Esri’s Power of Where Collection Puts Water and Land Data at the Heart of Infrastructure

Esri’s Power of Where Collection Puts Water and Land Data at the Heart of Infrastructure

When a software company releases books rather than product updates, it is easy to file the news under corporate housekeeping and move on. That would be a mistake in this case. Esri’s decision to debut its Power of Where Collection at the 2026 Esri User Conference in San Diego says less about publishing and more about where geographic information system (GIS) technology now sits in the infrastructure economy.

The collection extends the ideas set out in Jack Dangermond’s 2024 volume, The Power of Where: A Geographic Approach to the World’s Greatest Challenges, into two focused, real-world domains that happen to be among the most capital-intensive and politically sensitive areas of the built environment: water, and the land itself.

The two launch titles, Geowater: A Geographic Approach to Water Data and Forecasting and Parcels: How Property Shapes Geography, are not marketing companions to a keynote. They are a signal that spatial analysis has moved from the map room to the boardroom, and from specialist niche to standard decision-making equipment for utilities, planners, contractors and the investors who back them.

For an industry wrestling with a multi-trillion-dollar water investment shortfall and increasingly reliant on accurate land records to move projects from concept to construction, the framing matters. Esri is making the case that geography is not a supporting discipline but the connective tissue that ties data, capital and delivery together.

Briefing

• Esri will debut its Power of Where Collection at the 2026 Esri User Conference in San Diego, held from 13 to 17 July, extending Jack Dangermond’s 2024 book into applied, sector-specific titles.
• The first two releases target the two areas that most directly shape infrastructure economics: Geowater, on water data and forecasting, and Parcels, on land records and property systems.
• The launch lands against a projected global water infrastructure investment gap of around €6.5 trillion by 2040, a shortfall equivalent to roughly €435 billion every year on current trajectories.
• Independent analysts estimate the GIS market at somewhere between USD 12 billion and USD 17 billion in 2026, with forecasts pointing to double-digit annual growth through the decade, driven by smart cities, digital twins and AI-assisted analysis.
• Geowater (US$54.99) publishes on 1 September 2026 and Parcels (US$54.99) on 15 September 2026, both available for preorder now, with the collection set to expand into further disciplines over time.

Why Water Forecasting Sits at the Centre of the Story

Of the two launch titles, Geowater speaks most directly to the commercial pressures facing infrastructure owners. Water is no longer a quiet utility running in the background of the economy. Ageing networks, intensifying climate variability and rising demand have combined to push water up the boardroom agenda, and the numbers attached to fixing it are substantial.

Analysis published by the World Economic Forum with the University of Cambridge and the utility group Acea estimates that around €11.4 trillion, or roughly USD 13.2 trillion, of investment will be needed by 2040 to secure equitable access, climate-resilient systems and a faster shift towards circular and digital water solutions. On current spending trajectories, the gap between what is required and what is planned sits at about €6.5 trillion, close to €435 billion a year. A book that treats water data integration and forecasting as a geographic problem, rather than a purely hydraulic one, is therefore aimed squarely at where the money and the risk now concentrate.

The technical substance behind that framing is what gives it weight. Geowater examines how spatial analysis supports water data integration, spatial data modelling and decision-making in a rapidly changing environment, and those three capabilities map neatly onto the direction the sector is already travelling. Water utilities and engineering consultancies are increasingly building digital twins that combine engineering models with live operational data to simulate system behaviour, stress-test flood scenarios and prioritise maintenance before assets fail.

Firms working globally now apply these methods to flood forecasting, groundwater management and network optimisation, and national programmes from the Netherlands to Singapore have used basin-scale digital twins to rehearse thousands of climate and infrastructure scenarios. The consistent lesson from recent flood events is that the value lies less in any single model and more in the ability to unify fragmented data across a whole basin, which is precisely the geographic layer Esri is positioning itself to own.

For contractors, consultants and asset owners, the practical implication is that spatial competence is becoming a prerequisite rather than a differentiator. The water sector has historically lagged other industries in digital transformation, which means the room for improvement, and the commercial opportunity attached to it, is unusually large.

A publication that codifies how geography underpins water forecasting arrives as utilities move from reactive operations towards predictive, data-driven decision-making, and as regulators and financiers begin to expect resilience to be demonstrated rather than asserted. That shift favours the vendors and service providers who can turn scattered sensor feeds, satellite observations and legacy records into a coherent spatial picture, and it rewards the engineering firms fluent enough in GIS to build on top of it.

Land and Property as the Foundation Beneath Every Project

If Geowater addresses the operational front line, Parcels: How Property Shapes Geography reaches into something more fundamental and, for construction professionals, often more frustrating. Every major project begins with land, and land is defined by records. Parcels highlights the importance of land records and parcel systems as foundational data that supports planning, infrastructure, governance and economic activity, and anyone who has watched a highway scheme or utility corridor stall over right-of-way disputes will recognise why that foundation deserves a book of its own.

Cadastres and land registries are the tools used worldwide to map, prove and secure property rights, and where those records are accurate, current and digitally accessible, projects move faster, disputes shrink and land acquisition becomes a manageable line item rather than an open-ended risk.

The wider development evidence reinforces the point. The World Bank has consistently found that registered property rights underpin investment, productivity and growth, and that reliable land information helps governments plan the expansion of urban areas and route the services and infrastructure those areas need. Land access is also central to the energy transition, with a significant share of climate actions under the Paris Agreement depending on how land is managed.

National digitisation programmes illustrate the scale of the prize: in Indonesia, a land registration drive supported by World Bank financing recorded more than 60 million parcels over eight years, created tens of thousands of jobs and multiplied the number of private surveying firms many times over. For utilities in particular, parcel-level data carries operational detail that goes well beyond ownership, capturing right-of-way, easements, crossing access and permit status along transmission and distribution corridors.

Seen through that lens, Parcels is less a treatise on property law than a business case for treating land records as critical infrastructure in their own right. For developers, infrastructure funds and public agencies, the quality of a jurisdiction’s cadastre increasingly shapes the cost, timeline and risk profile of what gets built there.

Spatially accurate parcel data feeds directly into disaster risk modelling, urban planning and evacuation logistics, which matters most in exactly the fast-growing, disaster-exposed regions where new infrastructure is most needed. By elevating parcel systems to the same analytical status as water and climate, Esri is making a quiet but pointed argument to policymakers and investors alike: the maps that record who owns what are as strategic as the assets built on top of them.

From a Flagship Book to a Deliberate Strategy

The decision to build a collection around Dangermond’s original volume reveals a considered commercial logic rather than a publishing afterthought. The 2024 book was an ambitious, wide-angle statement, a lavishly illustrated argument running to some 490 maps across 300 pages, with a foreword by The Atlantic writer James Fallows and drawing on Dangermond’s six decades in the field. It set out the philosophy of the geographic approach across climate, biodiversity, poverty and health.

What the Power of Where Collection does is convert that philosophy into applied, domain-specific playbooks, starting with the sectors where the geographic approach delivers the clearest return. As Dangermond puts it: “The geographic approach is essential to understanding and solving today’s most pressing challenges. This collection demonstrates how GIS connects data, people, and place to create a more sustainable and resilient future.”

That progression, from a single flagship title to a growing library of focused applications, mirrors a broader mainstreaming of spatial intelligence across the built environment. GIS increasingly sits alongside building information modelling and digital twins as part of the standard toolkit on major projects, with Esri deepening integrations across design and engineering platforms and layering artificial intelligence into its ArcGIS ecosystem through capabilities marketed under the GeoAI banner. The applied turn represented by the collection is consistent with that trajectory.

Rather than asking infrastructure professionals to appreciate GIS in the abstract, Esri is meeting them inside the specific problems they are paid to solve, whether that is forecasting a flood, valuing a parcel or sequencing a maintenance programme. The commitment to expand the collection into further disciplines suggests the company sees each sector as a distinct market to be addressed on its own terms.

There is a competitive dimension to this as well. The GIS software market is concentrated, and while independent estimates of its size vary considerably, analysts broadly place Esri as the clear leader by share, competing with the likes of Hexagon, Autodesk, Trimble and Bentley Systems across overlapping infrastructure workflows.

Establishing the vocabulary and reference material for how geography should be applied to water, land and other domains is a subtle way of shaping the terms on which that competition plays out. Content that becomes the standard reference in a discipline tends to pull procurement, training and integration decisions along behind it, and a privately held company that reinvests heavily in research and development has both the incentive and the patience to play that long game.

The Conference as an Industry Stage

The choice of the Esri User Conference as the launch venue is itself instructive about the audience Esri intends to reach. The 2026 edition, running from 13 to 17 July at the San Diego Convention Center, is billed as the world’s largest GIS gathering, with more than 18,000 attendees expected in person from over 100 countries and thousands more joining online. This year’s programme centres on the idea of GIS creating a more intelligent world, with Dangermond sharing the plenary stage alongside Kristine Tompkins of Tompkins Conservation, and the collection will be featured through author presentations, book signings and the Esri Press stand.

An event that began in 1981 with a handful of users in Redlands has become a concentrated meeting point for the planners, utility operators, engineers and public officials who make spatial technology decisions, which makes it a natural place to launch material aimed at exactly that constituency.

For the construction and infrastructure sectors, the significance is less about the books as objects and more about the direction of travel they confirm. The market context is supportive: research firms estimate the global GIS sector at between roughly USD 12 billion and USD 17 billion in 2026, with most forecasts anticipating sustained double-digit growth through the decade as smart-city rollouts, national open-data mandates, cloud deployment and AI-assisted analysis broaden adoption.

Water, transport, utilities and public safety are repeatedly identified as the applications pulling that growth forward. A collection whose first two titles address water and land therefore reads as a fairly precise bet on where demand is concentrating, and on where the industry’s most stubborn delivery problems still lie.

What the Collection Signals for the Decade Ahead

Read together, the two launch titles and the collection behind them point to a maturing relationship between geography and the business of building. Spatial data is shedding its reputation as a technical back-office function and taking its place among the strategic assets that determine whether infrastructure gets financed, permitted and delivered on time.

That repositioning suits a moment when climate resilience, water security and land governance have moved to the centre of national investment agendas, and when the ability to model a system spatially, from a river basin to a property register, increasingly separates projects that succeed from those that stall. The optimism in Dangermond’s framing is grounded in a practical observation, which is that better decisions tend to follow better geographic understanding.

For the professionals who will actually use these ideas, the takeaway is encouraging rather than daunting. The applied turn lowers the barrier to entry by tying spatial thinking to concrete problems that engineers, planners and asset owners already understand.

Utilities gain a clearer route towards predictive operations, developers gain sharper insight into the land beneath their schemes, and investors gain a more legible way to assess where resilience is real. As the collection expands into further disciplines, the likely effect is to normalise the expectation that infrastructure decisions should be made with geography at the centre rather than at the margins.

In an industry defined by long horizons and heavy capital, that is a quietly consequential shift, and one worth watching well beyond the week in San Diego.

Key Industry Questions

1. How does the Power of Where Collection differ from the original 2024 book? The original volume, The Power of Where, was a broad, illustrated argument for the geographic approach across challenges such as climate, biodiversity and health. The collection takes that philosophy and applies it to specific, high-value domains. Rather than making a general case for GIS, each new title focuses on how spatial analysis solves a defined set of problems within one sector. The first two, on water forecasting and land records, address areas where the return on spatial intelligence is most measurable. Esri has signalled the collection will grow to cover additional disciplines, effectively turning a single flagship book into a library of applied, sector-specific references for practitioners and decision-makers.
2. Why does water forecasting justify its own dedicated GIS title? Water combines enormous capital requirements with acute risk, which makes it an obvious proving ground for spatial analysis. Global water systems face a projected investment gap of around €6.5 trillion by 2040, and the sector has historically trailed others in digital adoption. Forecasting floods, managing groundwater and optimising networks all depend on integrating fragmented data across large geographic areas, which is a spatial problem before it is a hydraulic one. Digital twins that fuse engineering models with live data are already delivering measurable gains in resilience and maintenance planning. A title that codifies how geography underpins water data and forecasting speaks directly to utilities, consultants and regulators who now expect resilience to be demonstrated with evidence.
3. How do land and parcel records affect infrastructure delivery and cost? Land records determine how quickly and cheaply a project can secure the ground it needs. Accurate, current and digitally accessible cadastres reduce disputes, streamline acquisition and make right-of-way, easements and permits far easier to manage along corridors. Where records are poor, land acquisition becomes an open-ended source of delay and cost. The World Bank has repeatedly linked reliable land information to investment, productivity and the efficient planning of urban services and infrastructure. For utilities in particular, parcel data carries operational detail well beyond ownership. Treating land records as critical infrastructure, rather than administrative paperwork, can materially improve the timeline and risk profile of major schemes.
4. Where does Esri sit in the GIS market, and why should buyers care? Esri is widely regarded as the clear market leader in GIS software, competing with firms such as Hexagon, Autodesk, Trimble and Bentley Systems across overlapping infrastructure workflows. Independent estimates of its share vary, but analysts consistently place it at the front of a concentrated market. For buyers, market position matters because it influences integration, training availability, partner ecosystems and long-term platform stability. A dominant vendor that reinvests heavily in research and development tends to set the pace on features such as AI-assisted analysis and digital twins. Understanding that landscape helps infrastructure owners weigh the trade-offs between platform standardisation, procurement flexibility and the risk of vendor concentration.
5. How does GIS relate to digital twins and BIM on major projects? GIS increasingly operates alongside building information modelling and digital twins as part of a connected toolkit. BIM tends to describe individual assets in fine detail, while GIS provides the geographic context that situates those assets within networks, terrain, land ownership and environmental conditions. Digital twins draw on both, combining engineering models with live operational data to simulate how systems behave over time. On large infrastructure programmes, the value comes from linking these layers so that a design decision can be tested against real-world spatial constraints. Esri has deepened integrations with design and engineering platforms precisely to make that connection smoother, positioning geography as the framework that ties project-level and network-level data together.
6. What is GeoAI, and how is artificial intelligence changing spatial analysis? GeoAI refers to the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning to geographic data and workflows. In practice it automates tasks that once required extensive manual effort, such as extracting features from high-resolution imagery, classifying land cover, detecting change and accelerating disaster-response mapping. For infrastructure, the significance is speed and scale, with analysis that once took weeks now achievable in far less time, allowing faster and better-informed decisions. Vendors including Esri have been layering these capabilities into their platforms to handle larger datasets and more complex modelling. As AI-assisted analysis matures, it is expected to broaden access to spatial intelligence, letting more professionals turn complex data into usable insight without deep specialist training.
7. Is spatial capability becoming a procurement requirement for infrastructure owners? The direction of travel suggests it is. Regulators and financiers increasingly expect resilience, environmental performance and delivery risk to be evidenced with data, and much of that evidence is inherently spatial. As digital twins, open-data mandates and AI-assisted analysis become standard on major programmes, the ability to work fluently with geographic data is shifting from a competitive advantage to a baseline expectation. Asset owners are beginning to specify spatial competence in their supply chains, and engineering firms that can build on top of a robust GIS foundation are better placed to win and deliver work. Material that codifies best practice in applying geography to water, land and other domains supports that transition.
8. When are the new titles available, and how are they priced? Both launch titles are available for preorder now. Geowater: A Geographic Approach to Water Data and Forecasting publishes on 1 September 2026 in paperback at US$54.99, and Parcels: How Property Shapes Geography follows on 15 September 2026, also in paperback at US$54.99. The original volume, The Power of Where, remains available in paperback and ebook at US$59.99. All are distributed through Esri Press and its distributor, Ingram Publisher Services, and can be obtained from most online retailers worldwide. The collection is expected to expand with further titles addressing additional industries and disciplines, so the two September releases represent the start of a broader programme rather than the full set.

Strategic Takeaways

1. The applied turn matters more than the books themselves: Esri is signalling that spatial intelligence has become standard decision-making equipment for infrastructure, not a specialist add-on, and buyers should plan capability accordingly.
2. Water and land records were chosen deliberately, because both sit at the intersection of large capital, acute risk and stubborn delivery problems, making them the domains where spatial analysis produces the clearest and most defensible return.
3. The €6.5 trillion water investment gap reframes water forecasting as a commercial and resilience priority, favouring utilities, consultants and vendors who can unify fragmented data into a coherent geographic picture.
4. Cadastre quality is quietly becoming a project-level risk factor, with accurate, digital parcel data shaping the cost, timeline and financeability of infrastructure in exactly the fast-growing regions where demand is highest.
5. As GeoAI and digital twins mature within a market led by Esri, spatial fluency is shifting from differentiator to baseline expectation in procurement, and firms that build on a strong GIS foundation will be better positioned to win and deliver work.