PROCESSORS

ESRI announced today that it has signed a multinational enterprise license agreement with EDAW, a San Francisco-based global leader in the fields of landscape architecture and urban planning and design. The company has 26 offices in four countries. Comments Richard Schwien, director of technology at EDAW, "Our enterprise agreement will allow us to deploy ArcGIS to our non-U.S. offices. We are excited to transfer our knowledge of applying geographic information system (GIS) technology on EDAW projects to these regions. We will also use the agreement to deploy GIS software and customized applications to non-GIS staff. The goal is to deliver powerful tools to our planners and designers without a steep learning curve. We are working on the integration of other applications, such as SketchUp; CAD; and EDAW's Web portal, EDAW.net, to develop a workflow called Digital Design. The intent is to capture data from initial concept drawings into GIS for communication and alternative analysis." EDAW primarily uses GIS in site analysis, facility site location, alternative analysis, and communication of design, employing ESRI's ArcView and ArcInfo with ArcGIS Spatial Analyst and ArcGIS 3D Analyst for these projects. ArcIMS and ArcSDE are used to support client applications. The company has used ESRI's GIS software for nearly 30 years. EDAW has many well-known clients including the Nature Conservancy; San Diego Association of Governments; Federal Emergency Management Agency; U.S. Navy; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; U.S. Bureau of Land Management; and the London Development Agency, which won the bid to host the 2012 Olympics. Concludes Schwien, "For many years, EDAW has been working with ESRI to further the application of GIS within the urban planning and design disciplines. It is our hope that the multinational/global enterprise license agreement will allow EDAW to easily deploy GIS into all areas of our business, pushing GIS into the domains where CAD has, by default, been deployed."