00:06Every organization is investing a lot of time and energy into compiling data for their areas of interest.

00:15If we can combine our respective information into a harmonized, continuous map of the world...

00:24...into a map that works at all kinds of scales, the global level, at a national level, at a regional level...

00:32...and even down to the block level, and perhaps even into a building...

00:36...then it really enables the GIS community to start to deliver all kinds of applications that help...

00:46...help all of our users meet their missions.

00:49The goal of the Community Basemap Program at Esri is really about providing you with the framework that works on the Web...

00:59...for you to deliver more effective applications for your GIS, your stories that you want to tell with your maps, to become more effective.

01:10The City of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County have a long history of providing GIS data at low or no cost.

01:18We've...We've always had an open data policy.

01:21The Community Basemap is really an evolution of that track.

01:26For the first time, we're providing a common, consistent, standardized basemap...

01:33...that really provides the foundation for thematic mapping, both internally within the city, and externally.

01:43The program is sort of in the hands of the users. It's their program to own.

01:47They're the authoritative source of basemap data for their organization and they participate in the program...

01:54...following methods and procedures that we give them to...

01:57...to prepare the data for...for the nationwide basemap so that it's consistent...

02:01...references the same cartographic template that everyone uses, but they're the authoritative source and they...they own that process.

02:08It's sort of a partnership between the customer and Esri to participate in the program.

02:13The Community Map Program allows us to be able to give access to the vast storehouses of information that we have at the city.

02:20What we have in this program, is a way of being able to deliver the services without having to make such large, initial investments.

02:29We do have investment limitations. We can't afford to always put those capabilities on premises.

02:36So, the Community Basemap Program allows us to be able to move some of those assets into the cloud, to not have to have those on our premises...

02:44...yet be able to provide a level of transparency to our citizens, to our businesses, to meet their needs.

02:50We really want to invite global participation in the basemap.

02:54It's also a multiscale map, so we have data from very small scales down to very large scales.

03:00Internationally, we have global coverage down to about 1 to 100,000 scale...

03:04...but we'd like to make that more detailed and more authoritative working with local providers of information.

03:10That could be local national mapping agencies or it could be local governments that are building datasets within their nation.

03:16This map is about you and your content, about us being able to take the best available data sources from the professional GIS community...

03:28...an authoritative source of information, the best data, a crowd-sourcing exercise...

03:36...by the professional GIS community, to build a great map of the world.