Agendra Kumar, Managing Director, Esri India

Technology has a key role to play in building a resilient and sustainable future for everyone, and advanced spatial technologies are playing a crucial role in demystifying the interconnections and interdependencies for solving complex problems and enhancing decision support through timely intelligence. Leveraging the power of GIS, policymakers, development professionals, and community leaders are integrating social, environmental, and economic information in a way that enables them to gain greater insight into complex situations, make data-driven decisions on where to act and apply resources, and collaborate across organizations and around the world. Geospatial information combined with socio-economic and other statistical data also provides critical inputs for addressing the complex challenges of sustainability for businesses. Data availability and sharing have now become easier in India. With enabling policies like the National Geospatial Policy and the Geospatial Data Guidelines in place, the availability of geospatial data has also improved. In such a scenario, GIS will prove to be a more significant tool in assessment, prioritization, mitigation, planning, change management, and capacity building to address economic inequality, social instability, and environmental degradation challenges.