Enhanced Elevation Data to Become Available in ArcGIS Online; Facilitates Building More Resilient Communities

Redlands, California—September 23, 2014—President Obama today announced the public availability of 30 meter SRTM data. Immediately following the President’s speech, Esri announced that it will enhance its existing World Elevation Map to include this more detailed 30 meter SRTM data, making the data available to its customers and others around the world. By taking advantage of new federal open data policies, users will be able to build more resilient communities.

"Esri leverages US government open data policies for the benefit of our customers, and we're excited to leverage our platform to help deliver the SRTM 30 meter elevation data available for everyone in the world," said Jack Dangermond, Esri founder and president. "This will add to the rich data offerings already available to Esri customers through ArcGIS Online, and will help our users build more resilient communities and address pressing environmental and societal issues."

In February of 2000, the Space Shuttle Endeavour flew an 11-day mission called the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). With a specially modified radar system onboard, the mission obtained 30 meter elevation data on a near-global scale to generate the most complete high-resolution digital topographic database of Earth.

Esri's World Elevation Map supports visualization (e.g., hillshade, slope, aspect) as well as analysis (e.g., viewshed, terrain profile). The addition of 30 meter elevation data will be a significant enhancement and will enrich many applications such as earth science and landscape modeling as well as visualization.

Esri has developed an advanced cloud-based GIS platform known as ArcGIS Online, which allows users of all types to leverage the World Elevation Map and a vast array of other geographic data and services for sophisticated analysis with no software installation required. ArcGIS Online will be a powerful delivery platform for leveraging the release of 30 meter SRTM data by the US government.

"This elevation data will be especially valuable for critical applications such as watershed modeling, hydrologic modeling, and a host of other geographic sciences," added Dangermond. "It's an enormous contribution to science and society."

Esri will stand up 30 meter SRTM services as the data is released by the US government.

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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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Brian Peterson, Esri
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