Philip Mott is the General Manager of Esri Europe, serving the community of users, partners and distributors in the region. He has an education background in Geography and Economics and since developed an expertise in bringing new technology solutions to market. The last 10 years have been focused on doing so in the world of Location Intelligence, helping both public and private sector organisations and enterprises harness the value of geospatial technology.

In an engaging Q&A session, Philip discussed the biggest climate concerns businesses face today, from the accelerating pace of climate disasters to the challenge of turning vast amounts of data into actionable insights. He highlighted key innovations, including Earth Observation, IoT, digital twins, and AI, and how Esri’s GIS technology is driving collaboration and real-world climate solutions. Philip also shared how organisations like the European Environment Agency are leveraging GIS for policy and action and emphasised the role of events like the Climate Technology Show in turning awareness into impact.

#Shaheen: What problems or concerns related to climate change are you hearing about from your customers?

#Philip: Climate change is the most pressing generational challenge that we face. Whilst the world rapidly evolves and progresses, we are also conscious of the cost of creating an unsustainable future for ourselves and our planet. And given that Geography encompasses everything, it is fair to say that we hear concerns arising across all industries and throughout the world. 

First, the accelerating pace of climate change is a challenge for all. It is impacting the environmental, social and economic factors faster than we can adapt to and increasingly catching us unprepared. The catastrophic wildfires in Los Angeles in early 2025 or the deadly floods in Valencia – events that could become more frequent because of  the increasing climate crisis - are examples of how it is a struggle to keep ahead. 

Second, we live in a world that has more data than ever before, but bringing this together and making useful information, in a language that all can understand, is a mission of continuous improvement for our customers across all industries. Leading on from this, is the intense desire from our customers for more collaboration between public and private sector organisations, and at national and local levels. Climate touches us all, so we cannot act alone. But there remains too much siloed thinking and activity. 

Third is that of investment. So many climate initiatives require long-term commitment and determining where to focus requires a holistic understanding first. Demonstrating the return on investment continues to be a challenge whilst competing pressures are a constant – never more so than in today’s volatile world. In Europe, we are fortunate to have the support from the Green Deal, and Esri shares in the sense of purpose to transform how we live for a sustainable world. 

#Shaheen: What innovations (whether technical, from governments, or from industry) are you watching in the climate space?  

#Philip: I first want to build on two themes I mentioned earlier, of data and collaboration. We are fortunate to have the tools and capabilities to gather and process enormous quantities of data today. Both Earth Observation (EO) and the Internet of Things (IoT) are not new, but bringing these together and extracting meaningful context remains at the forefront of innovation, spurred on by the constant improvements of connectivity, storage and compute. We now have the ability to create rich, photorealistic living digital twins of our environment, generating detailed insights in near real-time.   

But rather than consuming such a digital twin for oneself, the other area of transformational innovation we are seeing revolves around collaboration. Web GIS, enabled by many of the big IT trends of today, can also connect multiple organisations across borders and sectors. It enables boundary spanning, fusing together ‘systems of systems’ and is reshaping how we collaborate together. We call this geospatial infrastructure and its ecosystem and network effect is powerful. 

Lastly, AI must be mentioned. In the geospatial sector, AI has been in use for years through the application of GeoAI, whether automating feature extraction from EO data or performing predictive analysis on large data sets. But with GenAI comes a new opportunity, where combined with GeoAI we are on the cusp of having amateur users able to organize and query massive data sets and create applications just from a handful of basic speech prompts. This will enable millions of professionals to leverage the power of GIS for the first time, almost without even realising it. 

#Shaheen: We see a growing number of technology companies formed with a goal of addressing climate change. How does Esri fit into that landscape?

#Philip: GIS is the ultimate integrator. No other technology is able to bring together so many different data, systems and services together. This comes closer to meeting the breadth of complexity of climate change. And ArcGIS is Esri’s GIS platform. It is a platform for capabilities, content, apps and deployment patterns accessed by different kinds of users across an enterprise. 

Operating on top of ArcGIS are thousands of partners and hundreds of thousands of customers worldwide, many doing great work focused on tackling climate change. They are able to quickly get started and also to share and collaborate with one another. I think the key point is that Esri and ArcGIS form a backbone of both enablement and connectivity for almost any organisation seeking to address climate change. And this is part of the sustainability mission we have been focused on for 55 years. 

#Shaheen: Where do you see Esri’s technology being successful in addressing climate change, and what made those cases successful?

#Philip: Examples abound, but perhaps it's best to highlight one customer: the European Environment Agency (EEA). They are a lighthouse doing much of the work that I have described above, gathering data from hundreds of sources and across many variables, they are organising this data geospatially, analysing it and then using it to inform policy and decision-making, ultimately leading to action on the ground. This process reflects the geographic approach, a framework that is core to GIS. And the EEA goes further, sharing their data through portals for collaboration, such as the European Environment and Health Atlas. I highlight this case as it demonstrates a replicable pattern that all can use, but also how one leading agency that is core to climate is doing so themselves. 

#Shaheen: What do you wish more people working in the climate understood about GIS?

#Philip: First, that GIS is the best tool for integrating all the factors in order to create a holistic understanding. I can’t over-emphasise this point enough, because climate change is deeply complex and impacts so many aspects, so you need a tool to help you see the big picture but also drill into the details. Where – at the macro and micro scale – matters.  

Second, that it is a collaborative technology. Again, climate change is not something we can solve in a silo. So we must be enabled with the tools and networks to collaborate effectively. 

#Shaheen: How do you see the Climate Technology Show contributing to the acceleration of sustainability practices and the adoption of innovative technologies that support a net-zero future?

#Philip: Whilst most of us are aware of climate change, there remains a gap between awareness and action. We can’t understate the importance of bringing together the best information, science and technology innovations as enablers for positive climate change. And we must act now. 

So the Climate Technology Show is a forum for just this – one about reinforcement, of understanding and of collaboration to spur on urgent action.