GISCafe Voice Industry Predictions for 2022 – Part 3

In this third installment of the GISCafe Voice Industry Predictions for 2022, our respondents look at fascinating and timely topics such as startup collaboration in the remote sensing and “new space” industry from Ellipsis Drive. Hexagon brings in the historical perspective and what could help or could’ve helped in certain disasters – automation, new uses for augmented and virtual reality, and remote sensing in space. There is not a day that goes by that one doesn’t hear something about the supply chain – and geospatial can definitely help with that. Geodecisions is working on the supply chain as a new element of location analytics.

Ellipsis Drive

Rosalie van der Maas, MSc is co-founder and CEO of Ellipsis Drive.

I expect to see startup collaboration surge in the Remote Sensing and New Space industry.

Here is why…

Startups want to radically change the status quo and build new ways of solving big problems. This requires:

1. A vision, underpinned by feasible technology and a real market need
2. People who buy into that vision
3. Critical mass to tip the scales

When startups with a shared vision on problems and solutions in the industry choose to join forces, both initial buy-in and critical mass are much easier to achieve. By being each other’s first supporters (as well as fair critics) startups can hit above their weight class and make the industry wide transformations we are seeking.

By relying on companies who buy into our vision but have a different focus and function in our ecosystem, we can also provide the best end to end products in our space. We can’t make mountains move all by ourselves, but luckily, we are not alone! There are plenty of companies out there with solutions that can fill the gaps in your product offering and roadmap.

So what will some of these collaborations look like? I believe that 2022 will be the start of a revolution in Earth Observation data management and delivery. For decades remotely sensed data has been collected at an increasing speed and quality, but over the last few years there have hardly been new innovations in how the data is stored, shared and integrated. This has led to a lot of friction in the adoption and consumption of Remote Sensing solutions.

Many new EO constellations are scheduled for launch over the next decade and all of these missions will need an effective way to distribute their data products to millions of new users around the world.

Operators focused on creating new, valuable data from space shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to safely storing their archives, delivering data to buyers, and helping their clients be successful. Instead, new space companies should be able to make good use of existing infrastructure that has been created to bridge the gap between their data and their client’s data consumption needs. An ecosystem of new tailor made startup solutions can make this all possible.

I’m excited for the year ahead and look forward to building out collaborations and partnerships. Join the movement!

Rosalie van der Maas, MSc Rosalie@ellipsis-drive.com is co-founder and CEO of Ellipsis Drive. She was accepted into Dutch Design school at age 15, organized her own events on Big Data & society at age 20, and founded her first company at age 22.

Nele Coghe is a product marketing manager at Hexagon’s Safety, Infrastructure & Geospatial division

Hexagon

In predictive analysis, we look at historical data before predicting the future so I’ll look at some major events from 2021 to build my predictions for 2022.

Extreme weather dominated the news in 2021.  Record drought wracked the American southwest, excessive flooding devastated Belgium and western Germany, epic wild fires tore through Greece, and so on. Automation could mitigate some of these disasters. With more and more drones filling our airspace and the commodity of sensors, autonomous operations will start to impact our daily lives. Organizations of all kinds will start to automate operations by incorporating location intelligence combined with artificial intelligence into enterprise systems and workflows. This will result in remote monitoring of assets and infrastructure, significantly reducing manual inspection processes. Think about identifying vegetation that is too close to a power line and likely to cause a wildfire, detecting missing manhole covers before an incident happens, or discovering damaged solar panels.

The Olympic games in Tokyo in 2021 left their mark on sports history. Besides setting new sports records, the games became their own exhibition of the latest in technology. Throughout the games, new ways of utilizing virtual and augmented reality were employed. With a special headset, spectators could see augmented reality displays during swimming and other events. By overlaying the lanes with information about competitors, as well as a world record “pace” line drawn across the athletes, augmented reality provided additional information on the races as they were happening in real-time. In addition, the Tokyo Olympics created a virtual reality content series for VR devices. In a series that ranged from baseball to rowing, virtual events were organized that tapped into virtual reality to connect the physical sporting world with the virtual and simulation sports gaming community. In 2022, virtual reality will expand to be used for realistic and immersive education, planning, and training. Augmented reality will, amongst other things, display different types of vehicles to make it easier for pilots to access critical information without breaking focus from the reality in front of them.

In 2021, there was the billionaires’ race to space and the Perseverance rover landed on Mars. While space has been key for a number of geospatial operations, such as remote sensing, it will get a more prominent place in the near geospatial future. While mapping the entire universe seems a long way ahead, the use of more antennas on space systems and new signalling capacity will help us create accurate 3D maps for planning and real-time monitoring of space events.

Today we’re experiencing some of the logistical consequences that the Ever Given caused, by blocking the Suez Canal for seven days in 2021, as well as other shipping challenges around the world. This reminds us of the importance of conventional GIS components such as incident response, rerouting, situational awareness and ‘what if’ scenarios.

With lots of technological innovation on the horizon, I believe that even in 2022, traditional geospatial functionalities will stay key.

Nele Coghe is a product marketing manager at Hexagon’s Safety, Infrastructure & Geospatial division, where she is in charge of successfully launching products and communicating the value of Hexagon’s high-performance real-time location intelligence products to the market. Nele lives in Brussels and before joining Luciad (now part of Hexagon) in 2017, she worked for a decade in the data visualization and analytics field.

Brian Smith is Chief Revenue Officer – ESP Logistics Technologies, and senior vice president of Strategy and Innovations at GeoDecisions.

Geodecisions

It’s 2022, and as a society, we continue to struggle with simultaneous challenges: a global pandemic, political turmoil, climate change—and a supply chain crisis.

Over the past year, I’ve been focused on working to solve the supply chain crisis the U.S. and the entire world is experiencing.

I believe the supply chain is the new frontier in location analytics, a place where many valuable nodes (point solutions) have been created. We need solutions that will enable companies, terminals, shipping, and delivery services to operate efficiently within each node. The challenge is that these nodes do not currently communicate with each other. There is no way of connecting, enriching, and consuming valuable data between each node, deriving valuable insights and data.

With GIS, GeoSpatial data, Location Analytics, Location Intelligence, and other tools, we GeoSpatial scientists can understand patterns, create analytics, and disseminate information uniquely and more effectively than any other professionals on Planet Earth, and it’s time for us to head into overdrive and find some solutions to the many problems the supply chain is facing.

That’s why we’ve formed ESP Logistics Technologies: to tackle global supply chain challenges innovatively, using a variety of integrations. To begin with, ESP has applied location, location analytics, and GeoSpatial Machine learning to the supply chain. By enabling location, IoT, integration, and data enrichment, ESP has started diagnosing challenges and creating valuable information for all nodes of the global supply chain. We use location to create a holistic view of demand, supply, and risk to provide actionable results. With the application of Esri Technologies and our integration platform (GeoQ), ESP is creating a “Glass Pipeline” that standardizes data across the nodes of the supply chain and provides enriched and actionable data to and from each node.

By using location—in other words, enabling location within each of these nodes—ESP can better understand the cause and effect of assets, containers, and warehousing, thus creating and communicating valuable information and insights to each separate node. This enablement provides efficiencies not seen before within the supply chain. Ultimately, it will significantly lessen the stress on the supply chain.

Additionally, using location does not intrude on current workflows. The advantage of GIS and GeoSpatial is the integrate with existing infrastructure—current devices, cameras, node solutions, and systems—and avoid changing or disrupting the current nodes’ workflows.

Finally, the value of GIS and Location Analytics goes beyond mere mapping. I’m not suggesting that mapping isn’t important to the industry, but I am suggesting that a map is a report, and we can now report in varied ways that are far more robust than simply showing dots on a map. THAT’S our value as an industry, and it’s OUR time to bring the application of location intelligence and location analytics to the forefront, take on new challenges, and continue to solve real-world challenges—quite possibly the most significant challenges our generation will ever face!

THE TIME IS NOW for GIS, GeoSpatial, Location Intelligence, and Location Analytics to shine. Let’s make 2022 the year of Location. Let’s solve these challenges together as a community and LEAD the world to a more efficient future and a new era where we can live, enjoy, and love!

Brian Smith bsmith@ESPlogisticstech.com is Chief Revenue Officer – ESP Logistics Technologies, and senior vice president of Strategy and Innovations at GeoDecisions.

Tags: climate change, cloud, data, geospatial, GIS, GNSS, hurricanes, imagery, Infrastructure, intelligence, location, mapping, maps, NASA, remote sensing, satellite imagery, situational intelligence, small sats

Categories: 3D Cities, analytics, Big Data, climate change, cloud, data, disaster relief, emergency response, field GIS, geospatial, GIS, government, Hexagon, integrated GIS solutions, location based sensor fusion, location based services, location intelligence, mapping, public safety, remote sensing, resilient cities, satellite based tracking, satellite imagery, sensors, space-based flight tracking, spatial data, transportation, utilities, wildfire risk

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 3rd, 2022 at 10:22 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.