Utilizing GIS for Successful Economic Development
Armando Lacivita
Account Manager, ESRI Canada
ENCOURAGING ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT in a community means balancing a variety of activities, attracting news business, retaining and expanding new business, and pursuing development intelligently ? to create jobs and establish a strong financial base. A geographical information system (GIS) will enable government organizations to streamline their processes, perform accurate analysis and enable decision makers to develop strategies in a more efficient manner while providing an advantage in the competitive arena of economic development.
What is a GIS and how can it promote economic development? Simply defined, a GIS is a computer system that manages and analyzes locational information and how it relates to other features surrounding it. By centralizing all the information about your community, GIS software facilitates the process of analyzing data and recognizing trends.
GIS software can assist economic development departments to:
- Analyze their target market through accurate demographic information: location, age, sex, education, language, income, spending habits, and product and service needs;
- Identify their proximity to transportation infrastructures such as major highways, railroads and airports as well as public services and competitors;
- Identify locations for entertainment facilities such as golf courses, theatres and restaurants; and,
- Undertake redevelopment of community areas to reverse deteriorating trends, create jobs, and revitalize the business climate.
- GIS software is a great solution for analyzing and presenting this information to prospects. The core of GIS technology is its ability to bring information together at any scale from large to small to allow for more informed decisions.
The benefits of GIS to economic developers:
Property Management
Location is everything! To sell a location, benefits such as availability of transportation, infrastructure, educational levels, trained workforce, tax incentives, grants, or other factors must be identified and emphasized.
GIS is well-suited for property management tasks such as analyzing information on building age, valuation, and income levels to plan projects.
Revitalizing Neighbourhoods
GIS software is a powerful tool that assists housing professionals in creating and maintaining livable communities. Timely and comprehensive information on the built environment allows for better policy decisions.
Project Tracking
GIS software is the best solution for tracking housing and development projects. Maps and databases can be linked with images, such as photographs or blueprints, to tell the complete story of a project as it develops.
Economic Gardening
Attracting businesses to an area is just one side of the economic development coin. Nurturing existing businesses is the other. ?Economic gardening?, the catch phrase for this economic development strategy, can improve their tax base by playing a more proactive role in retaining and expanding businesses that are already located in the area.
Demographic Profiling
GIS can help build more viable communities by helping existing businesses find customers. It provides answers to questions about market conditions with demographic, street, and business data.
Web-enabled community interaction
The Internet is changing the way local governments do business. More and more communities are embracing Internet Map Server technology to extend government services. Combining the power of Internet and GIS technologies, government can provide vital information to developers, consultants, and businesses 24 hours a day. Spatially enabled local government Websites improve customer service and help create a more productive, efficient, and open organization.
Beyond the benefits within the organization and to constituents, developing a Website can dramatically increase your community?s visibility. Information about your community is directly available to potential domestic and foreign investors.
Conclusion
As the leader in GIS technology, ESRI Canada offers innovative solutions that will help economic developers create, visualize, analyze, and present information better and more clearly. Working with location information, GIS software and solutions enable government departments to unlock the spatial component of valuable data and see information from a new perspective.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Armando LaCivita is an Account Manager with ESRI Canada. He is responsible for developing new business initiatives in the Greater Toronto Area for the municipal and utility market. Armando started with ESRI Canada in 2000 and has been active in the GIS marketplace for more than 12 years. He is a graduate of Ryerson University''s Applied Geography Program. Over the years Armando has worked on various GIS projects ranging from natural resource management to business geographics. His experience with GIS in multiple disciplines has provided him with an excellent opportunity to understand how different business problems are similar across many verticals. Armando currently acts as an executive member of the Geospatial Information Technology Association (GITA) Ontario Chapter.