Most contemporary work in GIS involves one or more of three major types of activity: a) database development; b) spatial analysis and map production; and c) web-based map display.  Applications of GIS analysis technology are enormously diverse:  land planning, climate change modeling, assessing the impact of sea level rise, natural hazard risk assessment, military scenario planning, cell phone tower placement, and business siting, and many more.  Currently, these applications, which involve large amounts of geographic data-processing are usually tied to desktop workstations because of the significant amount of time, memory, and processing power required to execute the operations.

As computing power continues to grow, Azavea has become increasingly committed to making substantial improvements in the performance of GIS data computation (sometimes referred to as “geoprocessing”) over the web.  Ultimately, what we are seeking to make possible web-based GIS modeling that are so fast that you might think you’re playing a video game.  That’s no small endeavor, but the possibilities are mind-blowing.  Thanks to a National Science Foundation grant in 2010, we made significant progress on testing the feasibility of using graphics processing units (GPUs) to do just that.  If you’re interested in how we can hijack GPUs for GIS, check out our blog series on the research.

It is that context that this past January, our colleague, Tamara Manik-Perlman did a presentation on community planning tools that prioritize place-based decisions at the Esri GeoDesign Summit.  Make sure to watch her presentation and learn what we are up to.

Video credit: Esri. For more videos of the Esri 2011 GeoDesign Summit, visit: http://video.esri.com/series/13/2011-geodesign-summit