The NYS GIS Association in collaboration with the Fund for City of New York has developed GISCalc, an Excel return-on-investment tool. GISCalc allows you to quickly estimate the benefits to your jurisdiction of using GIS. The formulas in GISCalc are based on a hundred documented GIS applications which were grouped into benefit categories, and whose ROI metrics were extracted for use in the model.

GISCalc allows you to adjust inputs based on easy-to-find characteristics of your own jurisdiction. It also allows you to either accept default benefit factors or to customize them as you wish. There is a worksheet included where you can also factor in costs. You may run GISCalc as many times as you wish to gauge benefits according to different benefit and cost scenarios.

Please take GISCalc for a spin and see if it provides you with useful information. We want to know if you found GISCalc helpful and whether you have recommendations for improvement. Please provide feedback or requests for assistance to info@nysgis.net.

We’d like to thank Paul Epstein and Brett Whysel for their work in designing GISCalc. Thanks also to Dr. Mary McCormick, President of the Fund for the City of New York for providing the funding that made the development of this tool possible.

Download GISCalc

The NYS GIS Association’s NYGeoCon 2015 featured an applications awards contest and we received sixteen great write-ups from across the State. We feel these descriptions of actual projects, implemented by state and local agencies, to be very enlightening and inspiring. They range from programs to enhance economic development to projects that improve infrastructure maintenance operations. We think there is much to learn from them and hope you can use them to promote GIS in your jurisdiction. In some instances there is useful ROI information, something we hope to add to in the future. Contact information is available on the write-ups should you wish to speak with the project managers.

Interviews were conducted with New York State County and Municipal GIS Leaders about what they believe could be done to expand GIS at the local level. A summary of these interviews has been compiled which you can read by clicking the button below.