GISCafe Industry Predictions for 2024 – GeoSapient

By John L. Kelley, President and Co-founder, GeoSapient, Inc.

John L. Kelley

Top GeoSapient, Inc. 2024 Predictions for GISCafé

GeoSapient looks beyond the growing space- and aerial-borne assets into the deeper aspects of geocomputing data, workflows, and use cases.

Theme: Responsible GHG Emissions for GIS

1. The New National Greenhouse Gas Emissions Strategy Provides Unique Opportunities for Satellite Remote Sensing Systems

Before COP28, the administration announced a new GHG emissions strategy this past November.

The strategy commits the US to ambitious greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction targets as part of the Nation’s agenda to tackle the climate crisis. Enhancing GHG measurement and monitoring capabilities is foundational to achieving these ambitious goals. Doing so will improve the Nation’s ability to track progress toward GHG emissions targets and assess the effectiveness of climate policies and actions. Numerous GHG measurement, monitoring, and data capabilities exist but are spread across various federal and non-federal entities. The Nation can enhance the coordination and integration of these capabilities, make more efficient use of resources, and leverage recent scientific and technological advances to provide more comprehensive, granular, and timely data to support climate action.

During COP 28, the Biden administration also announced a rule to significantly cut the US oil and gas industry’s methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas. It will rely on independent, third-party monitoring – using satellite remote-sensing technology – to find fugitive methane emissions from oil & gas infrastructure.

The Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) payload onboard the ISS has proven to have a competent secondary mission of detecting methane emissions. Detecting methane was not part of EMIT’s primary mission, but the instrument’s designers did expect the imaging spectrometer to have the capability. Two new satellites coming online in 2024 will further the satellite’s remote methane sensing capabilities. The Carbon Mapper satellite is a public-private effort, with the first satellite launch planned for early 2024 with a 30m resolution, and they are making the data accessible to the public. MethaneSAT also has an early 2024 launch, claiming to be the only one in the “Area Mapping” space (versus Point and Global Mapping), filling a gap. Data will be provided for free with negligible latency. Accessible data access and extremely low latency for posting the data will be essential for these new tools to be practical.

In the newly released US GHG emissions strategy, there are many references to using satellites and remote sensing to achieve their goals, so it will be exciting to see how these new satellites help achieve them!

2. Deeper Insights and Faster Workflows with AI-enabled GIS

With responsible GHG emissions and a strategy to leverage remote sensing, along with the GIS community being flooded with notions of the grandeur of AI, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning, the community must take a responsible approach to AI adoption and use. We must ensure that this powerful technology is used for good and benefits every stakeholder.

Responsible AI (RAI) refers to developing and deploying AI systems in a way that promotes ethical, safe, and socially beneficial outcomes. RAI must address societal concerns about advanced AI through proactive ethics, governance, and technology development efforts. This approach helps build trust and acceptance of AI among the public and policymakers.

Here are some ways to adapt and incorporate RAI into GIS systems and information products (in priority order).

• Privacy and Data Protection– Use differential privacy, data anonymization and aggregation, and access control levels to protect personal and sensitive data in spatial datasets (where data are at rest and streaming). Geospatial data can present unique re-identification risks (i.e., location, linkage to other sources, inference, etc.).
• Transparency and Explainability – Use interpretable models with epoch management so GIS analysts can understand model behaviors and question resulting decisions. Provide explanations for automated decision support systems, for example, urban planning (Smart Cities), environmental management (e.g., GHG emissions), public health (pandemic response), etc.
• Mitigating Bias and Discrimination – Continuously evaluate GIS models, parameterizations, and datasets for biases. Ensure representation of diverse geographies, demographic groups, etc., in training data and fine-tuning. Audit algorithms for fairness across locations, races, and incomes.
• Human Oversight and Accountability – Keep humans in the loop for reviewing model predictions, flagging anomalies, and overriding incorrect decisions. Automation should assist rather than replace the GIS analyst or technician.
• Accuracy and Precision – Finally, communicate data accuracy levels and uncertainty spatial models to end users. Ensure clarity on limitations while sparking geographic insights and fire for curiosity and exploration.

A successful outcome of implementing Responsible AI practices for GIS insights aligns with ethical expectations. Outcomes serve the public interest and further social goods. Trust in the systems grows, fueling wider adoption and participation. Ongoing responsible innovation with RAI becomes the priority.

About GeoSapient, Inc.

John L. Kelley, President and Co-founder, GeoSapient, Inc.

Mr. Kelley is the President and Co-founder of GeoSapient, Inc. He has extensive experience in remote sensing systems engineering and associated geospatial applications. Before starting GeoSapient, Mr. Kelley spent most of his career in the aerospace industry developing remote sensing systems. Mr. Kelley’s passion is the subject of remote sensing of the Earth for environmental and geospatial applications. Driven by this passion, he co-founded GeoSapient to create a unique ‘Geospatial Knowledge’ platform not currently in existence. He also teaches Remote Sensing as an adjunct lecturer at Villanova University and has guest lectured on the subject.

John.Kelley@GeoSapient.com

Category: GIS Industry Predictios

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 9th, 2024 at 10:56 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.