Artificial intelligence, augmented reality, maximizing the value of Digital Twins, higher refresh rate on satellite data, and a new group of users: geospatial immigrants are among this week’s 2022 Industry Predictions. The industry needs to ensure two things for this category of users who don’t care if the data is geospatial or anything about it – firstly that users are getting the right data for their needs, and secondly that they are able to access it easily.
CEO Jensen Huang presented the keynote at the recent GTC21 NVIDIA Conference, November 8-11, sharing with the audience the importance of accelerated computing and much more. The announcements were so prolific and many of interest to the GIS/geospatial industry, thus I will share those that would be of most interest to our audience. One of the most profound announcements came at the end of the talk, wherein Huang announced that they are building a digital twin of the earth.
Better cloud and remote GIS tools, virtual and augmented reality have now blossomed in response to the demands put forth on our industry by the pandemic. Gaining access to analysis-ready geospatial data at a scale and with granularity never before possible is on the horizon. We thought we already knew about digital twins, but now we find out they are finally born? This is the way of the future and much more, we learn by checking in with companies Blue Marble and Omnisci, two companies with a finger on the pulse of what to watch for in geospatial.
This week, our Geospatial Industry Predictions includes Linda Loubert, Interim Chairperson and Graduate Coordinator, Economics Department, Morgan State University; Seb Lessware, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of 1Spatial; and George Mastakas, Vice President of Enterprise Solutions & Corporate Partnerships at Cityworks. These industry spokespeople cover where they see the industry going – and how to apply geographic knowledge to economics, politics, data sharing, visualization, city and country planning using sensors, Digital Twins, machine learning and artificial intelligence and much more. With GIS and geospatial, the matter of being able to provide accuracy and validity in data is paramount. The technology is already there; yet finding the ways to use the technology in even more promising ways is the way of the future.
Nearmap Aerial Image of the Presidential Inauguration January 20, 2021
Looking forward to 2021 brings with it a necessary looking backward at what geospatial organizations and providers have had to deal with in 2020. On a regular basis throughout the next two months, GISCafe Voice will post industry predictions from professional geospatial organizations, looking at what vectors are influencing the industry and what directions the technologies will take. This week we will hear from spokespeople from Maptek, Nearmap, Septentrio and Sinclair Industries. Autonomous solutions, partnering with other technology providers, mapping critical care centers such as testing centers, cybersecurity and increased accuracy and analytics are all areas that geospatial and mapping have stepped up to as a result of Covid-19. The technology was there, ready to meet the sudden and unanticipated demand. What does that mean going forward? Greater resilience and growth, innovation at a more rapid pace, and much more, according to these industry professionals.
This week Enview, a company in the vanguard of the field of scalable processing of 3D geospatial data, announced the launch of Enview Explore™, a web application that leverages AI and cloud computing to automatically process 3D data at great speed and scale. Additionally, Robert Cardillo, former director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), has joined the company’s Board of Directors. Following an oversubscribed round of funding in May, the company continues to experience growth and momentum in the market.
Normally approximately 17,000 people attend Esri User Conference held in San Diego, California but this year, the conference has attracted upwards of 80,000 people online as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. While it is sad not to be gathered in San Diego, the sheer volume of people who are able to participate online makes it quite a phenomena for Esri, a 50-year-old company spearheading the GIS movement globally.
This is our final installment of Industry Predictions for 2020. Topics this week include satellites, Cloud for geospatial applications, data storage, data sentience, data sovereignty, growth, location, mapping fleets and much more.
Representatives from CubeWerx, DataCapable, T-mapy, GeoSapient, Inc. and Mapillary offer their insights into the industry and trends for the future.
GISCafe Industry Predictions for 2020 move forward into February. Topics covered this week are cloud-based asset management systems, artificial intelligence, smart cities, citizen science, open source mapping and data, GNSS advancements, big spatial data analytics, drone industry, enterprise scale and dashboards and data visualizations.