In the article ‘Building an Oasis in the Desert‘ in the Fall 2009 edition of ArcNews Online, the work of CH2M Hill company is presented. It describes the use of geographic information system (GIS) technology that is being used to develop the Masdar City project located in UAE.

From the article – “”GIS is imperative in managing the overall spatial information necessary for designing, building, and operating Masdar City,” says Derek Gliddon, GIS manager, Property Development Unit, Masdar. Staff members at the City of Masdar use GIS to model building information throughout the life cycle of the project. For the city to meet its challenging goals, CH2M HILL carefully considered the geography of the area: sun angles, wind patterns, street widths, and building density and height. The orientation of buildings on a diagonal grid to provide maximum natural shading was modeled in ArcGIS.”

ArcGIS Network Analyst is a software that can be used to analyze biomass transport over a given distance. Since many agricultural producers and biomass sources are usually distributed to different geographic locations, computing the transport costs of the entire operation over time is useful information for helping to determine net return on investment, decision making surrounding infrastructure and the monitoring and maintenace of transport vehicles and biomass equiment.

SARIG is the South Australian Resource Information Geoserver and is designed to provide free geodata to the petroleum and mining sectors.

From the site – The South Australian Resources Information Geoserver (SARIG) is an online web application that enables users to search, view, download and purchase information relating to minerals and petroleum exploration in South Australia. SARIG also provides the facility to apply for an exploration licence online.