Esri Will Donate Software to Fight Drug Addiction

Redlands, California—March 14, 2017—Esri, the global leader in spatial analytics, today announced that it will donate software to winners of the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) Grant to combat the national opioid and heroin abuse epidemic. The new partnership will promote Esri's mapping and analysis capabilities to government agencies that need to more efficiently monitor and manage their drug intelligence and community surveillance efforts.

Esri will donate software, valued at $40,500, to NIJ Grant winners. With easy-to-use mobile apps for field data collection that work on any device, Esri's analytics and data-sharing capabilities will enable winning agencies to instantly view and share critical information. For instance, interactive maps can identify hot spots of drug activity and can be indicators of potential problem areas, allowing police to deploy the right resources to the right place.

"Esri knows the damage that opioid abuse is doing to our communities, and we are thankful for this opportunity to help find a solution to this devastating epidemic," said John Beck, Esri head of global law enforcement. "The Esri platform collects data in real time, then integrates this data and makes sense of it in interactive maps, making information about drug addiction and crime easier to access, understand, and share."

The NIJ is seeking proposals for research on drug intelligence and community surveillance that examine currently available resources to identify reliable data, unmet information needs, and recommendations on how data collection and data sharing efforts can improve law enforcement response to the fast pace of the national opioid and heroin abuse epidemic.

The deadline for grant submissions to NIJ is Thursday, March 23, 2017.