UN and Esri Challenge Developers to Build Apps That Prepare Cities for Twenty-First-Century Change

Redlands, California—July 15, 2014—Esri and the United Nations are working hard to help communities build resilience to impending twenty-first century disasters. One way  Esri – the world leader in GIS – is helping is through its  Global Disaster Resilience App Challenge. The app challenge is born from the United Nations Office of Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) campaign Making Cities Resilient: My City is Getting Ready, and supports the UN secretary–general's efforts to accelerate actions that build resilience to climate change. Participating developers will create map tools that help communities see, understand, and prepare for a variety of disasters.  

"This partnership with Esri can help bridge the gap between aspiration and implementation," said Margareta Wahlström, the head of UNISDR. "It puts the latest science and technology at the disposal of those who have joined the Making Cities Resilient campaign."

UNISDR launched the Making Cities Resilient campaign to improve land use and urban planning for more than 1,800 participating cities worldwide. These communities have committed to observe UNISDR resiliency recommendations. Esri is collaborating with UNISDR on the initiative and giving these cities access to its developer technology. Esri invites the developer community to lend a hand and use the ArcGIS platform developer tools.

Esri launched the Global Disaster Resilience App Challenge to help local, regional, and national governments find the tools they need to reach their goals to become resilient. Developers will build apps relevant to UNISDR's 10 Essentials for Making Cities Resilient. Esri will present a $10,000 award each for the best professional/scientific app and the best consumer/public-facing app. Winners will be announced in mid-September, just one week prior to the Climate Summit to be convened by UN secretary–general Ban Ki-moon on September 23, 2014.

About Esri
Since 1969, Esri has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS technology, Esri software is used in more than 350,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. Esri applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world's mapping and spatial analysis. Esri is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at esri.com/news.

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