By Dan O’Toole, founder and CEO, Dronedek
One thing I know
As this new autonomous delivery paradigm is set to launch things are going to significantly change. When I say significantly, I mean in a good way.
“We are a spoiled consumer” and we want things delivered to us better, faster, cheaper, and fresher. Getting the most for the least is what it’s all about. Paying less, not having to leave, having the quality and freshness at its height and all, right now, is where we want to be.
In the show Star Trek, “beam me aboard” delivered the person or item immediately from great distances to the Starship Enterprise. While we are not quite there just yet, in the time it may take to contemplate a trip to your local restaurant or retailer, you could very well have your desired delectable or product delivered, via today’s new autonomous last mile.
By Margarita Dadyan, Content Specialist, WGIC
Margarita Dadyan
Utility industry is fast embracing spatial digital twins – dynamic digital replicas of physical counterparts that facilitate real-time performance monitoring and status – as they provide an excellent understanding of the criticality of assets and networks, reduce inefficiencies, improve safety and reliability, culminating in improved customer satisfaction and returns on investments.
Historically, asset mapping has been a critical aspect of managing utility infrastructure and improving the efficiencies of utility service providers. Such mapping helped engineering design programmes, supported early digitalization, and integrated into corporate GIS.
New OGC DWG will help the Location communities collaborate and contribute expertise into building and growing the open Metaverse.
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is excited to announce the formation of the OGC Geo For Metaverse Domain Working Group (DWG), which will serve as a forum for the collective geospatial expertise of the OGC community to gather to help build and grow the open Metaverse. The group is open to OGC Members and non-members alike.
The Metaverse is perhaps the ultimate distributed digital twin of the world. It has the potential to represent everything in the world alongside imagined spaces. The challenges to Standards Development Organizations (SDOs), technologists, artists, and society are huge, but the payoff is believed to be equally tremendous. The Metaverse is not a single thing but, like the internet, is a collection of platforms and technologies: a world of objects that can be navigated and interacted with.
By Gareth Gibson, Marketing Director, Mapping & GIS Solutions, Trimble
Gareth Gibson
Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Systems Will Shape Future of GIS and Asset Management Industries
The GIS industry is experiencing a period of rapid change and growth, and the increasing use of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) is playing a crucial role in driving this development. By enabling GIS professionals to process and analyze data quickly and accurately, these technologies are helping to unlock the full potential of GIS and drive innovation and progress in the field.
Powerful AI/ML Hits Mainstream
When predicting trends in the GIS (geographic information system) industry in 2023, consider the major breakthroughs the IT industry experienced in 2022. Of particular interest are the AI/ML systems that burst into our collective consciousness, with several headline-grabbing products making waves.
By, Jean-Michel Brière, President, PRESAGIS
As the world moves forward and out of the most uncertain times in recent history, the industry enters 2023 with optimism and the hope that technology continues to play a pivotal role in its evolution. Geopolitical unrest, climate change and other global issues are prompting governments and the private sector to look at geospatial technologies to help inform and solve some of the biggest problems we’re currently facing.
The predictions below focus on four technologies as the main levers of that evolution: 3D data, the Metaverse, Simulation and AI.
3D Geospatial data will become a commodity
- More and more providers are including 3D data in their offerings either free of charge or low cost, particularly buildings footprints. Democratization of its access is now on the way
- 3D data makes complexity look easier, when the representation of geospatial data takes into consideration the accuracy of such data
- 3D data facilitates the proper development of simulation. For example, for flooding simulation (how water will spread, accelerate, change course, etc.)
- 3D mapping and visualization will bridge the gap between experts’ knowledge and stakeholders together with decision makers
- 3D Data puts upfront geographical data in context as a truly geospatial representation of a region
- Photogrammetry and LiDAR will enable stakeholders to take better decisions by visualizing information within relevant context, as an accurate representation of the real world
- Modelling reality requires accurate data, and LiDAR will provide just that.
New Pilot will bridge technology and stakeholder engagement to reduce disaster preparation time and accelerate our ability to transform data from observation into decision.
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is Calling For Participants in the OGC Disaster Pilot 2023. Funding is available. Responses are due by February 17, 2023.
The goal of the Disaster Pilot 2023 is to further improve the ability of key decision makers and responders to discover, manage, access, qualify, share, and exploit location-based information in support of disaster preparedness & response as well as the full cycle of multi-hazard disaster management.
By Bob Sinclair, CEO, Sinclair Industries
Bob Sinclair
Here is my 2023 prediction piece and headshot – appreciate the consideration –
“There’s a lot of talk about artificial intelligence (AI) and this needs to evolve much like maps have evolved over the years. 2023 will be the year of “Geo Consciousness”. To truly realize and understand the potential of GIS we must first recognize that a map is so much more than a map. “Geo Consciousness” is the next frontier in big data, analytics, maps, and AI. This combination of technologies will provide an opportunity to finally have maps that understand they are actually a map. For example, the team at Bob Sinclair Industries are people, that have names, that live in different locations (“our homes”).
By Brad Burgess, Founder, The Mindshare Manager
With the year 2022 in the books, attention of course now turns to what we might expect in 2023. While 2022 certainly presented all industries with a number of challenges, the geospatial industry saw continued advancements in a number of areas that set it up well, in my view, for the new year ahead.
With that in mind, keep an eye on these important trends this year:
Technology
Interest in remote (field) access to visual infrastructure asset information remains high and will only continue to grow. Having the ability to virtually “see” buried utilities under the pavement, or MEP installations behind the wall, is not only highly productive but serves to reduce errors. Use- cases are emerging that impact business results across the full asset life-cycle, including Concept & Planning, Design/ Engineering, Construction, and Operations & Maintenance.
By Jodie Gosselin, GISP, Geospatial Technologies Director, Dawood Engineering
Geospatial technologies are prevalent in our personal lives. With the advancements of the smart phone, we have an underlying expectation that information is presented to us in a spatial context. Which businesses are near me? What travel delays will I encounter? When will the snowplow come to my street? Where is my teenager driver?
In 2023, I predict that this same level of geospatial expectation becomes fundamentally engrained in our professional lives. Where are the assets that need to be inspected? What travel restrictions will my construction vehicle encounter? Where are existing utilities in relation to proposed construction? When was infrastructure along this route replaced?
The business world has already seen this trend begin. My experiences lead me to believe that the spatial delivery of information will become even more widespread—particularly among non-technical users.
For example, Dawood developed a web-based GIS solution for a major utility company’s land management team. These non-technical professionals—who had been using a spreadsheet-based workflow successfully for years to manage their easement acquisition process— had the foresight to realize that geo-enabling their workflow would save time and money.
By Eduardo Coloma, CEO, Maptek
Eduardo Coloma
Every company feels the pull to become a data company. The cloud is now accepted as the modern foundation for managing data, promising unlimited data storage space. However, increasingly larger datasets collected from multiple sensors and systems bring novel challenges for effective and efficient value extraction. Complexity also increases with multiple providers offering proprietary data formats. Everyone is claiming a best-of-breed solution, leaving end-users wallowing in an information mire, without a clear strategy for decision support.
Maptek has developed various strategies to answer the need to harness both data and data management. GeoSpatial Manager offers smart visualization tools combined with a simple web interface to deliver a single source of truth for managing as-built surfaces across an organization. Dynamic updates to surveyed surfaces allow users to manage, visualize and download any as-built surface at any point in time over the life of a project and apply it to downstream tasks. Opportunities then arise to automate workflows involving surface data and improve cross-team collaboration and inter-team communication.
Many organizations are developing use cases for data analytics and machine learning that will deliver significant business outcomes. Computing frameworks such as Maptek DomainMCF combine cloud computing power and machine learning to deliver resource and grade trend models 2000 times faster than traditional methods. Speedy turnaround on modeling scenarios releases professional staff for in depth analysis and investment reporting. In this way the power of technology augments the power of the user.
