Esri brings global location analytics experts to Australia

Location-based analytics specialist Esri Australia has brought two international technology experts to Australia to discuss innovative uses for the technology.

Esri’s global start-up program manager Kurt Daradics is visiting the country this week to mentor aspiring entrepreneurs looking to create the next Uber or Yelp.

Daradics will help guide participants involved in the Esri Startup Program in developing innovative business ideas based on location-based analytics.

The free three-year Esri Startup Program is designed to give start-ups the tools to build mapping and analytics into their products.

“Internationally, we have already helped a wide array of start-ups produce some really interesting products, from social media mapping to intelligent transport solutions, and we’re just getting started,” Daradics said.

“In Australia we see a lot of potential for start-ups to drive innovation in established industries, particularly in mining and agriculture, for example, where drone and imagery apps provide state-of-the-art solutions for those industries. The commercial market is also full of opportunity.”

Esri Australia Chief Solutions Strategist Gary Johnson noted that all the most successful and disruptive apps in recent years have had location-based analytics at the heart of their technologies. These include Yelp, Uber, Tinder and Airbnb.

“These are the big household names in the new technology world and all, at their core, are about matching where people are with the services they want,” he said.

“The release of free open data about population, transport and weather and the proliferation of data-collecting mobile devices is providing the real-time spatial data necessary for those apps.”

Esri’s international smart transport specialist Terry Bills is also visiting, and today held a special workshop covering the ways Australian transport agencies plan to use big data to transform transit network planning.

The workshop at the 23rd World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems in Melbourne also covered how new advancements to location-based analytics can be used by Australian agencies to reveal new insights into traffic and public transport patterns.

“Every smartphone is a sensor and every transport card records vital information, so it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the terabytes of real-time data that is flooding in every day. But by using advanced technology to map and analyse big data, we can reveal previously hidden blind spots in transportation trends and traffic patterns that will enable better network planning and management,” Bills said.

“This is an approach already being leveraged by some of the world’s most innovative cities — including Singapore, London, Los Angeles and Melbourne — but the next step is moving big data analytics from delivering real-time insights to predicting future transport challenges and solutions.”

Image courtesy of Aaron Parecki under CC