Around 100 users of Esri's GIS software met at the Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences. Decision-makers from district offices, cities & municipalities and regional associations, employees from the Ministry of Transport and the State Office for Geo-Information and Rural Development, as well as from engineering firms, took the opportunity to attend specialist presentations and exchange ideas with colleagues.
After the welcoming address, Prof. Schröder gave an overview of current work at HFT Stuttgart, which often focuses on the analysis and evaluation - including recommendations for action - of climatic changes. A study using the example of Botnang showed that urban planning can also benefit enormously from well-prepared geodata from the inventory analysis. "Data procurement is an important factor here," emphasized Prof. Schröder. This is because these are often available in different resolutions or with different levels of accuracy.
Jasmin Seifried (Esri Deutschland GmbH) presented news from Esri: She recommends switching to Arc GIS Pro as soon as possible, which, however, entails changes in user administration (now always with personalized licenses and new user types), but offers the advantage of cross-platform work and better use of resources. "Arc MAP will retire on March 1, 2026," emphasized Seyfried. New features include further training in blended learning format. Incidentally, Esri is now also ISO9001 certified. Not many providers can boast such a certificate.
In addition to Esri, solution providers also exhibited at the accompanying trade exhibition: BARAL (Tom Horwath & Florian Tubbesing), Vertigis (Norbert Helmle), con terra (Christoph Uhlenküken & Marie Salomo), Frox (Christoph Babilon) and GI Geoinformatik (Roland Körber) presented their services and tools for the Esri community in Baden-Württemberg.
The practical side continued: Friederike Kafka (City of Pforzheim), who was connected to the room via Zoom, explained her solution for 'Geodata information with sophisticated rights management'. Dr. Dirk Schäfer (Soluvia IT-Services GmbH) and Christoph Uhlenküken (con terra GmbH) explained the sophisticated rights management that the companies provide to Esri users.
Matthias Stängel, Esri Deutschland GmbH, led newcomers and potential switchers from old versions through ArcGIS Pro at a gallop before Theresa Weixler (City of Constance) presented her bicycle traffic counting dashboard. In the city on Lake Constance, citizens can find out about bicycle traffic 24/7. Did you know that over 150,000 cyclists are counted there every week? https://www.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/9202209d156c4ad4824368b4229bbbca
Andre Völkner (Hohenlohekreis) and Alexander Gauss (Terratwin) explained the development of a digital twin in the Hohenlohe district, while Tom Horwath (HFT Stuttgart/BARAL Geohaus-Consulting AG) provided a practical example of indoor navigation.
Finally, Florian Fischer from the Esri development department and Matthias Stängel (Esri Germany) spoke about the possibilities of reality mapping and image analysis in ArcGIS Pro. Conclusion: Evaluations that often required a lot of programming work in the past are now completed much faster and more precisely.
