before the pandemic, and sales are up 48%. Last year, same-store sales grew 70% faster than the US economy, in a completely discretionary category.
In the defense and aerospace corporate security case, the company leverages the power of maps and geospatial technology to capture and visualize hundreds of thousands of threat incidents in the U.S. and abroad.
The company’s mapping system integrates data from multiple sources including imagery and sensors to provide real-time situational awareness. It monitors an array of risk events, such as a shootings, accidents, civil disturbances, and severe weather. Its key feature is a data fusion center that visualizes all in one place the locations of employees and external threats.
This live map-based view enables the organization to conduct wellness checks and prioritize responses. It has become a powerful way of quickly and effectively responding to threats, safeguarding employees as well as company assets. M aps have always been part of city planning, but Dickinson, Texas, a small town on the edge of Houston’s sprawling southern suburbs, faced a unique problem.
In the last decade, town leaders gradually realized that Dickinson, population 22,000, was being bypassed by Houston’s economic boom. The city was hemmed in, landlocked physically, economically, even psychologically. Surrounded by other cities, Dickinson couldn’t grow outward, and most of its land had been developed.
How could Dickinson avoid being passed over by the vibrant growth of the Houston metro area? The city’s planners and economic development team hit on a strategy that’s novel for Texas—a place where suburban subdivisions, single-family homes, and malls are often the measure of success. They decided to remake Dickinson’s 12-block downtown into a high-density, mid-rise focus area. By building up instead of out, they could create a classic city downtown in miniature, with mixed-use buildings of 4 or 6 or 8 stories.
Apartments and offices share the same buildings. Wide sidewalks make the area appealing to pedestrians and accessible for street-level retail and restaurants. Urban blocks blend with green spaces.
They called it “growing up” — as in vertical growth. Anticipating resistance, they used GIS maps and gaming software to create an immersive, interactive 3D video of the new downtown. Anyone can virtually walk or float through the proposed downtown, clicking on elements to see the mix of residential, retail, parking, even tax values.
Fresh zoning rules to encourage the new style of building are built right into the application. Developers can drag and drop elements inside the software to see what adding a fourth story or shifting parking would do to the overall plan and the context of downtown. Two big projects are underway, and the Dickinson Downtown has won over both the city council and the city’s economic development authority.
An idea became a map, and a map became a video game that was a vision of a new future. All of it so different and so much more persuasive than a typical 70-page, multi-tab, spiralbound economic redevelopment plan. Drones with GIS are increasingly being used as problem-solving accelerators in areas from .
.. More infrastructure and public safety to agriculture.
By mapping 2D and 3D imagery from drones, leaders are able to make better-informed decisions. T he modern digital map — turbo-charged with everything from classic geographic elements like roads and buildings to demographic data, traffic flows, and water currents plus customized elements like zoning laws and neighborhood education levels — is a master key for solving almost any problem. It’s a master key in the classic sense–one versatile tool that unlocks countless solutions.
A map can unlock new layers of understanding, new powers of problem solving. And GIS maps are following a familiar tech pattern. Once requiring specialized training, today’s drag-and-drop GIS software with built-in artificial intelligence has democratized enterprise mapping and spatial analysis.
Now organizations of all sizes can tackle complex problems with spatial intelligence. And what about the drones of Salem, Oregon? The city’s fleet of six drones flown by Salem’s public works department are a kind of modern mapping marvel. They are used to inspect the top of city water towers—a vital task that’s dangerous and demanding for even an experienced maintenance worker, but a breeze for a drone and a drone operator.
The drones are available to all city departments on a drones-as-a-service basis. City staff can log on to the drones’ page, request a flight, and see how many flights are in line ahead of them. They can check a fully mapped history of drone coverage of the city to see if the images they need have already been scanned.
Salem’s work with drones is built around GIS — where they fly, the video they take, the 2D and 3D imagery they produce. Their mission is geography. Virtually every city department now uses drones and maps.
After a major ice storm several winters ago, the drones identified trees that needed clearing, power lines that needed restringing. Recently, drone imagery was incorporated into a $60 million grant proposal Salem made for repairs to a city dam and reservoir. Maps of drone imagery are increasingly seen as problem-solving accelerators for Salem staff.
After a landslide closed a major city road, almost the first request from public safety staff was to deploy the drone team, giving police and first responders the best possible view of the damage. The drones were in the air in less than an hour. GIS and enterprise mapping make it possible to craft new solutions to persistent or even novel problems.
The solutions are faster, yes, but also arrived at with the kind of confidence that comes from seeing and understanding all the available information. Maps make that information useful. They make it make sense.
And a better map of the problem leads to a better map of the solution..
