Esri Creates First Global Map of the Catholic Church

Redlands, California—November 18, 2016—Global smart-mapping leader Esri today announced that the GoodLands project team has partnered with Esri to create a digital map portal of the Catholic Church's global landholdings.

The project uses geographic information system (GIS) technology from Esri to inspire the world's 1.2 billion Catholics to take a more ecological approach toward managing church land. GoodLands also assists nonprofit Catholic aid organizations in using spatial information to address global problems that include poverty and climate change.

"We are thrilled to partner with Esri on this initiative," said Molly Burhans, executive director of the GoodLands project. "GIS is the tool that enables a holistic perspective to solve problems sustainably. Using Esri's technology, we are able to view urgent issues such as extreme poverty, environmental degradation, and climate change; identify where problems are located; and understand the impact on the people in the area. By bringing these issues to light, we hope it will inspire others to take action."

The GoodLands GIS portal provides comprehensive spatial data to Catholic organizations worldwide that support efforts in conservation, health care, education, and other issues. The portal offers an intuitive user experience: Individuals can contribute information, and organizations can share data, creating a living atlas of information that can be crowdsourced to maintain relevancy and accuracy.

Esri founder and president Jack Dangermond said, "Esri is proud to collaborate with GoodLands on such an important and impactful global initiative. Esri's technology provides valuable problem-solving tools that allow GoodLands to succeed at doing great work and making significant change worldwide."

Esri provides the capabilities to create, access, and store the massive amounts of data required to map the church's landholdings completely and securely. The ability to visualize and analyze this data through easily understandable maps results in a clear view of the global landscape helping decision-makers preserve and protect the land.

Esri has a long history of assisting nonprofit organizations such as GoodLands in serving their communities better with GIS.