TerraGo
Democratizing GIS for the Masses

The intersection of catalysts like Big Data, cloud technology and billions of interconnected mobile devices create opportunities that we haven’t seen historically, one such opportunity is transforming GIS (Geographic Information Systems),” says Chris Broderick, President and CEO, TerraGo. GIS technology, which was once predominantly used for highly specialized purposes like sharing mission terrain conditions by Army, has now found its way into the everyday apps we use on smartphones. Through collaboration of location-based information with anyone, anywhere, TerraGo, a DC area company is helping organizations ‘see and know more’ in a geographic context. “With this intelligence, mobile field personnel, such as first responders, agricultural, petroleum and utility workers can make better decisions faster and improve effectiveness,” notes Broderick.

To help organizations harness their mobile workforce, availability of geographic data, rise of cloud-based services and explosive growth of location-enabled devices, TerraGo launched TerraGo Edge, an open collaboration solution for mobile workflows that immediately syncs field data with headquarters and other mobile workers. TerraGo Edge enables mobile workers and field crews to easily take notes, photos, assign tasks and share data in real-time. The easy-to-use app enables the enterprise to embrace the Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) promise of improved productivity, ease of use and seamless networking.

With TerraGo Edge, organizations create intelligent, portable notebooks customized for their unique areas of interest and specialized workflows. Available with a tap from any user’s smartphone and tablet, TerraGo Edge notebooks contain all the forms, documents, maps and imagery needed by remote workers, securely delivering real-time data to and from users at the “edge of the enterprise.”

TerraGo also offers field collaboration solutions integrated with leading GIS. For example, TerraGo Publisher® for ArcGIS® lets users create portable, interactive GeoPDF® maps for a variety of location intelligence products that support information gathering, improve situational awareness and support decision-making across modern enterprises.

TerraGo products provide field personnel with anytime, anywhere access to maps and applications so they can share on-the-ground intelligence with analysts and decision makers.“Place-based intelligence is transforming the way geographic data, relationships, and patterns in the world are being interactively mapped, analyzed and visualized for an increasingly growing community of end users, for a multitude of purposes— we are contributing to this transformation,” says Broderick.

TerraGo puts geospatial power in the hands of those on-the-ground, automating the collection of real-time location intelligence

TerraGo’s geospatial solutions ensure mission success across a wide range of industries including Defense and Intelligence, Crisis Planning and Response, Public Safety, Energy, Natural Resources, Transportation and Utilities. Seattle City Light, the 10th largest U.S. public electricity company, has over 1,800 employees, with a large percentage of them deployed as mobile workers. The company relied on manual processes, radio communications, and dispatch services to coordinate field work with necessary location data. The distribution system’s “flat map” data was stored in a Computer-Aided Design (CAD) database system, inaccessible to non-experts, and field workers outside the system control center. Another TerraGo product, TerraGo Composer®, was able to turn their CAD-based data into a portable, interactive, searchable map database that was available anywhere, even offline in disconnected environments. “Now all personnel and field crews are able to search access and update the entire map database from their desktop, laptop or mobile devices—irrespective of network availability, a feature that sets us apart from rest,” says Broderick.

Going forward, TerraGo wants to democratize geospatial technologies, which were once only developed for geo-experts, so that everybody who needs these technologies can use them on any device, from any place on the planet, giving them new ways to share their world and make a difference.