The 13th Annual South Asia Regional Conference for Esri Users was hosted by Esri South Asia Sdn Bhd, Esri's distributor in Malaysia, at the Sheraton Subang Hotel & Towers in Kuala Lumpur, September 6–8, 2006.

Daniel Boey, who oversees the operations of Esri South Asia's Malaysian market, explained the conference theme Sustaining the Present for the Future, "Many cultures have recognized the need for harmony between the environment, society, and economy—commonly known to us by the term sustainable development. Sustainable development focuses on the ability of the current generation to maintain or raise the standard of living without compromising the future generation to meet its needs. GIS is often used as one of the enabling technologies that make integrated approaches to sustainable development viable."

The keynote speaker at the conference was Y. Bhg. Datuk Hamid bin Ali, director general of Survey and Mapping, Malaysia, who discussed Jabatan Ukur dan Pemetaan Malaysia (JUPEM)—The Way Forward in the K-Economy.

Esri senior managers James Higgins and John Calkins demonstrated some of the many new features of Esri's ArcGIS 9.2 software. Another product that was demonstrated was ArcGIS Server. "ArcGIS Server offers a new means to manage and disseminate geographic knowledge," declared Esri president Jack Dangermond.

Complementing ArcGIS Server is ArcGIS Image Server, a new product that provides very fast access to large repositories of imagery; on-the-fly processing; and fast, easy publishing.

Continued Dangermond, "What this means in a practical sense is that data captured during a natural disaster, such as a hurricane, can be immediately processed and analyzed, which speeds up the emergency response efforts."

ArcGIS Image Server supports all the leading GIS, CAD, and imaging vendors' software as well as Web standards, such as the Open Geospatial Consortium Web Map Service (OGC WMS).

In conjunction with the user conference, Esri South Asia hosted a GIS for Public Health Regional Seminar and the First Asian Mini Petroleum User Group meeting.

Other conference highlights included technical workshops, presentations by the user community, and an exhibition of maps and posters illustrating GIS applications and analyses.

Participants from a number of industries and government agencies, including agriculture, forestry, minerals and geosciences, elections, town planning, oil and gas, meteorology, environmental management, defense, water utilities, electric utilities, public works, homeland security, and local councils, attended the conference.

More Information

For more information, contact Esri South Asia Sdn Bhd (Malaysia) (tel.: 603-7874-9930, Web: www.esrisa.com.my).