IPR Prague received the Esri President’s Award, the company’s most prestigious honor, for its work with geoinformation systems. IPR Prague was recognized primarily for its use of GIS in urban planning. Thanks to the institute’s geoportal and applications such as the digital zoning plan, the heat map of Prague, and technical infrastructure drawings, among others, the City of Prague can develop systematically and efficiently. This data is used for city planning, but also, for example, for the Integrated Rescue System. 

Petr Hlaváček, Prague’s First Deputy Mayor for Spatial Development and the Land Use Plan, says: "Prague is not only one of the most beautiful cities, but now we can finally say that it is also one of the most technologically advanced. For several years now, we have been trying to push for the digitalization of the entire country to improve urban planning. This is one of the reasons for the creation of the CityDeal initiative, which brings together Czech cities and tries to improve the newly emerging building law. We hope that this award will be a driving force for everyone.”

Ondřej Boháč, Director of IPR Prague, and Jiří Čtyroký, Director of the Department of Spatial Information, were in San Diego, USA to personally receive the award from Esri President Jack Dangermond. 

Ondřej Boháč notes: "This is Esri's most prestigious award, given only once a year. With this distinction, IPR Prague has joined the ranks of companies such as UPS, the American Red Cross, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. I am glad that thanks to this award, we can be an inspiration for cities around the world. Data are the cornerstone of our work, on the basis of which all analyses, strategies, and even the draft Metropolitan Plan are created. Of course, the data is freely accessible to the general public. We invest a large part of our budget in data collection and use, so I am pleased that this work has been appreciated by the jury."

IPR Prague also took home an award in the Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) category for the Spatial Analysis Portal (https://uap.iprpraha.cz). The SAG award recognizes the innovative or otherwise significant use of geoinformation technologies. The spatial analysis portal houses data from the city’s spatial documentation and analysis, and contains information on the current state and future development of the capital's territory, its values, and its limitations, as well as essential data on transport and climate. The portal gained the jury's attention not only because of the volume and quality of the published data, but also thanks to the innovative presentation of the individual outputs. In addition, through the geoportal, IPR Prague provides data and information to experts, developers, politicians, and the general public all in one place.

Jiří Čtyroký adds: "Winning this award is a wonderful achievement for us and motivation for the future. IPR Prague is one of 300,000 organizations using Esri software worldwide, and only one of them receives the President’s Award each year. We have managed to impress with the way we work with data and how we use it for city planning and public engagement."

Esri hosts an annual international users conference, which was first held at the Redlands campus in 1981 with 16 attendees. Since 1997, the conference has been held in San Diego. This year, more than 18,000 people from 136 countries are attending, and another 13,000 are watching online.

About Esri

Esri is an international provider of geographic information systems (GIS) software, web-based GIS and geodatabase management applications. The company is known for its ArcGIS products and since 2013 has had a 40.7 percent share of the global GIS market. Esri has 10 regional offices in the U.S. and more than 80 international distributors, with approximately 1 million users in 200 countries.