Esri, a provider of location intelligence, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the World Bank to integrate location intelligence into the latter’s software.

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Image: The World Bank Group headquarters building in Washington, D.C. Photo: courtesy of Shiny Things/Wikipedia.org.

Under the agreement, Esri software geoenables the World Bank’s Survey Solutions software, allowing staff to improve accuracy and quicken the kinds of data collection, analysis, and decision-making that countries need to address the most urgent development challenges.

The World Bank and Esri are leaders in their respective fields and share the objective of creating a sustainable way of life for all people around the world.

The organizations will collaborate to deliver solutions that integrate Esri’s spatial analytics technology into the World Bank’s Survey Solutions and Cloud for Development. Esri’s tools will bring real-time data collection and visualization to these solutions, particularly as they relate to Census 2020.

Esri global business development manager Linda Peters said: “The World Bank has an impressive goal: to end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity.

“The complex challenges of sustainable development that the World Bank faces underscore the need for geospatial data and tools for users to understand how to help the most people possible.”

The World Bank’s Survey Solutions is a computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) software that helps build capacity for data collection and analysis in developing nations. Survey Solutions does this by offering national statistical agencies and other institutions involved in data collection a cost-effective and sustainable solution for conducting surveys.

Providing a location component to survey data collection enables field teams to cover populations more efficiently and accurately and begin to put into action a global statistical geospatial framework.

World Bank Development Economics Survey Unit manager Michael Lokshin said: “This agreement with Esri will allow users of Survey Solutions to collect both standard survey data and GIS data.

“Now, our clients in developing countries have a free and powerful platform to collect data in a wide range of surveys. For example, in agricultural surveys, using high-resolution satellite imagery can improve precision and reduce [the] time it takes to measure land plots.”

Source: Company Press Release