Towards A Better Tomorrow

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JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022 » VOLUME 12 » ISSUE 01 | ISSN 2277–3134

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

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he 2021 annual edition focused on the roadmap for pandemic recovery and withstanding future disruptions.

This year, the spotlight is on a resilient future driven by digital transformation, connectivity, and sustainability.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Highlighting the exemplary leadership and vision exhibited by the geospatial industry, the 2022 Annual Leaders’ Outlook edition focuses on innovation and digitalization that have been life-savers in multiple ways during the pandemic. These technological innovations have helped us identify the gaps in our existing systems. The power of location and the ubiquity of data will unveil new business models in the years to come. As the boundary between the ‘real’ and the ‘digital’ blur, the salience of geospatial as both, an interface and a catalyst, will diversify in myriad ways.

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Metaverse and the complex supply chain management have vividly captured our attention in the recent years. Though for entirely different reasons. One is the leap towards splendid futurism and the unbounded potential of digitalization and human-technology connect through AI and AR/ VR. While the other points towards the necessity of reorientation and devising new outlooks. Reinvention is the game's name, and there’s one pathway to the future: geospatial, location, and innovations.

The upcoming 5G rollout and increase in Space-based applications, along with the ongoing trend of ‘X-as-a-Service,’ will add tremendous value to economies and societies, and create a plethora of opportunities across bussinesses. It will also help us map challenges ahead and tackle grave threats like climate change.

Enjoy reading!

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Seizing the Future Geospatial World magazine’s annual exercise of interacting with a range of industry thought leaders across geographies and technology spectrum reveal the overlook is very positive, and the industry is well poised to leverage the opportunities that the multifold crises places before it.

By Anusuya Datta

48

Creating Impact: Innovation in the Space Economy The Space economy is accelerating and diversifying as a wide range of entrepreneurs, backed by government and private investment, bring new ideas into the market.

By Kevin M. O’Connell

92

Geoint + Fintech Placemaking in ‘Downtown North’ An urban insight district in St. Louis at the heart of America.

By Richard C.D. Fleming

VOLUME: 12 / ISSUE: 01 Abhay Mittal

REGULAR Editorial

6

Editor's Note

8

LEADERS’ OUTLOOK 16

Ola Rollén

18

Ronald Bisio

20

President & CEO, Hexagon AB Senior Vice President, Geospatial Sector, Trimble Inc.

Yuya Nakamura

rof. Sir Martin Sweeting OBE FRS P FRENG FIET FINSTP 22

Founder & Executive Chairman of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd., Chairman, Surrey Space Centre, Director, National Hub on Future AI and Robotics for Space

58

President & CEO, Axelspace Corporation

Dr. Simonetta Cheli

Jack Dangermond

Founder & President, Esri

56

CEO and Founder, EOfactory

60

Director - Earth Observation Programmes, European Space Agency

Dr. Josef Aschbacher

61

Director General European Space Agency

Dr. Stephen Volz

62

Assistant Administrator for Satellite and Information Services, NOAA

Rodrigo da Costa

64

Executive Director, European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA)

George Zhao

66

CEO, CHC Navigation

Greg Bentley

24

r Zaffar Sadiq D Mohamed-Ghouse

Michael Burger

26

Executive Director, Strategic Consulting & International Relations, Spatial Vision

Nadine Alameh

28

CEO & Co-Founder, NextNav

30

Executive Vice President of Global Growth, HawkEye 360

CEO, Bentley Systems President & CEO, FARO Technologies, Inc CEO & President, Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

Maj Gen (Retd) Clint Crosier

Director, Aerospace & Satellite Solutions, Amazon Web Services

Ganesh Pattabiraman Alex Fox

Rema Matevosyan

Mike Greenley

32

Theo Agelopoulos

34

CEO, MDA

Senior Director, Architecture & Engineering Design Strategy, Autodesk

Frank Pauli

CEO, Cyclomedia

Dr. Christoph Strecha

Founder & CEO, Pix4D

Nicole Robinson

Thomas VanMatre

38

Vice President, Global Business Development, Satellogic

PV Rai

40

Dr. Ted Tewksbury

42

CEO, Kadaster, The Netherlands

Juergen Dold

43

Director, Geospatial Commission

Lauren Spiegel

44

Jeffrey Martin

46

Johannes Riegl Jr.

52

CEO, Velodyne

President, GSI, Hexagon AB Senior Vice President of Product, SafeGraph CEO, Mosaic

President, Riegl USA Inc. & Riegl International GmbH

Dr. Motoyuki Arai

Founder & CEO, Synspective Inc.

Thalia Baldwin Ingrid Vanden Berghe

74 76 78

Andrew Mullin

Sr. Associate Editor India Jitendra Choubey

Associate Editor GW Prime Aditya Chaturvedi Sr. Assistant Editor Srishti Juyal Chief Sub Editor Nibedita Mohanta

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Chief Designer Subhash Kumar

84

Visualizer Pradeep Chauhan

85

86

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Managing Director, Esri India

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Consulting Editor Nishi Malhotra

Senior Sub Editor Snehil Manohar Singh

Secretary-General & Executive Director, EuroGeographics

Agendra Kumar

Consulting Editor Spatial Analytics and Location Intelligence Nicolas Duggan

80

Administrator General, National Geographic Institute, Belgium

Léa Bodossian

Contributing Editor Global Defense and Security Keith J. Masback

73

Managing Director, Pixel Softek

Frank Tierolff

Contributing Editor Geospatial Infrastructure John Kedar

Associate Editor Europe Meenal Dhande

CEO, GHGSat

36

Editor-At-Large Americas Anusuya Datta

72

President, Ursa Space Systems

Stephane Germain

Managing Editor Prof. Arup Dasgupta

Associate Editor Asia Pacific Sarah Hisham

70

CEO, Near Space Labs

Geert De Coensel

Founder & CEO, Merkator

68

Editor-in-Chief Sanjay Kumar

90

Global Marketing, EarthDaily Analytics

Disclaimer

Geospatial World does not necessarily subscribe to the views expressed in the publication. All views expressed in this issue are those of the contributors. Geospatial World is not responsible for any loss to anyone due to the information provided.

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EDITORIAL

The Choice is Ours to Make

A

Thus, there is hope that there will be s the world steps out of the a newer version of ‘normal’, exemplified darkness of 2021 and steps by the cover of the National Geographic into 2022, we find ourselves magazine, January 2022, depicting a health wishing that the worst is worker standing on a hillside in Kashmir behind us and things will now ‘return in personal protection gear, holding a to normal’. Why this retrograde wish? cold box of vaccines, and looking into the Humankind evolves and there is no distance searching for nomadic shepherds ‘return’ to any state called ‘normal’ who he has to vaccinate. because normal itself evolves — hopeProf. Arup Dasgupta fully for the better. Looking back for Managing Editor arup@geospatialworld.net This picture tells a remarkable story of a moment at the year before COVID vaccines developed, tested, and cleared struck, was that state desirable and for human use within a year of the start acceptable? The world was hurtling of the pandemic. It tells of rapid manufacture worldtowards an unsustainable future with global wide, and its distribution to the remotest corners warming and climate change. That a tiny virus, of countries, and the dedication of the persons at which somehow managed to make the jump from the end of the chain. This is an example of how bats to humans via an unidentified intermediary, technology has helped humanity — in metropolises, would make this journey extra challenging was cities, towns, villages, and even people without a never expected — except by a few concerned fixed address. epidemiologists.

However, the pandemic did show some unexpectedly pleasant outcomes too. As human activities came to a crashing halt, the skies cleared, pollution receded, global warming slowed down, and animals returned to their homes that had earlier been rudely taken away from them in the name of development.

This shows that all is not lost.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

However, the future is uncertain, as exemplified

by COP26 outcomes. The goal is to achieve about 50 percent reduction in emissions by 2030 to limit warming by 1.5ºC, in line with the Paris Agreement aims. Can it be done?

6

The Boston Consulting Group suggests industry “make bold moves, embed the climate transition, and accelerate change through ecosystems”. It further adds: “Monitor developments in climate tracking and reporting, carbon markets, voice of civil society, and adaptation.”

McKinsey also has suggestions for an orderly transition to a net-zero situation. The company names nine requirements to solve the net-zero equation, which include, among others, technical innovation, collaboration among public-private- and social-sector leaders globally, and support from citizens and consumers.

Satellites and drones and IoT will continue to create a flood of data using Cloud services, and applications will use artificial intelligence and Big Data analytics to implement technological advances in information systems for agriculture, water, Smart Cities, Digital Twins, and all the rest. At the same time, the challenge will be to address the needs of each person individually or in very small groups. The technology to achieve this is available today.

Of course, there is an alternate dystopian view that humans will venture forth to newer worlds and colonize the planets using the Moon as a jump-off point. They will leave Carl Sagan’s Blue Dot a wasteland populated by Wall-Es and other non-biological ‘intelligent’ machines. Maybe the lesson from planet Earth will be finally learnt, or maybe further technological advances will be achieved that will enable the conquest of other planetary systems in the Universe!

The direction the world will take will be determined by what steps the governments, industries, and citizens take in 2022 and beyond. The choice is ours to make.

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EDITOR'S NOTE ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022 8

Innovation to Impact

I

Today, constellations of satellites by thousands of commercial companies provide data in near real-time and are, ‘by default’, the biggest source of information to understand, monitor, and manage planet earth. Most notable amongst policy reforms was the Clinton administration’s decision in the United Sanjay Kumar States to discontinue usage of ‘selective Editor-in-Chief sanjay@geospatialworld.net availability of GPS’ in the year 2000, making it available to civilian and commercial users worldwide. It’s simply unimaginable but true that the world economy runs on GPS/GNSS. There has been, undoubtedly, tremendous innovation in the geospatial industry. Geospatial knowledge Today, when the geospatial industry is on the and tools have powered innovation by adding a third cusp of unlocking its potential to be a trillion dimension (3D) that is the foundation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and data economy, opening dollar market by 2030, many new public policies are being unveiled worldwide, which will further several windows of possibilities and opportunities driven by the world’s ever growing appetite for geospa- augment the impact of ongoing innovation. There is growing recognition of the valuable role played tial content. At the same time, 4IR has powered a host by geospatial knowledge infrastructure in national of innovations across the entire eco-system of the and global development, amongst the highest geospatial industry – in hardware, software, data, and levels of socio-economic and political leaderships. solutions. Cloud, artificial intelligence (AI), machine Recognizing and acknowledging the inevitable role learning (ML), Internet of Things (IoT), and Big Data of geospatial knowledge in next generation digital have enabled the integration of geospatial workflows and powered collaborative business models. A product eco-systems like Digital Twins and Metaverse, and its combined value in overall society, economy, and and data-centric industry has transformed itself into environment, progressive governments have begun a solutions and services-oriented industry in less than to invest in geospatial infrastructure and its integraa decade, extending its relevance and value in maintion with national development goals. stream economy and society.

nnovation is probably the mosttrending word of the modern era, though it has been part and parcel of human evolution forever. What continues to change rapidly is the speed of innovation and associated value chain in terms of benefits and impact, making it one of the most sought-after phenomena in almost every walk of life.

And obviously, it has the attention of political leaderships and public policy institutions worldwide.

Undoubtedly, innovation has been the key driver of the digital age, and especially so for the geospatial industry in the last one decade. But the foundation for these innovations was laid down by some path breaking commitment by political leadership towards opening Space and digital technologies for the commercial sector in the 1990s. The opening of the world wide web in 1991 brought the power of the internet to the commercial world. Welcoming this development, its creator Tim Berners -Lee said, “it would fundamentally change the world as we knew it” and today access to internet is considered nothing short of a fundamental right for every citizen worldwide. The Land Remote Sensing Policy Act of 1992 by US allowed commercial companies to build and operate satellites. And soon, the first license for a high resolution satellite was given to WorldView Imaging (known as Maxar now), founded by Dr Walter Scott and Doug Gerull.

It wouldn’t be inappropriate to say that real-time geospatial content will serve as oil to the digital economy and society. And the same will be further augmented by automation of processes and workflows, empowering geospatial platforms to be the biggest network of insights and services.

It is imperative to continue investment, especially for developing countries, in geospatial knowledge infrastructure and its integration with domain workflows of major economic industries − enhancing productivity, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness as important instruments for the ‘sustainability of everything’.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

SEIZING THE FUTURE Our annual exercise of interacting with a range of industry thought leaders across geographies and technology spectrums reveals the outlook is very positive, and the industry is well poised to leverage the opportunities that multifold crises place before it.

By Anusuya Datta

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

I

10

f 2020 was a year of shock, 2021 was one of reckoning. Even as the virus continued to play havoc, vaccines brought some hope and order in the later part of the year. However, 2021 also threw up many challenges that the human society is now collectively facing.

for the better. Technologies and business models also continued to evolve, throwing up solutions that will best confront the unique challenges of our century.

As extreme weather events and climate change took centerstage in 2021, scientists are unequivocal that these events are distinctly more severe now and not due to natural causes.

Geospatial World magazine’s annual exercise of interacting with a range of industry thought leaders across geographies and technology spectrum reveal the overlook is very positive, and the industry is well poised to leverage the opportunities that the multifold crises places before it.

Amid all this, geospatial technologies continued to play a critical role — in managing the pandemic and climate events, and even in initiatives around re-building

Recent advances in sensordata fusion capability and location-based technologies, increasing digitalization and workflow integration, and emerging business

models are driving the ubiquitous penetration of geospatial information and technologies to benefit the entire ecosystem of user networks — from governments and businesses to individuals.

Alternatively, rising user demand for accurate, current, precise, detailed, and insightful geospatial data to create Digital Twin and Metaverse environments has led to the emergence of a dynamic geospatial start-up ecosystem globally — revolutionizing and driving the growth of the global geospatial market (GeoBuiz 2022: Global Geospatial Industry Outlook, GW Consulting).

GW Consulting estimated the global geospatial market to be

Geography at the center of it all

As has been often repeated in the past two years, there has perhaps never been a more illustrative need for taking a geographic approach than the current pandemic.

“We have been able to watch and better understand the spread and impact of this virus on dashboards and maps. We can also better understand disruptions to the global economy, whether evidenced by supply chain struggles or labor shortages,” says

Acceleration in digitalization

Jack Dangermond, President, Esri.

All this is tied to location. So are the solutions.

In many ways, the pandemic has accelerated not only the mainstream uptake of geospatial data and technologies, but also resulted in a wider recognition of the advantages of using location as an organizing principle when undertaking data integration and analysis.

“The pandemic has made us recognize the value of putting location at the center of all data analyses; people, cities, states, countries, and organizations are all asking questions related to ‘where’,” says Nadine Alameh, CEO and President, Open Geospatial Consortium.

There was already a move towards digitalization and the pandemic has only accelerated those trends many times over; many of these changes are permanent.

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

worth approximately USD 395 billion in 2021, compared to USD 365 billion in 2020. The numbers are expected to grow at a CAGR of 14.61 percent between 2021 and 2025, to touch USD 680 billion.

As Greg Bentley, CEO, Bentley Systems, underlines, “Going digital has been the saving grace in enabling economic productivity to largely continue, and even gain new momentum.” He also sees this as an opportunity to institutionalize the digitalization process not only within organizations but also towards ‘futureproofing’ our world’s assets with respect to economic and environmental dependencies.

This is but natural when we see the explosion of growth in

Major trends driving geospatial industry growth

Increasing Sensor-Data Fusion Capability

1

Technology and Market Trends Driving Geospatial Industry Growth

5

Geospatial industry's transition to offer enterprise solutions and services

4

2

3

Enabling policy environment, and global policy frameworks

Integration of geospatial and 4IR technologies to create digital twins and metaverse

Courtesy: GeoBuiz 2022: Global Geospatial Industry Outlook Report.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Increasing digitalization and workflow integration (across new industry verticals)

6

Evolution of business models from traditional license/subscription models to X-as-a-Services models

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

In the future, geospatial data will hold greater significance than ever before. There will be a dynamic GIS at the core of everything, combining base maps with sensor information in real time. data that brings the physical to the virtual information world.

“This enables an efficiency boost so that the physical world can be analyzed better and faster — independent of location — and shared with practically any stakeholder.

This moves organizations and economies to higher performance through less waste and cost,” says Michael Burger, CEO, FARO Technologies.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

In the future, geospatial data will hold greater significance than ever before. Ola Rollen, CEO, Hexagon AB, sees a dynamic GIS at the core of everything, combining base maps with sensor information in real time, for example, to optimize last mile delivery routes hour by hour.

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However, Rollen also points out that the deployment of dynamic GIS will happen only if there is greater collaboration between different companies, although there will be a lot of consolidation. Historically, the companies that made money in GIS were the ones dealing in hardware and software. In the future, the biggest revenue stream is going to come from data itself.

Trending technologies

Digital Twins: The concept of ‘Digital Twin’ has been around for more than a decade, although it has become a buzzword only lately. More companies and cities want Digital Twins, that is, digital representations of their physical reality. This technology can

be utilized for more disciplines by adding non-spatial data and information to the 3D models, to digitally support the operation and maintenance of businesses and communities.

“Digital Twin technology is essentially an easier form of abstraction to explain the challenge of accurate digital data in all representation forms, which needs to be as current as possible.

Ultimately, we should come to a point where the network inventory system is warned about a data anomaly within seconds so corrective measures can be taken,” explains Geert De Coensel, CEO, Merkator.

Fusion of sensors: The fusion of different kinds of sensors and technologies allows for positioning accuracy in the millimeter or centimeter range. Some years ago this was completely GNSS based but today it is hybrid positioning solutions that merge the strengths of GNSS, MEMs (micro electro mechanical systems), IMUs (inertial measurement units), LiDAR and optical data.

“Industry platforms are driving geospatial innovation by connecting people, technology, tasks, data, processes, and industry life cycles. Cloud services enable survey companies to deliver on the Digital Twin through the software driving data capabilities,” says Ronald Bisio, Senior Vice President, Geospatial Sector, Trimble.

Also, changes in data collection and processing are broadening the surveyor role beyond simply capturing information in the field.

“Three decades ago, surveyors used either optical instruments or GNSS. Now, increasingly, they need experience in other technologies, including UAVs, scanning, and augmented reality visualization tools,” he adds.

As George Zhao, CEO, CHC Navigation, points out, the result is greater availability, reliability and accuracy of position, navigation and timing (PNT) data. The demand for hybrid GNSS, IMU and MEMS fusion systems applied to assisted and autonomous driving to ensure reliable lane-level accuracy is constantly growing.

LiDAR: The use of LiDAR in infrastructure systems and 3D mapping is central to making digital cities a reality, as the technology allows for efficient and cost-effective ways to map large areas in hours, rather than weeks.

“LiDAR also has the power to dramatically improve the safety, sustainability and efficiency of a world in motion. There has been tremendous work done by industry to support advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous vehicles, as well as the infrastructure that will support integration of connected vehicles. While we cannot speak to when fully selfdriving vehicles will be deployed at scale, updates to performance standards and testing will be critical to progress,” says Dr. Ted Tewksbury, CEO, Velodyne.

PNT: The vulnerabilities of GPS have been discussed often.

Even when GPS and other alternative GNSS services are available, for cities defined by multi-level structures, vertical location is

necessary for safety and efficiency. PNT technology plays a major role in building more immersive augmented and virtual reality capabilities.

“The digital layer that will live on top of the physical world is not two dimensional. Z-axis capabilities will need to be involved, especially in urban areas where skylines are populated with multistory buildings. Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) games like Pokemon Go will continue to develop further as 3D geolocation becomes more widely adopted and, with it, even more realistic digital worlds will be made,” says Ganesh Pattabiraman, CEO, NextNav.

The New Space adventure

In many ways, the pandemic has emphasized the role of Space

tech and Earth Observation (EO) more than ever before. Suddenly, we can see the stark impact of the drop in human activity during lockdowns. Again, the focus on digital technologies has brought to the fore every aspect of Spacetech — from communication to EO to positioning and navigation, every human activity on Earth today is directly or indirectly impacted by Space technology.

“We are pushing the technology frontier — from launchers, EO, and telecommunications to quantum communication and navigation,” says Dr. Josef Aschbacher, Director General, European Space Agency.

He sees artificial intelligence (AI) on board satellites as the

future. Cognitive Cloud computing — with AI and machine learning (ML) on the one hand and systems of interconnected satellites on the other — builds a mesh of network capabilities and then transmits the data down to individual users.

All of this basically amounts to personalization of acquisition, processing, and dissemination.

“There’s a palpable excitement about Space these days,” says Mike Greenley, CEO, MDA. It stems in part from a growing understanding of the economic impact of Space — high-quality jobs, strong supply chains, strong economic benefits with very strong economic growth multipliers, and new business opportunities in areas like Space-based manufacturing or Space-mining, he explains.

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Courtesy: NOAA

1980-2021 United States Billion-Dollar Disaster Event Cost

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Stephane Germain, CEO, GHGSat, points to some pathbreaking innovations: “Several companies have cracked the code and managed to package powerful synthetic aperture radar (SAR) payloads, once the specialty of governments and space agencies, into small packages. Innovative sensors to look at radio frequency (RF) signals on Earth are providing invaluable insights into human activity patterns.”

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In a report published last year, Space Capital said, “In the same way that every company today is a technology company, the companies of tomorrow will all be Space companies.” This rings so true even today.

Economic stimulus

As governments around the world have made major stimulus investments in their infrastructure, primarily to create jobs and keep their economies moving forward, the industry sees this as further accelerating the digital

transformation of the infrastructure industry.

more high quality and sustainable assets,” he adds.

What is exciting about all these stimuluses is not just the amount of money that is being poured into the sector, but the fact that finally digital technologies and solutions are getting recognition. For instance, in the United States alone, USD 100 million investment is going into digital construction programs, says Theo Agelopoulos, Senior Director, Architecture & Engineering Design Strategy, Autodesk.

Powering the Metaverse

“Historically, we have seen stimulus investments drive an early uptick in construction for shovel ready projects; we should also realize the benefits of digital innovation to execute them better. As we continue forward we will also see new projects entering the planning and design phase, driving more adoption of digital technologies, leveraging design automation through AI/ML to design better,

The concept of Metaverse is powered by a desire to improve today’s online social experiences by making them feel more immersive and natural. However, just as location was central to understanding the pandemic, it is also central to the concept of the Metaverse, points out Alameh of OGC. “The Metaverse helps in driving digitalization, thereby driving new business models in the consumer market,” says Juergen Dold, President, GSI, Hexagon AB. The idea of a smart digital reality goes beyond Digital Twins and can be likened to a Metaverse.

“Smart digital realities bring together people, places and things in a 3D representation of the physical environment where people can interact through

information-sharing to create new processes that solve some of our most challenging business problems. A smart digital reality is a part of the Metaverse that will always have a real, one-to-one connection with the physical world,” he adds.

The future

“The next evolution in geospatial intelligence will lead to an integrated geospatial ecosystem that will combine Geospatial Knowledge Infrastructure with the United Nations Integrated Geospatial Information Framework and Industry 4.0 components,” says Dr Zaffar Sadiq Mohamed-Ghouse, Executive Director, Strategic Consulting & International Relations, Spatial Vision.

This will pave the way for a consolidated and holistic approach for geospatial advancement.

The World Economic Forum’s The Global Risks Report 2022 has listed climate action failure, extreme weather, biodiversity loss, livelihood crises, and social cohesion erosion as the top five risks for the global economy.

Geospatial data and technologies are at the forefront of monitoring and addressing each of these risks — especially for climate change monitoring and disaster mitigation.

Real-time data collection and analytics will vastly improve all aspects of our lives, especially in smart cities, and improve the lives of the growing urban population. The move from megabit to gigabit broadband will also see petabytes of data. So, the capacity of having to store this data and make sense of it will be the main issue in the near future.

In the coming years, billions of dollars will be spent on combating future hazards and disasters, and building resilient infrastructure. Placing geospatial at the core of these requires a more generalist thinking than most traditional players have historically considered.

TAEHYUN JEON CEO of SI Analytics

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Dr. Taegyun Jeon, Founder and CEO of SI Analytics Elesci cus eveni as et harum fugit que voles doluptur,

Artificial intelligence technologies arequo stillquiae viewed as corem ex everi rersperum fuga. Ed rendem immature Human GEOINT experts.

Then whyomvelendaeamong exces qui nisimax iminctorro officiendit, aren’t we just ignoring AI? nim sitas endis ex et as as excestibus ate dit ad que The main reason is that there is consensus and pelluptur, conseque vitis re, sit enim aute velluptaspe expectation in the GEOINT community that AI native sitas eat modis vero comnimpos dis peruptia GEOINT analyticsest willfacit effectively work side-by-side with Human intelligence the EO ecosystem to cone laborro vit et when aciumetur, ulparum et reevolves occatiunt, the next level. ut eationeceror ationse rsperrovid quis aut quis in exConstellations will pour down higher resolution data at the cea esciatur moluptate conseque plia que idus aut opminute level, and we understand the limitation of domain taesecto occatquat est pedit, sequo voluptatem num experts to analyze increased data at a given time. eatetwe que et alibus repedi solupta isit Thus, need to accelerate utilizingspernamuscil AI analytics in voluptat ullabor iorerspAI erumqui Imin pe nis various fields to nurture to train,tem findfuga. creativeness in new forms of analytics makelenisin experts’ focussed on insight et harum aciet aborro and eatende evendis eos analytics ability. mo inctur atatur sequat rehenis sinustiist, cum enditat SI Analytics will help you use AI native GEOINT analytics denime preheni hilleces etur, sumquiata voluptaque in various analytics fields.

SI Analytics will be at GEOINT 2022 Let’s meet at Denver, USA [25~27th, April]

Super Enhancement

Monitoring Service

But now, the industry looks poised for change and is ready to seize the moment.

Anusuya Datta Editor-At-Large — Americas anusuya@geospatialworld.net

findout@si-analytics.ai | www.si-analytics.ai www.si-analytics.ai

AI Native GEOINT Solution

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Technological Advancements are Best when Ahead of the Curve

BY JACK DANGERMOND

T

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Founder & President, Esri

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here has perhaps never been a more illustrative need for taking a geographic approach than the current pandemic. We have been able to watch and better understand the spread and impact of this virus on dashboards and maps. We can also better understand disruptions to the global economy, whether evidenced by supply chain struggles or labor shortages. Decision-makers in business and government are finding it increasingly important to strategize where they source materials — whether PPE or everyday consumer products — to ensure they are available to those that need them, and to better understand how to maintain operations and serve communities and customers with fewer people working. All of this is tied to location. So are the solutions. We have seen cities, states, and countries pinpoint vaccine distribution sites based on geospatial data. We have seen like-minded agencies and organizations team up to distribute food using one shared, collaborative map so as not to duplicate efforts and instead get essentials to those who need them most.

At Esri, we quickly pivoted our business and made adjustments to support our users and employees. There’s a reason we introduced the ArcGIS Platform last year. We recognize that our users want to be able to pick and choose the elements of ArcGIS best suited to their organizations. We have seen users go to market far quicker, knowing they could entrust our backbone technology with a specific pain point they might have had, be it data management, imagery sourcing, security, or sharing.

Digital acceleration

There is no slowing advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and there are certainly ways of life that can’t, or shouldn’t, be squeezed back into the bottle. Many jobs, we now know, can be done fully remotely or on a hybrid basis without sacrificing productivity, thanks in large part to accelerating IT infrastructure technology and expanded cloud computing.

Of course there are, and will continue to be, hurdles in the way — the growing capabilities of

AI and ML, Big Data in a spatial context, advances in satellite imagery both in quality and turnaround time, advanced 3D visualization, real-time GIS connected to IoT devices and sensors, and open-source APIs allowing for more collaboration.

What I am most excited about is a geospatial nervous system that’s akin to the internet itself in its democratization but built on web services, which would allow for uniting and overlaying maps from so many reliable, accurate sources to create a whole that can be visualized. It’s the only way to truly understand what we are up against and get our best minds and sciences working in tandem on solutions.

Complex global challenges

Before and well after the pandemic subsides, we still face enormously complex challenges.

There are the severe weather events made worse by climate change and biodiversity loss, water scarcity and overpopulation, and the need to undo longstanding systemic inequalities that have held entire populations back.

Looking at climate change, the key question is not just how to stop it but also how to improve the planet for the better after we mitigate the damage. Nothing is simple, and neither is this, but it requires everyone being involved and working toward the same goal.

This is what is so crucial about maps; when everyone can see the same picture with the same information it becomes easier to collaborate and work towards a common goal. I get inspiration from thousands of our users who are already working on solutions and collaborating and sharing their knowledge. It’s going to require the best of all of us — scientists, thinkers, designers — to work together. The architecture for collaboration — a geospatial nervous system — exists, as long as it’s embraced by many.

The geospatial industry is today blessed with a vast amount of information that can help us make better decisions. That’s where we can help — securely hosting and helping to make sense of geographic data, including more detailed, updated views of our planet.

Technological advancements are best when ahead of the curve, that is, identifying needs early on. And in many ways, it’s heartening to know that the technology that could contribute to something as revolutionary as self-driving cars or dronebased deliveries is being refined and perfected so as not to be unwieldy. Understanding a new technology and how it fits into our natural world, as well as its potential consequences, is a prudent, rational — albeit perhaps slower — path to take.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

The pandemic also speeded a shift in consumer flexibility, with brick-and-mortar retailers embracing omnichannel strategies, turning some stores into distribution hubs for deliveries and in-store or curbside pickup.

This made location intelligence more essential to planning operations than ever. The pandemic didn’t cause many of these technological innovations; they were in development for some time. And there are constants in the geospatial industry, pre-pandemic to now, including an increasing push to move away from paper processes to systems for real-time data sharing. So, some of our users were able to quickly shift to remote work because of the device-agnostic collaboration capabilities.

The geospatial nervous system is akin to the internet itself, and is the only way to truly understand the challenges we are up against and to get our best minds and sciences working in tandem on solutions.

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

While navigating the pandemic, we also provided free access to health departments in cities, states, and countries to develop and deploy more than 5,000 dashboards to monitor the situation and help their communities understand the COVID data most relevant to them, based on templates we constructed that linked to their existing GIS.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Automation and Autonomy in the Future

BY OLA ROLLÉN

I

President & CEO, Hexagon AB

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

n looking ahead to 2031, we first need to look back at digital transformation over the last 20 years. It’s fascinating to see the number of consumer services that have been digitalized. The big developments in the last 20 years started with the internet and today we have entire catalogs of our favorite music and movies online. There has been a great deal of change in retail too. Companies like Amazon deliver groceries to one’s doorstep within two hours.

And in Germany, Mercedes has permission to run autonomous vehicles across the country.

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So, what’s going to happen in the next 10-15 years? The changes in retail are going to come to business eventually.

That’s why it’s important to talk about autonomy as opposed to automation. Autonomy is about automating workflows while also removing the human element from the workflow. For example, fatalities and severe injuries related to traffic accidents every year are in the millions.

These numbers can be reduced.

Humans aren’t particularly good at doing repetitive tasks, so autonomous cars are the future.

But autonomy is to do with much more than driving cars.

Autonomous workflows have

Power of measurements

Measurements are the crucial secret brew to automation and autonomy; unless you can measure reality you can’t determine where you are, where you are going, and how far it is to where you are going. You can use measurements to navigate, to position, to determine what to do next, and so on. So, business is no longer about just taking measurements, but also using them to make real-life decisions.

Collaboration is the key

The deployment of dynamic GIS will happen only if there is greater collaboration between different companies, although we will also see a lot of consolidation. Historically, the companies that made money in GIS were the ones dealing in, hardware and software. In future, the biggest revenue stream is going to come from data itself. For

What I see in the future is that collaboration will take place in data capture — a market where precious data is sold. Our contribution to that marketplace is HxDR, a platform that allows the convergence and visualization of almost any geospatial or reality capture data for improved collaboration and decision-making, where you can also sell and resell map data (our response to iTunes if you like).

Emergence of artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an important tool in the automation of workflows. We have developed algorithms that can identify up to

will eventually work as well as, or better, than a human.

Focus on sustainability

Autonomy is the only way we will achieve sustainability at the scale needed to reverse current trends. And it won’t happen unless businesses can make it happen profitably. Sustainability and profitability must thrive together.

We need to find sustainable ways of consuming, generating power, transporting goods, and so on. At Hexagon we have already started working on that. We have a solar park in Spain generating 17 MW of power but, as importantly, we are deploying Hexagon’s technology on site to improve its output. Yield is currently about 20 percent but if we can improve it to 25 percent the global impact will be huge.

Similarly, in 2022, we want to get into the wind sector. We want to

Artificial intelligence is not a technology that you can buy in a box and just deploy, as it is inherently stupid. Where AI plays a role is in automation, where humans take decisions based on data input.

97 percent of everything you see when flying over a country or a city. So, we can identify grass and trees, and classify objects as buildings, cars or lamp posts. As a result, you can automate 95 percent of the manual interpretation you had to do, say seven years ago.

AI is not a technology that you can buy in a box and then just deploy, as it is inherently stupid. Where AI plays a role is in automation where humans take decisions based on data input.

If that human tells the algorithm ‘this is right, this is wrong’ enough times, then that algorithm

operate a wind farm where we deploy our technology to improve the output of wind turbines.

We also have a joint venture with the Bahamas, where the government has set up a sovereign wealth fund to build national wealth. This includes selling carbon rights based on seagrass growth, seagrass being one of the best living carbon capture organisms on the planet. We are using our airborne bathymetric LiDAR technologies to detect, map and capture critical details about this vital habitat, including its extent and composition.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Since computers are likely to make these decisions going forward, geospatial data will hold greater significance than ever before. Computers, or let’s say apps, will use measurements to navigate from point A to B, assisting, for example, in making garment deliveries from brands like H&M and Zara to thousands of households in a city. Dynamic Geographic Information Systems (GIS) will be at the core of all this, combining base maps with sensor information in real time, for example, to optimize last mile delivery routes hour by hour.

instance, if you have the latest map of downtown London that you update six times per year, you are unbeatable.

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

come into play in car manufacturing, surveillance operations and public safety. They are present in mining, aerospace, construction, agriculture, oil and gas… everywhere. So the future is automated in most of our industry verticals.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022 20

The 'Why' of Geospatial Innovation

BY RONALD BISIO

Senior Vice President, Geospatial Sector, Trimble Inc.

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or every challenging topographic survey, mobile mapping project, and tunnel monitoring campaign, people are both the reason for and the means of geospatial innovation. They are our customers, the surveyors in the field, combining their expertise with hardware and software to work smarter, faster,

safer, and cost effectively. They are the teams and crews working on all manner of surveying projects in infrastructure, construction, utilities and agriculture. They are our employees, listening to our customers, developing new workflows, and inventing the next breakthrough technology. And ultimately, they are the people living within the boundaries we survey, the drivers navigating the roads and bridges we scan, and the residents and

businesses operating in the cities we measure, model and monitor.

Opportunities born of a pandemic

Despite many disruptions, the pandemic is accelerating changes long needed in the digitization of work. It has also added urgency to global infrastructure needs, deepened commitments to sustainability, and challenged us to address skills gaps across the industry. From the earliest days of COVID-19, our employees, customers, and partners showed incredible resilience in one of the most challenging periods in history. Now, two years later, they continue to stay focused on their roles as governments pour historic funding into infrastructure construction and maintenance. As a result, we are seeing an acceleration rather than a slowdown in the adoption of software and hardware solutions for the digital transformation of our key industries. Enabled by technological advances and digital transformation across all workflows, these conditions present us with a generational opportunity.

With governments putting historic funding into infrastructure, the geospatial industry is primed for innovation. In the United States, USD 550 billion is slated for new investments from the USD 1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) passed in November 2021. It is surveyors who will determine the location of new and existing infrastructure. To make the most of the post-pandemic era, we must enhance skills and embrace the potential of technology to advance processes across disciplines. Even the most exciting technological advances in robotics and artificial intelligence can’t make up for the need for more geospatial professionals and skilled workers to lead the industry forward.

Industry platforms are driving geospatial innovation by connecting people, technology, tasks, data, processes, and industry life cycles. Cloud services enable survey companies to deliver on the Digital Twin through the software driving data capabilities.

Also, changes in data collection and processing are broadening the surveyor role beyond simply capturing information in the field.

Three decades ago, surveyors used either optical instruments or GNSS. Now, increasingly, they need experience in other technologies, including UAVs, scanning, and augmented reality visualization

Twin starts with the surveyor, who will capture the earth and convert it into a digital model. That model serves as a fully connected environment from which planners, designers, engineers, and workers in the field can operate in concert.

This kind of digital collaboration minimizes downtime from information requests and design and stakeout updates.

Sustainable practices and impact Ensuring a sustainable future is one of the defining issues of our generation, and current realities require even more accelerated focus and stepped-up ambitions.

Geospatial technologies are

When we examine trends in innovation, geospatial technology that leverages artificial intelligence, autonomous robots and augmented reality catches most of our collective attention. But widen the lens to the impact of the work we do, and the heart of the ‘why’ becomes vivid — people.

Digital Twins are one example of innovation primed for impact from stem to stern. As the end game of scanning and mobile mapping workflows, the Digital

addressing this need by providing sustainability benefits in land and water management and mass data solutions for Smart Cities.

Software processes and BIM/ GIS integration help streamline complex project communications by ensuring a correct build the first time, which reduces rework, uses fewer materials, and generates less waste. Mapping and GIS are integral in demonstrating the environmental impact of climate change, including coastal impact, disaster mitigation, water management tools, public works projects, and endangered species mapping.

With so much work related to climate change analysis, we are

People: our greatest asset and challenge

More than ever, the global pandemic has shown surveyors at their most resilient. But this robust market has also magnified the challenges of the slowing pipeline of survey professionals, with more retiring than joining the profession. The average age of the practising surveyor is 59 in the US and Canada, and 54 internationally. As the next generation brings its digital-native expertise to the workforce, surveying has a historic opportunity to evolve and adapt.

We need to increase awareness of surveying and mapping as careers of choice for tech-minded individuals who want to get involved in projects making a difference in their communities. The surveying ecosystem, which includes educational institutions, government organizations, trade associations and businesses, needs to work together to develop a stronger pipeline of geospatial professionals.

Innovation means dreaming of a better future for customers in the industries we serve, listening to their needs, and applying our brightest, most curious minds to solving those problems. Cuttingedge development is a key to our future, but ultimately, it’s people who drive advances in geospatial technology and give purpose to our work connecting the physical and digital worlds.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

tools. Our customers also need a deeper understanding of the data, with software becoming the data hub and the place where they get what they need, when they need it. Trimble Business Center is the linchpin of our survey and mapping ecosystem. Cloud services could make it possible for a company that does airborne processing at a certain time of year to get a subscription license for a survey photogrammetry solution when it needs it.

moving from data capture to data intelligence so we can understand and plan better for the future. And what happens with our customers also needs to happen within our own company. By weaving sustainability practices into our work both externally and internally, Trimble has increased efficiency and prevented more than 7 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually.

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Strengthening connected workflows

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

SmallSats and the Democratization of Space

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BY PROF. SIR MARTIN SWEETING OBE FRS FRENG FIET FINSTP

Founder & Executive Chairman of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd., Chairman, Surrey Space Centre, Director, National Hub on Future AI and Robotics for Space

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he story of growth in smallsats (small satellites), leading to the democratization of information from Space, can be split into two parts. The first part is about access to Space.

Today, over 100 countries are active in Space, which means that access is no longer limited to big corporations or governments alone, but is also available to small companies, universities, and even high schools in some cases.

Additionally, tech advancements in smallsats have made it economically feasible to have more

constellations in Space. It was always possible to have a constellation, but if a satellite would cost USD 1 billion, it was not possible to afford too many of them. But with satellites costing USD 10 million, it is possible to have 50-60 of them — or even thousands — in Space.

As soon as there is a constellation in Space, it becomes possible to add a third dimension to the data coming in. So, one gets the spatial, spectral, and temporal resolution that allows one to monitor rapidly changing phenomena, which adds a completely different value to the dataset. The international Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) of optical EO microsatellites ably demonstrated this new capability.

Now, the second part is about the data. In the last few years, we have witnessed the launch of many smallsats with different sensors. This has led to data proliferation, which in turn has presented the opportunity for extracting more value from Space. Ten years ago, it was only about data being sold. However, a change occurred in recent years when the value of raw data dropped to less than 10 percent, and the demand for knowledge that could be extracted from it spiked. Consequently, the business model also changed from data retailing to knowledge services.

A decade ago, the Earth Observation (EO) market had very few organizations with the tools to calibrate and process the data that was coming in. It was a small club. But as soon as data became widely available, several small companies came into play as they could set up data processing facilities because of low capital investment. This completely changed the game in the Space sector. And now new companies are popping up almost every week, taking essentially the same raw data or the same data streams and processing them to provide different apps. We thus have a whole heap of apps, which earlier we didn’t think we would want but which we now find valuable.

Since more and more people/companies have joined this trend, we see more innovative ideas being generated. There is literally a virtual vortex of data analytics. Clearly, analytics providers are using the satellite data and only a few of them have invested in satellites. The satellite manufacturing market is very tight and the profit margins are very small compared to the downstream applications segment where the margins are very high. This is why we have started to see more vertically integrated companies where the satellite manufacturer has emphasized involvement in downstream applications as they generate revenues that can fund the capital infrastructure. These companies are either developing their own applications, capabilities, or partnering/merging with other players to get a better share of the market.

Significance of R&D

R&D are always profitable in the long term, and therefore research institutions run by governments and defense organizations hold great significance in the Space sector. Governments and their R&D insti-

tutions could also be the first customers, even as they support technology breakthroughs.

The new HydroGNSS project with European Space Agency (ESA) is a good example of long-term R&D, from technical feasibility experiments starting on a small satellite in 1998 through increasingly complex demonstrations on a number of microsatellite missions through to the first operational small satellite commencing in 2022! HydroGNSS will operate as a bistatic radar exploiting the reflections of the GNSS signals from the surface of the Earth and by analyzing the returns, deriving information on moisture content, and biomass of the Earth’s surface contributing to the better understanding of climate change.

Access to the Moon

For the first time, there is a very high probability of prolonged human habitation on the Moon in the next few years. The US and China have programs in place already and others have begun to talk about it as well.

A human revisit on the Moon is expected within a few years and will be followed by the development of a habitat there. Several institutional and private players would want to have landers and rovers on the moon, and this provides an new opportunity for the private sector to provide infrastructure services of communications and navigation around the Moon.

The Lunar Pathfinder project, with ESA and NASA as anchor customers, is the forerunner of the planned ‘Moonlite’ constellation around the Moon.

Space robotics will change quite dramatically the nature of the Space industry and business during this decade: first focusing on the active removal of Space debris and in-orbit servicing of satellites, and then in-orbit assembly of satellites and large Space structures, and then leading on to in-orbit manufacturing of Space systems. Indeed, the prolonged human habitation on the Moon (and later Mars) will need the preparation of substantial habitats and this will rely on Space robotics.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

The trend of ‘Everything-as-a-service’ is not limited to EO. It is predicted to also pick up in the field of science where ‘Science-as-a-Service’ is not a distant reality.

Take, for example, communications, where what matters is the service that is provided. Nobody cares whether it comes from a satellite or a piece of fiber.

However, the fiber guys and satellite manufacturers still have to provide technical capability and capacity, and they need to make enough money to be able to do that. Satellite manufacturers still have to invest in Research and Development (R&D) to be able to create capabilities for the new services that are yet to come.

So, unless there is a circle of money that goes back to R&D, the applications guys would start to run out of steam. They would want to do a lot of new things, but the satellites would not be capable of doing them.

In the last few years, we have witnessed the launch of lots of small satellites with different sensors. This has led to data proliferation, which in turn has presented the opportunity for extracting more value from Space.

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Changing dynamics

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Going Digital, for Infrastructure Resilience!

BY GREG BENTLEY

A

CEO, Bentley Systems

s we look forward at the outset of 2022, having endured a global pandemic, we should prioritize making the most of what we’ve learned in response to vulnerabilities for which we were unprepared. I think it can objectively be said that ‘going digital’ has been the saving grace in enabling economic productivity to largely continue, and even gain new momentum.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

I think the momentum in going digital will turn out to have been the crisis’ silver lining, in leading the way to improve the resilience of infrastructure. There is opportunity now to institutionalize going digital, not only within our organizations but also towards ‘future-proofing’ our world’s assets with respect to economic and environmental dependencies.

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Of necessity during the pandemic, going digital enabled ‘virtualizing’ infrastructure engineering and related professions.

Today, any practitioner anywhere in the world can work on infrastructure projects anywhere (else), WITH anyone.

Digital acceleration

Most infrastructure engineering organizations, having surmounted unimagined challenges, have actually grown their scope and profits during the pandemic. By going digital, they have proved and improved their resilience and are consequently more future-proof.

The priority must be to continue and accelerate going digital.

New pandemic-spawned patterns of work and life have substantially disrupted the requirements for infrastructure’s fitness for purpose. Coping with unexpected exposures has increased the world’s determination to achieve and sustain the adaptation needed for overall economic and environmental resilience. The daunting cost of new infrastructure capacity means this can be effective only at the margins, and hence the priority must be the necessary extension of the useful life of infrastructure assets, with the added imperatives of energy transition and climate threats. Just in time to meet these challenges, further benefits of going digital are at hand and are accelerating, with infrastructure Digital Twin advancements gaining adoption.

Bentley Systems (BSY)’s 2021 Year in Infrastructure (virtual) Conference served to highlight this momentum. The Going Digital Awards reflected independent juries’ assessments of the hundreds of infrastructure projects nominated by BSY users globally. The 2021 Infrastructure Yearbook (www.bentley.com/ yearbook), presenting all of the nominations, winners, finalists, and founders’ honorees, provides an informative and encouraging perspective on advancements towards infrastructure resilience now being enabled by ongoing pandemic-spurred inflections.

Infrastructure Digital Twins require federating together, in Cloud services, each of  digital context, for reality (reflecting ‘OT’ via operational technologies),  digital components, for veracity (leveraging ‘ET’ from engineering technologies), and  digital chronology, for fidelity (by virtue of ‘IT’ comprising information technologies).

In achieving these Digital Twin thresholds, significant and auspicious progress was observable during the pandemic.

Digital context

An essential prerequisite for an infrastructure Digital Twin is to capture and continuously maintain an asset or project’s digital context, its 3D-surveyed reality. With pandemic restrictions curtailing physical site access, drones and associated surveying innovations were applied with reality modeling software to support, for example, increasingly autonomous inspections. At BSY, we observed significant related milestones:  36 percent of the (57) 2021 Going Digital Award finalist projects credit reality modeling;  AEC Advisors’ inaugural Going Digital survey of AEC firms’ CEOs in October 2021 indicated that more than half have invested in and are offering UAV surveying services;  With Collins Engineering and the Minnesota DoT, BSY was recognized by Microsoft (North America) as the Mixed Reality

Digital components

The opportunity now is to institutionalize going digital not only within our organizations, but also towards ‘future-proofing’ our world’s assets with respect to economic and environmental dependencies.

Systems power transmission engineering software will be incorporated for grid integration.

Digital chronology

Infrastructure Digital Twins must synchronize changes in both their digital context and digital components, in order to maintain fidelity over the asset lifecycle, and their usefulness is multiplied by logging and even extrapolating these changes. The pandemic has contributed to and coincided with advancements in this ‘4D’ visibility:  Restrictions in travel to project sites, and on proximity within project sites, have accelerated ‘constructioneering,’ enhancing 3D BIM for construction sequencing and scheduling.

The emerging opportunity for ‘industrializing’ construction will necessitate 4D simulation of the interfaces and assembly of modules manufactured offsite.

So far, BSY’s SYNCHRO for 4D construction modeling was credited by 28 percent of Going Digital Award finalists, and led BSY’s new business growth in 2021.  New and broadly accessible 3D visualization environments will quickly improve the ‘last mile’ technology for immersively navigating Digital Twins. This is leading to new demands for integration with BSY’s iTwin Platform to uniquely enable 4D infrastructure Digital Twins, as exemplified in NVIDIA’s main-stage demonstrations of its omniverse environment to visualize SYNCHRO 4D construction modeling.

The firsthand examples here make the case that what we’ve recently learned — from going digital for pandemic resilience — will serve us well over the longer term, through Digital Twins, in the imperative for sustaining infrastructure resilience.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

The veracity and value of infrastructure Digital Twins results from their semantic federation with the asset’s engineering technologies’ intelligence. The pandemic accelerated these needs and responsive innovations, as in these examples:  In keeping up with unprecedented demand for bandwidth for going digital, communications towers’ operators have led the way among infrastructure owners, in endorsing and demanding infrastructure Digital Twins, which robustly incorporate digital components. Bridging from reality modeling to Digital Twin creation and curation, BSY’s OpenTower iQ Cloud service applies machine learning workflows to recognize and classify, with reference to carriers’ digital catalogs, each tower’s as-operated equipment inventory.

The physically and functionally aligned digital components then directly populate extensive structural and schematic simulations

to assess the tower’s further capacity and optimize its maintenance. I believe this continued steep learning curve being proven for the case of communications towers’ Digital Twins will ultimately benefit the resilience of all infrastructure assets.  The requirement for infrastructure to suddenly be used differently under pandemic conditions has led to new applications and advances in modeling and simulation within mobility Digital Twins, for instance. BSY’s LEGION pedestrian simulation software has been enhanced to model parameterized social distancing behaviors; BSY’s CUBE, EMME, and DYNAMEQ traffic simulation software have been applied to consider lockdown scenarios; and BSY’s new AGENT software is expanding these with agentbased capabilities. With major transportation infrastructure investment programs now in scope everywhere, pandemic learnings have accelerated the need to capture the dynamic, interdependent and multimodal mobility decisions of travelers (among digital components) as independent individual ‘agents,’ rather than relying only on traditional aggregate measures.  As the ‘build back better’ initiatives are notably prioritizing climate resilience through renewable energy sourcing, engineering modeling and simulation software are being integrated in new combinations around novel digital components. For example, BSY’s OpenWindPower design application incorporates our PLAXIS geotechnical functionality for fixed offshore wind farms, and also our SACS and MOSES offshore wave modeling for floating offshore wind farms.

BSY’s newly acquired Powerline

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Partner of the Year, for UAV-based bridge inspection workflows;  BSY acquired Seequent, the global leader in subsurface Digital Twins, to integrate geosciences with infrastructure engineering; and  BSY inaugurated infrastructure IoT for environmental monitoring, with the acquisitions of Sensemetrics and Vista Data Vision.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Communicating 3D Physical World Data to a Broader Audience

BY MICHAEL BURGER

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President & CEO, FARO Technologies, Inc

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

oday, we continue to see an explosion of growth in massive data that brings the physical to the virtual information world. This enables an efficiency boost so that the physical world can be analyzed better and faster — independent of location — and shared with practically any stakeholder. This moves organizations and economies to higher performance through less waste and cost. The insights gained are increasingly being supported with artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), where the interoperability of devices and data relies on the information provided by laser scanning and sensors.

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Scanning launched surveying to new heights of performance, and broadened its impact. It has changed the construction and architecture industry as well, creating much better control and insight to manage process and design challenges. It has also found great application in mining, tunneling, water management, solar and wind power, heritage management, and forensics. The range of applications is growing every day. It is all about understanding and communicating 3D physical world data to a broader audience. The opportunity for cost savings in construction alone is massive, which is of tremendous importance given that construction is the largest industry in most economies.

Information about our physical world underpins our ability to address real challenges — from pre-incident planning and disaster response to forestry maintenance and environmental stressors that may imperil infrastructure. With advancements in mobile mapping, Digital Twin and the remote sensing technology we see today, our physical environment (indoors or outdoors) become further intertwined with the digital environments in which we work and live.

FARO has been a pioneer in 3D measurement since 1981.

However, laser scanning technology really came to market about 20 years ago and we are proud to have been a leader in this space since that time. In fact, in November 2021, we manufactured our 20,000th scanner.

Building sustainable infrastructure

By digitizing the physical world, we can create smarter designs to gain better efficiencies — lowering cost and waste while optimizing the processes in the virtual world. Digital technologies also help customers improve productivity and control over complex processes by getting things right the first time. Digital collaboration also means less need for carbon-producing travel to sites multiple times. It allows smarter insights by more stakeholders in a simple and more risk-adverse fashion. This data is also the basis for detailed simulations and optimization of complex projects.

The ‘Scan to BIM process’, for example, supports the concept of a regenerative circular construction economy, where a building is planned and built to use or recycle nearly everything that goes into construction and maintenance.

Scanned data is used by all stakeholders to provide information about thermal performance, ideal layouts to manage fluctuations in temperature and weather conditions, support simulations, and optimized to reduce energy emissions, save on electricity, and more. When it’s time to retrofit or update, the process maintains an accurate as-built record.

Understanding the physical world accurately helps to smartly reduce materials and energy waste, and optimize human labor. In infrastructure, it offers a similar proposition — scanned data coupled with sensor/real-time data that provides information on conditions, predicts risks, and provides the intelligence to help stakeholders map new infrastructure to meet the evolving conditions of their projects.

This can even have direct effect in disaster prevention and recovery, with important learnings

Digitalization also supports event monitoring and risk mitigation on several levels — stakeholders get to know earlier when structures are being stressed, be it in a building or a utility substation.

Stakeholders receive this information nearly instantaneously so they can make decisions before any disruptions snowball or incur waste. This is especially true when it comes to monitoring buildings that are at risk before or after earthquakes, landslides or flooding.

Advancements in Digital Twin technology

The ATS and HoloBuilder acquisitions were important for FARO in offering the first complete end-to-end Digital Twin platform solution. ATS’ unique solution enables us to deliver a highly accurate 3D Digital Twin. In manufacturing, for example, this allows customers to simulate precise

acquisition process. We consider this to be an important trend in the industry. Already, today, this kind of application allows workers to have their hands and minds free for more complex

Today, more and more companies and cities have a spatial Digital Twin, meaning that relevant areas of their infrastructure are regularly updated to ensure an always up-to-date digital representation of their physical reality. being applied for whole buildings and job sites. And Digital Twins are used throughout the building or infrastructure lifecycle, from the planning phase, through the construction phase, until the operations and maintenance phase, and even back to the planning phase of an extension or renewal of assets, buildings, and infrastructure.

Different environments or applications have different requirements when it comes to accuracy of measured data and detail of captured data (both in 3D space and as a visual image).

HoloBuilder helps us to open new areas that don’t need as highly accurate 3D point Clouds but high-resolution 360-degree images. Combining these two solutions, along with our other hardware and software workflows in one ecosystem, allows customers to have one place that reflects the full reality of their assets, buildings and/or infrastructure in the relevant quality.

The future

FARO recently launched FARO Trek, in collaboration with Boston Dynamics. FARO Trek is the first step in fully automating the complete scanning/data

tasks that a robot cannot fulfill.

This is especially true with simple routing tasks that can be covered well and even at off times when a construction site is quiet. Trek can also play an important role in risk and safety mitigation for on-site workers.

Artificial intelligence and automation will increasingly play an important role in supporting users to gain insights faster and at lower costs, and automate complete workflows that are mostly manual today. Cloud technology already allows immediate and low-cost distribution to all stakeholders. We support technologies that guide the world to broader data gathering in less time and at lower cost. It is all about unlocking the power of data and then using that information effectively.

As more projects move into a Cloud collaboration environment, it is important to protect data and standardize protocols around security. Digital chain of evidence is critical in Public Safety (hashing) and we were one of the first to offer a digital signature for our forensic users.

This will become a broader issue as time goes by.

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The significant advantages of digitalization create profound opportunities for industry and society. Today, more and more companies and cities have a spatial Digital Twin, meaning that relevant areas of their infrastructure are regularly updated to ensure an always up-to-date digital representation of their physical reality. The next step is to utilize these Digital Twins for more disciplines by adding non-spatial data and information to the 3D model to digitally support the operation and maintenance of a business or community. We are addressing these areas to enable both capturing solutions and data processing workflows that will deliver increased value.

processes and automation with high confidence before its implementation into reality. In the Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Operations (AECO) space, digital realities are increasingly

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

about what went wrong and what can be improved should new challenges materialize — saving lives and protecting the environment.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Standards Lie at the Heart of Data Integration

BY NADINE ALAMEH

T

CEO & President, Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

he pandemic has made us recognize the value of putting location at the center of all data analyses; people, cities, states, countries, and organizations are all asking questions related to ‘where’. Location-based analysis is now front and center.

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In order to answer ‘where’, the geospatial industry has stepped up to offer solutions that provide decision-makers with timely, accurate, decision-ready information. This ranges from custom dashboards powered by standardized Application Programming Interface (APIs) to location-based/geographic analysis and insights enhanced by machine learning/artificial intelligence and underpinned by data coming from sources as broad as Earth Observation satellites in the sky to Internet of Things devices and social, health, and government authorities on the ground.

Just as location was central to understanding the pandemic, location is also central to the concept of the Metaverse. You can think of Metaverse ‘spaces’ (the Metaverse equivalent of websites) as massive databases of 3D semantic environments designed for efficient streaming. In many ways, the current hype about the Metaverse is an extension of what the geospatial industry has already been championing as city-or statewide Digital Twin technologies currently in use for optimized citizen services, increased citizen engagement, cutting-edge modeling and simulations, and more.

In many ways, COVID accelerated not only the mainstream uptake of geospatial technologies and principles, but also the wider recognition of the advantages of using location as an organizing principle when undertaking data integration and analysis.

And, of course, at the heart of all this data integration is the recognition of the importance of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) information powered by standards.

If a Metaverse is an extension of the real-world, then, obviously, it will be based on Space and time — a speciality of the geospatial community! Any activity in the Metaverse will require knowing where things are and how to get there. The geospatial industry is, therefore, in a great position to provide the necessary tools and accumulated knowledge needed to navigate, analyze, and make sense of the Metaverse. That same geospatial expertise will also be critical for linking and crossing between the virtual and real worlds.

The move to digital and Metaverse

Indeed, the pandemic, its related social distancing/ isolation policies, and the large sections of the workforce pushed into remote work, have all accelerated the digital transformation of our social and working lives. And some of these new methods for online collaboration and engagement are here to stay. It’s not coincidental that talk of ‘the Metaverse’ bubbled up during the pandemic. The growing interest in the Metaverse is partly powered by a desire to improve today’s online social experiences by making them feel more immersive and more natural.

As such, many of the OGC standards (3D, CityGML, Augmented Reality ML, and GeoPose to only name a few) will be critical to the Metaverse ecosystem — but more importantly critical to delivering a Metaverse that is open to all — a key value of OGC.

FAIR — Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable

There’s never been a better time to be in ‘geospatial’.

Because of that, there are several technology trends that OGC is leading. At the most basic technical level,

Beyond that, the trend of interdisciplinary data integration continues to accelerate and hence there is a growing market for ‘Analysis Ready Data (ARD).’

From our perspective, this highlights the need for standards to enable, support, and document ARD, so that it’s not only Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) but also trusted. The need for FAIR and trusted data and processing also applies to geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI) as well as the related field of linked data and the semantic web.

At the geospatial technology market level, we are experiencing an unprecedented expansion. Geospatial is emerging from its niche and becoming part of mainstream business. This presents several challenges and opportunities for OGC. On the challenges side, industry — backed by higher than ever investment in geospatial - will likely respond with the development of commercial solutions geared toward quick returns on investment, rather than a deliberate commitment to foster longer-lasting interoperability. Simultaneously, technologies have partly emerged to a level that allows rapid integration, though this should not be mistaken for sustainable interoperability.

Every decision we make depends on data integration and analysis.

Today with geospatial becoming mainstream, those decisions are increasingly dependent on location and spatial correlations.

Standards work is never ‘done’

Standards are the solution to data integration problems. By their very nature they support the interoperability of disparate systems, allowing data to pass between them with minimal effort. OGC believes that for standards to be successful, they also need to be open. Open Standards, such as those from OGC, are freely accessible, publicly available, vendor-neutral, and not constrained by license fees or patents. Open Standards reduce the barriers for anyone to access and share data.

Standards, however, are not the end goal. They are only the means! The goal is to solve the complex problems of our times, the problems that can only be solved if we are tackling them collectively. Take climate change for example. No single entity has all the data, systems, expertise, or processes. Interdisciplinary, collaborative approaches are absolutely critical when it comes to addressing a topic concerning such a complex and all-encompassing system as the climate. In many ways, climate change is THE use case for interoperability, and hence a great opportunity for geospatial to make a tremendous positive impact on the world.

As a geospatial community, we use our expertise in Space and time to connect, not just systems and technologies, but people and communities.

We already have the expertise in data integration, diverse technologies, cross-disciplinary interoperability, and big data handling. That’s exactly why we are also passionate and committed to standards.

Because of that, the work of a standards body is never really ‘done’. OGC, of course, has achieved much in the 25+ years of its existence, but as long as technology evolves, so too must the related standards. We continue to standardize APIs and the models behind them, to lead on Cloud-native geospatial workflows and applications, to drive innovation in new domains, such as New Space, Digital Twins, the Metaverse and even planetary exploration. But OGC is about more than just standards: we are about problem solving.

There’s no better time to be in geospatial!

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

On the opportunities side, the abundance of new data and players — coupled with countless domains that could be disrupted by incorporating geospatial — underscore the need for trusted standards to

accelerate data integration, and hence accelerate impact! This is driving the OGC community to accelerate the development and testing of our standards to remain in-step with technology changes. We have to be more collaborative than ever with developers, users and decision makers; we have to leverage our partnerships in various domains for accelerated targeted development and uptake; and we have to ensure that our standards are more modular.

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

there’s a shift towards web APIs as the dominant methodology for interacting with data — hence we’ve built the OGC API family of standards— based on the popular OpenAPI specification — to enable any developer to easily use location in their application or service. OGC is also investing in a ‘Cloud native’ approach to geospatial, where geospatial standards and workflows are designed with Cloud technologies as the primary use-case. These two developments alone are a huge shift for the industry.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

The Massive Need for Innovation in Space-Based Missions

BY MAJ GEN (RETD) CLINT CROSIER

C

Director, Aerospace & Satellite Solutions, Amazon Web Services

OVID has accelerated a digital transformation across aerospace as well as many other industries, putting us several years ahead of where we otherwise expected to be on that journey. As organizations have pivoted quickly to respond, they have adopted Cloud to power remote work, tele-health, and distance learning. As a result, cloud computing is moving faster than ever before, helping to push collaboration and communication at scale.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

More broadly, in the satellite industry, customers are seeing the value of the Cloud to collaborate, streamline operations, and grow and scale in response to evolving customer needs.

One benefit of the AWS (Amazon Web Services) Cloud is its global network, which allows satellite customers to access their data when and where they need it most. Global connectivity enables global collaboration and global response.

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Many satellite companies are turning to Cloud to create digital operations centers or transition their existing operations. Cloud capabilities, like high performance computing, help engineers streamline satellite design, development, and simulation, which allows them to continue product development and testing from any location.

It is also clear that the rapid innovation we see happening across the industry will require a skilled workforce if it is to be sustained.

Ground capabilities

Satellites are being used by more and more businesses, universities, and governments for a variety of applications, including weather forecasting, Earth imaging, and communications. To do this today,

customers must build or lease ground antennas to communicate with the satellites. This is a significant undertaking and cost because customers often require antennas in multiple countries to download data when and where they need it, without waiting for the satellite to pass over a desired location. And the antennas are just the beginning of the infrastructure requirements: customers need servers, storage, and networking in close proximity to the antennas to process, store, and transport satellite data from the satellite, plus business workflows to organize, structure, and route the data before it can be used.

This activity requires significant capital investments and operational costs.

AWS is helping lower this barrier to entry with AWS Ground Station, which lets customers control satellite communications, process data, and scale their operations without having to worry about

Virtualized ground networks such as AWS Ground Station help customers uplink their Space data directly into the Cloud faster, and then process and transport that data around the world with low latency and a high level of security. This allows customers to reduce data processing and analysis times for use cases like weather prediction or natural disaster imagery from hours to minutes or seconds.

Global collaboration

Due to the global nature of the Space industry, global collaboration is imperative for long-term success.

We are seeing countries coordinate on Space policy around Space exploration initiatives. International agreements and partnerships can help to provide a safe environment for all nations to explore and use Outer Space. For example, as of January 2022, 16 countries had signed the Artemis Accords, an international agreement between governments participating in the Artemis Program, a NASA-led program to return humans to the Moon by 2025.

We also recently announced Licensing Accelerator, a new feature for AWS Ground Station customers. AWS Ground Station is a managed service that lets customers control satellite communications, process satellite data, and scale their satellite operations. Licensing Accelerator, which is free of charge, removes the guesswork out of the spectrum licensing process and provides a guide that satellite operators can use to more efficiently secure the spectrum licenses they need for their operations and missions. AWS Ground Station customers simply come on board Licensing Accelerator, answer a few questions, and then they get

a customized step-by-step guide with consolidated checklists, plus links to free resources, for their licensing needs. Leveraging the latest centrally located information provided by Licensing Accelerator, customers can launch and scale their spacecraft operations faster, mitigate launch delay risks, and reduce their capital spend.

Earth Observation to protect our planet

Space data gives us detailed information about our planet, which we can only get from the vantage point of Space. Advanced Cloud tools, and resources such as the Registry of Open Data on AWS, provide valuable access and collaboration capabilities to a variety of organizations looking to study, understand, and protect our planet.

This information can help us improve life here on Earth. For example, scientists can study catalogues of satellite imagery to track changes in coastal erosion over time, or download information from orbiting satellites in real time to respond to flooding and severe storms. Government organizations, nonprofits, and commercial start-ups around the globe are using Earth Observation (EO) to help monitor extreme weather, safeguard water supplies, measure greenhouse gas emissions, improve crop yields, and more.

Over the past 10 years, the Space landscape has changed dramatically, creating an enormous need for innovation in Space-based missions. At AWS, 90 percent of what we build is a result of what customers ask for. We are constantly innovating along with them to enhance their missions.

AWS stands ready to help remove the limits to connect Space to Earth by re-imagining how organizations can access, operate, explore and further discover Space to build a better world.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

In this same spirit, AWS has developed statements of strategic intent with some countries, including Greece and Singapore. AWS is committed to supporting government and commercial customers around the world to achieve their Space goals. These international agreements include specific initiatives designed to support the growth, education, training and experience of professionals in the aerospace community.

Virtualized ground networks such as the AWS Ground Station help customers uplink their Space data directly into the Cloud faster, and then process and transport that data around the world with low latency and a high level of security.

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

building or managing their own ground station infrastructure. With AWS Ground Station, customers have direct access to the AWS Global Cloud Infrastructure, including over 200 AWS services and a low-latency global fiber network. Customers pay only for the actual antenna time used, and can rely on the global footprint of ground stations to download data when and where they need it.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Space Remains a Very Strong Economic Growth Multiplier

BY MIKE GREENLEY

T

CEO, MDA

here’s a palpable excitement about Space these days. A sense that big things are happening.

This is driven in part by awareness of the enormous impact that satellite technologies have on our lives — activity in Space is bringing access to communications to people no matter where they live; Earth Observation (EO) is allowing us to monitor all kinds of variables around the world and detect changes bringing new insights to decision-makers in multiple sectors. In part it stems from a growing understanding of the economic impact of Space: high-quality jobs, strong supply chains, strong economic benefits with very strong economic growth multipliers, and new business opportunities in areas like Space-based manufacturing or Space-mining. Then there’s the fact that some big names have ventures in Space that are making headlines. And of course, Space is just cool.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Space industry outlook

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In fact, we are on the cusp of a New Space age, driven in large part by accessibility. The cost of launch has gone down year over year, for a number of years now. If we go back to the 1990s or the early 2000s, the cost of launch might have been USD 18,000 per kg to get something into Space, compared to the current cost of slightly less than USD 2,000 per kg. And the launch community suggests that maybe, in time, it can come down another 10x to under USD 200 per kg. It is a game changer. In the

first decades that Canada was in Space, there were just a few Space-faring nations, now there are 90, and thousands of commercial companies.

So, it’s no wonder that invested capital in Space has doubled every year for the last four — even through the pandemic. The global Space economy is now worth USD 450 billion a year, and by the 2030s is forecast to reach more than USD 1.5 trillion. For perspective, that is roughly the size of the current GDP of my country, Canada.

Now, with multiple countries and companies participating in this domain, as Space becomes more congested and competitive, we will need to be more organized about how we all operate together and how we take care of the resources that we already have in Space, just as we do with our skies and seas on Earth.

Value of Earth Observation

The evolution of satellite technology is stunning... and accelerating. In the constellation era, companies with bold vision and a mission-critical mindset are opening the aperture wider to reach more of

the world, changing the way we communicate on Earth, through connections we make in Space; changing how much, how often and how well we see the world.

These advanced Space-based observation and communication technologies are improving our ability to monitor and analyze changes on our planet and communicate with each other about them.

Building on the strong heritage of the RADARSAT program, we are continuing to advance our synthetic aperture radar (SAR) capabilities with our next generation CHORUS constellation, which will initially include C-band and X-band SAR satellites, and provide radar imaging capacity that will range from broad area coverage with a 700km-wide swath to sub-metre very high resolution spotlight images.

Looking further ahead, industry is exploring applications that will feature multi-sensor fusion, onboard processing (rather than sending data back to Earth for processing), and many more innovations. Being able to fuse information more rapidly, from multiple sensor types and sources, will support the creation of richer information products that provide enhanced insights to our customers.

One challenge for all of us operating in the sector is helping people to understand the magnitude of the offer. When we consider technological advancements in EO, the uptake is there from government, defense and businesses. However, there’s still a bridge to be crossed for

the broader commercial population, and even the civilian industrial population, to realize the rich business insights, the life insights, they can get from Space-based EO data, with the right applications and software environments which allow them to make the most of this information. But we know that innovation drives demand and demand drives capacity: Space-based communication was originally mainly used by governments and big industry like broadcasting, it now can be used by people simply looking to connect to the internet.

We anticipate that the impact of and interest in advanced Space-based technology will continue to accelerate. MDA is leaning in. And we aren’t the only ones. There are already thousands of companies operating in this Space. Hundreds of new ones are coming onstream every year, bringing innovation and opportunities. Proven companies like ours, that have been around for decades, are creating collaborations with next generation Space companies, with new ideas and new financing, to offer new capabilities to the market. It’s an exciting time. A time of opportunity. A time for discoveries.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

This has enormous implications and benefits for humankind. Just look at climate change, for example. Of the 50 different climate change variables that we need to track, over half of them can be best or only be monitored from Space. The pandemic provides another salient example.

Because of Space-based Earth Observation and communication technology, we are able to monitor transportation, oil supplies, immigration patterns and supply chains. We are able to connect people from around the world, enabling instant communications and near real-time delivery of satellite data and analytics.

Our understanding of a myriad of other issues can be advanced too, including sensitive land and coastal ecosystems, deforestation and illegal fishing, natural disasters, movement of people, and national defense, to name a few.

What’s coming next

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Interest in advanced Space-based technology will continue to accelerate. MDA is leaning in. And we aren’t the only ones. There are already thousands of companies operating in this Space. Hundreds of new ones are coming onstream every year, bringing innovation and opportunities. Proven companies, that have been around for decades, are creating collaborations with next generation Space companies to offer new capabilities to the market. It’s an exciting time. A time of opportunity. A time for discoveries.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Digital Adoption is an Evolution, Not a Revolution

BY THEO AGELOPOULOS

Senior Director, Architecture & Engineering Design Strategy, Autodesk

O

ur customers have been on a digital transformation journey from CAD to Building Information Modeling (BIM).

BIM is a digital process and the foundation to enable efficient delivery, from planning all the way through to operations and maintenance. To digitally transform the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry, one must adopt BIM.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

There are various phases of the BIM process, beginning with digital planning and design, digital construction and ending up in digital operations.

At the core of the BIM process is a rich and intelligent 3D model, CAD still plays a role in the BIM process except now it’s a 2D documentation derivative representing a point of view at a single point in time. COVID saw an uptick in the demand for remote working and connecting different disciplines together through the project lifecycle. The Cloud has allowed us to better connect different processes and people, both in offices and in the field. This demand has accelerated the next wave of adoption and digital transformation. In the past two years, we have seen significant ramp in the adoption of Autodesk’s Cloud technologies because many of our customers had to rapidly distribute their workforce in a coordinated manner while managing their project risk.

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There are several independent industry reports that claim digital transformation of the AEC industry has accelerated by three to five years because of COVID, I believe it and see that happening before my eyes.

The pandemic served as a forcing mechanism in accelerating the AEC industry’s adoption of remote working leveraging digital collaboration technologies.

Even post-pandemic it has permanently changed the way AEC professionals work and collaborate forever.

Adoption of Digital Twins

In the development of a capital asset, from planning to design to operations, most of the digital maturity has primarily happened in the digital design and

engineering over the past 20 plus years. Over the past five years we’ve witnessed rapid adoption in the construction space, there continues to be a tremendous amount of capital invested in digital construction. Now we are entering the next phase of innovation in digital operations, which is why we are seeing the emergence of Digital Twins.

This is one of the primary reasons Autodesk has been working closely with Esri over the past five years to connect our asset scale Digital Twins with their macro level Digital Twins from a geospatial perspective. If you digitally transform the way capital assets are delivered — using a BIM process — you should always end up with a derivative Digital Twin, which then optimizes the way you operate and maintain that capital asset through its lifetime. As you operate and maintain that asset in the Digital Twin environment, and look towards renovation and retrofit, the collected data and insights should re-feed the BIM process for future renovation and retrofit. We will finally close the loop of moving data and information through the capital asset lifecycle to drive knowledge and better outcomes.

Stimulus measures and tech adoption

Governments around the world, including those in the United States, Germany, Japan, Australia, India, and China, to name a few, made major stimulus investments in their infrastructure, primarily to create jobs and keep their economies moving forward. This has only further accelerated the digital transformation of the infrastructure industry.

In the United States alone, the infrastructure bill uplifts infrastructure spend by USD 500 billion, with key investments in roads and highways, rail, water infrastructure, water storage, public transit, and airports.

We should all be excited about the infrastructure stimulus bill, not just because of the amount of money that is being put into these different markets. What is very encouraging is the current

Historically we have seen stimulus investments drive an early uptick in construction for shovel ready projects, we should also realize the benefits digital innovation to execute them better. As we continue forward we will also see new projects entering the planning and design phase, driving more adoption of digital technologies leveraging design automation through AI/ML to design better, more high quality and sustainable assets.

I spent some time on Capitol Hill in Washington trying to help educate key stakeholders and policymakers about the value of digital technologies. I was so excited to see how receptive government has become in driving innovation and change in our industry. I expect to see more digital technology adoption in AEC over the next five years than ever before.

Things never move as fast as any of us want them to; digital adoption is an evolution, not a revolution. But it feels like there’s a fundamental shift happening, partly because there’s digital transformation happening in a lot of industries at the same time, and our industry is going to benefit from this momentum.

Tech for sustainable infrastructure

Over the last decade the AEC industry has been primarily focused on building sustainability, and with good reason as buildings generate nearly 40 percent of annual global CO2 emissions. We have seen standards evolve to help engineers and architects deliver more efficient buildings, and with the broad adoption of BIM coupled with analysis has helped the AEC industry adopt more sustainable practices in design and build.

Metaverse enabling the infra industry

Metaverse is the next major buzz, the question is what problem are we really trying to solve for with

Metaverse? Certainly at Autodesk, we have already been doing things that lend themselves to the vision of a Metaverse. Our customers have been using tools to model different types of infrastructure and building assets and putting them into an AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) experience to solve different types of problems. We’ve seen customer deploy solutions that allow for virtual training to virtual experiences to help make design and operational decisions.

At Autodesk we have always been focused on enabling our customers flexibility in using their Autodesk design and model data across multiple vendor environments. Whether it's Unity, or Unreal, or Nvidia, they have all been consuming our content to build Metaverse experiences in many ways.

Our goal would be similar to what we are doing with Esri — we want to enable federated data environments that customers can assemble the way they need, in the case of Esri, it’s bringing together BIM and GIS data. We absolutely want to deliver to the industry best design, construction and operations platform for capital assets — but want to leverage the power of the BIM process to connect the various phases of the project lifecycle that eliminates data redundancy and enables data reuse. Our digital Cloud platform to support this experience is Autodesk Forge, our Cloud offerings are all built on the same Forge platform. Forge fuels the BIM process and manages our data across the project lifecycle and will feed the Metaverse. It allows our customers to create a unified data and user experience. The Metaverse to me is just an extension of what we are already doing in driving the industry’s digital transformation. We are all participants in the broader Metaverse, our job is to enable our customers to essentially get access to the data they need to build different experiences that bring value.

The jury is out on what those high value experiences are, I think our customer and the industry will decide where the value exists and that’s going to be an exciting time for the AEC industry!

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

That maturity in buildings has made its way into infrastructure. Regardless of the asset type when you begin with a rich BIM model it allows you to analyze and simulate the impact of different materials, different locations and different designs. Once in operations we can then use sensors to measure things like if a particular infrastructure or building asset is performing at the level we had planned for in-design.

IoT (Internet of Things), with Digital Twin platforms that allow us to create a digital replica of the physical world will transform the way we optimize operational assets, and those insights will also drive major changes in how we plan and design for the future.

If you digitally transform the way construction projects are delivered, you should always end up with a derivative Digital Twin, which optimizes the way you operate and maintain a capital asset.

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

administrations USD 100 million investment in digital construction programs.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

When it comes to managing safety, 3D modeling can be invaluable because it allows you to build a Digital Twin and assess different scenarios. AI and 3D are becoming mainstream and Cyclomedia uses both these technologies extensively. Consequently, the company is well positioned to support both governments and companies in their ongoing digital transformation.

Instant intelligence trend

The world is moving towards real-time intelligence and this is a trend that is here to stay. Developments like autonomous driving, which require real-time data (for example, on road safety) are behind this trend. Real-time intelligence requires context and this is what geospatial data provides. We have several exciting initiatives in the pipeline to meet this market demand by increasing the frequency of our data capture and providing on-demand insights.

The Rise of 3D Geospatial Data

BY FRANK PAULI

W ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

CEO, Cyclomedia

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e are seeing growing customer interest in and need for geospatial data, which is driven by the digital transformation taking place within companies and governments. Data acts as the foundation of many processes that make cities smarter and companies more efficient. We are also seeing a higher adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing technologies, which allow users to extract more valuable information from particular datasets, helping them find smart new solutions.

Another important development is the rise of 3D geospatial data. This 3D data is no longer just a ‘nice to have’ thing; it has become an important part of business processes as it provides added value.

Data is no longer just a ‘nice to have’ thing; it has become an important part of business processes because it provides added value.

We are active in various verticals where data analytics is crucial. Our focus is on developing technology-driven innovations that provide solutions across these verticals. For instance, we are assisting telecom companies with insights for their FTTX fiber rollout projects. We are also helping cities with analytics to improve road safety and accomplish the European Union’s goal of ‘Vision Zero’ — zero fatalities and serious injuries on roads by 2050.

Bringing data together

Today, we see a need in the market to do more, do it faster, and do it at a lower cost. Technologies like AI and cloud computing are addressing this need. There is also increasing attention around crowdsourcing.

New types of data and new ways of collecting it are emerging, driven by developments around autonomous driving — vehicles collecting all kinds of sensor data. The data capture capabilities of mobile phones are also contributing to this. Now, the key is to find a way to bring all this data on one platform to derive insights for market-specific use cases.

3D data challenge

3D data enables the creation of true Digital Twins.

However, making this data a part of everyday work processes is a challenge. Another challenge is combining the growing volume of data of different qualities and forms, from different sources, and harnessing it for new applications and solutions to create safer and more sustainable cities, and more efficient ways of working. In 2022, Cyclomedia will create a Digital Twin of the Netherlands in 3D. We are convinced this will have a big impact.

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Drones for the Geospatial Industry

BY DR. CHRISTOPH STRECHA

T

Founder & CEO, Pix4D

oday, since drones have become an established tool for surveying, the rise of handheld photogrammetry and LiDAR solutions will revolutionize the geospatial industry in the coming future. We, at Pix4D, have been using phone-based photogrammetry for years and are glad to see others doing the same today, thanks to the power and camera quality of new-age phones.

Phone-based photogrammetry is possible partially due to the inclusion of LiDAR or ToF (timeof-flight) sensors. One obstacle, which concerns GPS accuracy, has been overcome with products such as viDoc RTK rover, a portable RTK (real-time kinetic positioning) GPS rover that connects to NTRIP networks. Designed in Germany, it provides RTK data during single-point collection. We expect to see widespread adoption of such products in the future.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Rise of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

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In the last few years, drone or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) regulations have been standardized and pilots are being held accountable for their actions.

Therefore, today, UAVs are increasingly being used for 3D scanning and reality capture. This change

in regulations has happened along with a rise in scalability of UAV operations, which, when coupled with enhanced software capabilities, can lead to better outcomes and returns on investment.

The evolution of distributed computing, Cloud processes, and common data environments is leading us to a point where we can collect more and more data. This offers new opportunities for critical applications, such as tracking site progress. Data collection itself is becoming cheaper, without its quality being compromised, thanks to consumer drones and phones with better capabilities.

As far as the challenge of linking all this data is concerned, common data environments and cloud computing ensure that drones can be optimally used in the geospatial industry. These tools enable easy sharing and communication, which means that multiple stakeholders can work on the same project, even when only one of them is on site. We are already seeing geospatial specialists take advantage of this — we have our own specialized Cloud platform to allow ease of data sharing and analysis. The next obstacle will be ensuring standardized formats and connections between platform and software components to further digitize our world.

Data collection itself is becoming cheaper, without its quality being compromised, thanks to consumer drones and phones with better capabilities.

Impact of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies

Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies are making a massive difference to many industries, primarily due to the sheer speed at which they are being developed.

At Pix4D, we use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to inform and improve our algorithms and enjoy the virtuous cycle of AI, where it improves with continued use and exposure. A specific, real-world use involves processing point clouds with PIX4Dmatic, where our software can automatically use sky and noise filters to remove any distortion. The imagery is collected with drones and the output can be attained easily with less need for editing, which saves time for the entire project.

For our other products, we use specialized algorithms to streamline workflows, such as PIX4Dsurvey, where the software has automatic road marking and identification of manhole covers when vectorizing a terrain. This technology makes work easier for human operators by increasing efficiency and overall savings.

Collect terrestrial data with PIX4Dcatch, aerial data with drones, process it in PIX4Dmatic, and make it CAD-ready in PIX4Dsurvey.

A complete workflow for projects of any scale.

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Better Data for Better Decisions

BY GEERT DE COENSEL

I

Founder & CEO, Merkator

n the past few years, the pace of innovation has accelerated. However, there are several challenges that need to be addressed related to continuous quality monitoring of infrastructure data. For instance, in the telecom and utilities markets that we serve, we have seen a growing pain of degrading data quality in the existing static inventory solutions. Bad data leads to bad decisions. It also results in underinvestment in NextGen inventory systems. This is where Digital Twin technology can be of immense help.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Digital Twins are not new — probing technology has been around for more than a decade. These digital models can be of great advantage, because in our world they provide much more than a good 3D-view of infrastructure. What we want to do is to be able to truly ‘read’ the network status in real time (such as fiberpaths), using network probing technology directly fetched from active network devices.

By doing so, active devices and passive devices (infrastructure) fuse into one environment. In this way, documentation errors are detected automatically, leading to much better data quality, which eventually leads to better operational decisions.

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Today, we find Digital Twins in all industries.

The Digital Twin technology is essentially an easier form of abstraction to explain the challenge of accurate digital data in all representation forms, which needs to be as current as possible.

A gap of months between the data being collected from the field and then being updated in the digital inventory system is no longer viable or, for that matter, acceptable. Ultimately, we should come to a point where the network inventory system is warned about a data anomaly within seconds so corrective measures can be taken.

A gap of months between data being collected from the field and then being pushed into the digital inventory system is no longer viable or, for that matter, acceptable.

Gaining from Metaverse

Recently there has been a lot of hype surrounding Metaverse. I think basically Metaverse is nothing more than a huge marketing initiative of one of the biggest social media players, in order to get more control and insights about consumers worldwide. Geospatial data, 2D and especially 3D, play a key role in this ecosystem. The concept of Metaverse turns our world into one big Digital Twin in the end. In my view, the question that we have to ask ourselves is: Do we really want that as a global community? I am personally not sure, but this is not a technical discussion.

Demonstrating capabilities

Today, Merkator is already an essential part of the primary process of our key customers. This is something we would like to extend to the international stage. When we demonstrate our capabilities, people get excited. We do this in a smart way by using the world’s best GIS capabilities from vendors such as Esri. As far as working with the local government is concerned, we currently serve more than 150 Smart Cities. So, innovation tracks like this motivate us to step up and aim for success, not just locally but also in the international markets.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Our Goal is to Make LiDAR Ubiquitous systems to address our most pressing problems, which includes mitigation of climate events and trends. The transportation sector is a major contributor to pollution, and accounts for one-fifth of CO2 emissions globally. According to the INRIX 2020 Global Traffic Scorecard, in the United States alone, congestion — often due to transportation infrastructure inefficiency — cost USD 305 billion in 2020. The passage of comprehensive infrastructure legislation in 2021 would now see increasing change in the adoption of sustainable solutions. This includes innovations to reduce congestion and advance electric vehicles.

LiDAR for a sustainable future

BY DR. TED TEWKSBURY

T ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

CEO, Velodyne

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hroughout 2021, we saw supply chain operations facing immense strain from high demand and massive disruptions caused by growing port congestion and manufacturing delays. Logistics and warehouse processes were pushed to fulfill orders faster and more efficiently. This quickly led to more companies benefitting from the adoption of Industry 4.0 automation initiatives, which can be advanced with implementation of LiDAR. Mckinsey found that Industry 4.0 helped 94 percent of companies keep their operations running during the COVID crisis.

These initiatives haven’t slowed down, and we foresee continued growth in the digital economy.

There is also a growing commitment from governments to rebuild outdated transportation infrastructure and modernize

As we look at a world with digitized and connected vehicles and infrastructure, we know LiDAR will play a critical role. Velodyne and its partners are currently leading the industry in deploying LiDAR technology to support a more robust, sustainable transportation system.

The use of LiDAR in infrastructure systems and 3D mapping will be central to making digital cities a reality. Velodyne’s 3D mapping, surveying and modeling indoor and outdoor environments are valuable to companies and municipalities for city planning.

Velodyne’s sensors deliver the

As we look at a world with digitized and connected vehicles and infrastructure, we know LiDAR will play a critical role in.

accuracy and resolution needed for municipalities to measure and analyze their environments with high accuracy for city planning efforts, including for intersections, bike paths, and roadways. The versatile systems can also be configured to mobile mapping needs.

LiDAR allows companies an efficient and cost-effective way to map large areas in hours, rather than weeks.

LiDAR also has the power to dramatically improve the safety, sustainability and efficiency of a world in motion. There has been tremendous work done by industry to support advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous vehicles, as well as the infrastructure that will support integration of connected vehicles. While we cannot speak to when fully selfdriving vehicles will be deployed at scale, updates to performance standards and testing will be critical to progress.

LiDAR for smart infrastructure The growth in LiDAR is driven by industrial automation and robotics, intelligent infrastructure and smart cities, which are positioned to be the largest and fastest growing LiDAR markets in the coming years.

We are already working with a number of customers integrating LiDAR for robotics and last-mile delivery purposes.

Currently, cost is seen as a challenge for LiDAR. Our goal is to make LiDAR ubiquitous — to do that, the cost needs to go down and our technology is set up to do just this, whereas some competitors are not. Within industrial automation, robotics, and Smart Cities, we are deploying high performance sensors at an affordable price point to accelerate mass adoption.

BY JUERGEN DOLD

The next step is enabling greater levels of autonomy, which requires robotic applications along with simultaneous location and mapping solutions.

This is what we mean by ‘smart digital reality’ which has been Hexagon’s vision for more than a decade — fusing the physical world with its accurate digital counterpart along with digital processes that drive increasing levels of automation and ultimately, sustainable outcomes for our customers. Our HxDR digital reality platform is a great example of a collaborative solution that enables users to converge and visualize almost any geospatial or reality capture data to build business processes that overcome challenges such as those related to developing green cities.

The Metaverse helps in driving digitalization, thereby driving new business models in the consumer market. On the other hand, current demand for our smart digital realities comes mostly from professional markets. In my view, there will come a point where consumer and professional demand for digital realities will converge.

s digitalization has progressed, Hexagon is driving the adoption of a ‘smart digital reality’ that is simpler, easier to access and more affordable. To that end, we have focused our innovation around the miniaturization and simplification of reality capture technologies. The most recent example of this strategy is the Leica BLK product line. For us, at Hexagon AB, this was (and still is) the most disruptive reality capture portfolio available.

The Metaverse helps in driving digitalization, thereby driving new business models in the consumer market.

The idea of a smart digital reality goes beyond Digital Twins. It can however be likened to a Metaverse. Smart digital realities bring together people, places and things in a 3D representation of the physical environment where people can interact through information-sharing to create new processes that solve some of our most challenging business problems. A smart digital reality is a part of the Metaverse that will always have a real, one-to-one connection with the physical world.

Multiple methods

The Metaverse is basically a combination of multiple methods.

So are smart digital realities. For example, in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry, we build simulations to create models that can help us find solutions to problems in the real world. Thus, it involves the interaction of multiple disciplines on one platform to get a common view from different angles for different kinds of users. In the Metaverse there can be separate platforms for shoppers, entertainment consumers and real estate buyers for instance. But again, a platform like HxDR is necessary.

That is why we feel that we don’t need to completely change what we do but just keep innovating.

Multiple business models in one

We have the most powerful and sophisticated sensors and software to capture and update reality. That’s where we lead the wave. But we are also working on new business models that will help us keep more customers up to date, including data and information licensing and processing services. All of this data enables the creation of smart digital realities — accurate representations of the physical space that can be updated in real time.

Growing industry

Today, several players in the industry, such as those providing Cloud services, are shifting their attention towards the Metaverse.

Hexagon has been pioneering this space for ten to twenty years.

Two decades ago, when Google Earth and Microsoft Bing started, photogrammetry, which wasn’t too well known, suddenly gained great momentum. Today, we have digital reality which can be used to build smart processes. The resulting smart digital reality will end up accelerating the pace of adoption of geospatial solutions.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

A

Metaverse, the driving force

President, GSI, Hexagon AB

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Building a Smart Digital Reality

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

The Importance of Accuracy and Precision in Curating a Source of Truth

BY LAUREN SPIEGEL

Senior Vice President of Product, SafeGraph

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ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

ocation data is becoming fundamental to decision-making for businesses, and the demand for location and business analytics has taken off. As more companies become data savvy, having an accurate, up-to-date dataset about physical places has value for a growing set of use cases.

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Consequently, a majority of data analysis platforms are developing native geospatial capabilities in-house; Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery and Alteryx have all incorporated geospatial functions into their platforms. We expect this trend to continue as more and more users now want to perform geospatial data analysis alongside other data science work, instead of moving between different platforms. As a result, business intelligence companies are leaning into geospatial data science and are increasingly bringing in specialized talent to do so. You will even see some of these data companies now advertising for ‘Software Engineer - Geospatial’ roles to build these features.

Breaking the silo

When you sell data, you are selling an ingredient. By developing software tools, a location data company can build a full solution and quickly give customers insights from the data. This can really be beneficial

for companies that do not have in-house geospatial data science resources. The downside of this approach is that you are now presenting a siloed view of the data. For more sophisticated users who already have a preferred data analysis environment, providing the data itself gives them more flexibility and the ability to glean deeper insights by combining with other data.

This is where SafeGraph focuses its time and resources.

We are entirely focused on data curation to empower data scientists with accurate and up to date information about physical places. Our customer use cases include site selection, marketing/ strategic planning, investment analysis, mapping, etc., as the industry continues to grow. For instance, recently, we have seen ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) budgets allocated towards location data to understand the carbon footprint of business operations.

BI companies are now leaning into geospatial data science, and are increasingly bringing in specialized talent to do so.

Data on-demand

Customers want accurate comprehensive coverage from one data provider. Typically, customers want a long-term license so they have the stability to build their own pipelines and products around the data. For one-off projects, we see customers wanting the flexibility of on-demand purchases. In the next five years, I expect data buyers will want deeper attributes about a given place as they build more complex machine learning models.

Data accuracy and precision are equally important. Many people believe they are synonyms for each other but, in reality, they are two different characteristics that are critical for geospatial data to be effective in analytics. Accuracy refers to how close to truth a data point is, while precision refers to the ability to reproduce that measurement. SafeGraph’s Places dataset is foundational to our other datasets and is built to optimize both accuracy and precision. This means we diligently curate our point of interest (POI) data to be a true representation of the physical world, and the resulting accuracy and precision are carried over into our Geometry, Patterns, and Spend products. As a result, our customers are able to trust that places are where the data says they are, and are not generated in error.

This gives them the confidence to use our POIs, polygons, foot traffic and transaction data related to a POI in their business decision-making.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Challenges and opportunities

Better HD mapping requires collecting tremendous quantities of data. Moving that data around and processing it in a timely manner is a major challenge. At Mosaic, we are striving to image the world in unprecedented detail at the highest possible speed, with minimum user requirements in terms of setup, operation, and data management. We have a number of exciting things around the corner that will ensure that the end solution, be it segmentation, routing or change detection, can be derived as quickly as possible.

Connecting Two Worlds

BY JEFFREY MARTIN

T

CEO, Mosaic

he general trend of automation in the evolution of human technology has allowed us to do away with the repetitive tasks that humans were forced to perform. Even now, a lot of infrastructure inspection is done by people driving down a street and finding issues that need to be examined closely. The opening of GPS data to civilians by Bill Clinton in 1996 was perhaps the single biggest opportunity for mapping. Further, digital imaging, LiDAR, the blossoming of artificial intelligence, and the ability to weave all of these together has led to new use cases, inventions, and economic benefits.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Gradual advancement

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Cameras are forever improving, but the curve has flattened and we are reaching a limit in terms of what today’s optics can accomplish with the smallest pixels and image sensors with resolution and dynamic range. LiDAR and other types of 3D sensing are maturing quickly. In the future, we will see more solutions offering real-time intelligence and metadata. We will also see a broadening of second-degree services as more base layer solutions become available.

We have been building ever more detailed aerial and ground-level photographic maps. Mobile mapping using cameras offers a wealth of information that is not available via laser scanners, drones, or aerial images. As it becomes easier to collect this data, more and more applications will come up.

Today, we see companies either doing everything on their own, or paying for a service that can provide the data that they need. A lot of private data exists, which is not shared, and a lot of work is duplicated by competing efforts. We must explore a more interesting federated solution that could allow all parties to benefit, while allowing the users to still compete meaningfully.

Mainstreaming of technology

Virtual reality as a technology hasn’t yet made its way into our lives. With the current interest in this thing that we call ‘the Metaverse’, there are a few companies investing heavily into it, but we don't know what it is yet. Until personal augmented reality devices are able to properly map our surroundings, HD/3D/ 360º mobile mapping will play an essential role in merging the physical world with this new world we are imagining.

In the future, we will see more solutions offering real-time intelligence and metadata. We will also see a broadening of second-degree services as more base layer solutions become available.

Emerging trends

We see a trend of consolidation, vertical integration, and previously competing or incompatible services being rolled up into more streamlined offerings, especially subscription-based services and Cloud processing of data. Currently, file management, processing of raw data into the final product, and presentation of that data can be cumbersome for customers who want to actually own their data.

We see the market streamlining itself in this way, offering more convenient solutions in terms of data collection, processing, and usage.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

CREATING IMPACT: INNOVATION IN THE SPACE ECONOMY The Space economy is accelerating and diversifying as a wide range of entrepreneurs, backed by government and private investment, bring new ideas into the market. By Kevin M. O’Connell

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ardly a day passes without an important and inspiring Space development, be it exploration of Mars, increased human spaceflight, improved communications, navigation, and analytic insights from Space-based assets here on Earth, and many others. As the global Space economy heads rapidly toward its first half-trillion dollars of value, with estimates of one to three trillion dollars by 2030, we need to understand the sources of innovation that will drive it and some of the new areas it will impact here, on our lives on Earth.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

To be a bit more specific, last year the Space Foundation estimated that the size of the global Space economy in 2020 had grown at a rate of 4.4 percent to nearly USD 447 billion, with commercial activities representing nearly 80 percent of that total. While this growth rate may seem modest, it is important to remember that it took place during one of the largest economic contractions in history. A separate study by Euroconsult said that government investment in Space in 2021 hit a record USD 92 billion, and was dominated by Space exploration and military Space activities.

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Space has an outsized impact on our daily lives, by some estimates adding over five trillion dollars in direct and indirect economic value in the United States alone, by enabling financial services, entertainment, weather prediction, navigation, communications, and many other sectors.

Space has, for sure, played an important role in helping us mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, be it by providing unique insights into macro-economic developments on Earth, allowing for remote monitoring of facilities and the precise delivery of goods and services, or through advancing necessary developments in telemedicine and distance education.

Geospatial observers are already well aware of one of the most important developments — leveraging the content derived from remote sensing

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

data is already one of the fastest-growing segments of the Space economy. The lesson from remote sensing history that certainly applies to other Space market segments is that end-users want information, not raw data, which is focused on their own sectors like agriculture, insurance, or even national security. Remote sensing use began to grow quickly when firms applied artificial intelligence and other analytic techniques, and then focused on the applications in these specific market segments.

The contributions don’t stop there. The Space economy is accelerating and diversifying as a wide range of entrepreneurs, backed by government and private investment, bring new ideas into the market. We are moving quickly from a historically limited set of conversations about Space-based remote sensing, communications, and launch to a broader set of near-term market services like on-orbit manufacturing, Space tourism, Space medicine, and the exciting near-term development of a lunar economy. Entrepreneurs who want to provide new Space services can use the lower costs and increasing availability of launch to try out technical solutions, validate or adapt them, and quickly bring them to market. Demand is also changing: companies from a wide range of industrial sectors, but traditionally not involved in any way with Space, are now beginning to leverage Space capabilities, based on those same economic realities.

What’s driving innovation in the Space economy?

Government investments in the Space economy remain vitally important but are changing, as public institutions like NASA and the US Department of Defense look to new acquisition strategies that involve initial investment rather than anchor tenancy. Meanwhile, an unprecedented level of private investment into the Space economy — over

Courtesy: Space Capital, January 2022

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

For one, many of the emerging Space market segments are broad and deep, meaning that there are multiple players pursuing ideas in similar market areas. One may be skeptical about the idea of a lunar economy, but with more than 90 missions planned by the end of the decade, it is almost certain that some of them, and perhaps most of them, will succeed.

Aside from the scientific exploration missions that include assessing the quality of water ice on the Moon — a potential game changer for further solar system exploration — other missions will be designed to help develop the infrastructure for a permanent presence on the lunar surface.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

the arts to business to economics and law, and others.

USD 46 billion in 2021 alone, and over USD 250 billion in the past decade — not only encourages diversity of business and technical approaches but helps create additional demand beyond traditional government demand.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

In fact, innovations in the Space economy are converging from many different directions, so it is important to highlight some of them here. Briefly, five key areas that are driving innovation are:

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 Entrepreneurs: They are the lifeblood of the exciting new ideas being proposed in the Space economy. They are coming not only from within the traditional Space community, but from adjacent technology markets. Some are trying to disrupt existing commercial Space services, like communications, remote sensing, and weather, while others are trying to invent and shape wholly new ones, like Space tourism or satellite servicing. An entirely different class of entrepreneurs is focused on developing infrastructure and services that will train,

house, feed, and equip the next generation of Space travelers.

 New participants: While many locations around the world have storied roles in Space activities — Florida, Texas, and California in the United States, Toulouse and French Guyana in France, and Bengaluru in India, to name just a very few — political leaders, economic development officials, and others are clamoring to bring their communities assertively into the Space economy. Being excited about Space, however, is not enough. Jurisdictions wanting to participate in the Space economy need to objectively assess their capabilities and how they can compete effectively.

 International partners: Traditional partnerships in  Investors: These include individboth military Space and Space uals like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, exploration showcase the but they also include a very wide overwhelming value of internarange of banks, private equity, tional Space partnerships. The and venture capital organizations.

Artemis Accords, for example, Financial innovations are almost are as much a reflection of the as interesting as the technical participants’ collective values ones — we are all watching the in returning to the Moon, as ultimate impact of the special they are a set of principles for purpose acquisition corporations, responsible behavior. As counor SPACs, on the Space industry, tries enter the Space economy, but also looking for other innothey can benefit from partnervations ranging from the estabships with traditional governlishment of investment ladders ment and private sector entities (helping companies move across to advance quickly. different stages of growth from pre-seed to IPO) to new access and While advances in the Space accounting mechanisms that will economy portend great achievebe enabled by Blockchain. ments in the human exploration of outer Space and for improving  Educators: Space activities have always required the highest levels our lives on Earth, there are important challenges. Not of scientific and engineering talent. But not every technical job everyone who enters the market will require an advanced degree, will succeed, although the Space economy now shifts toward a as many Space activities expand from one-of-a-kind Space objects normal market where we will see to full-blown production. And we winners and losers, mergers and will only reach the full potential of acquisitions, consolidation, and the Space economy by employing many of the other behaviors we a much larger range of skills from see in other markets.

Understanding the competition

The key will be understanding and adjusting to competition.

There is intense competition brewing in the small satellite launch business, which today claims over 170 companies worldwide pursuing a wonderfully diverse set of business and technical approaches. It is inevitable that some consolidation will take place in the next few years.

The LEO (low earth orbit) satellite communications market may also be headed for consolidation and even commoditization. The number of communications satellites grew rapidly from 2200 at the beginning of 2021 to over 3000 by year end, mainly from SpaceX and OneWeb. Planned satellite deployments by these companies — as well as by Amazon Kuiper, Telesat Canada, and a Chinese system — over the next five years, will raise the numbers by thousands.

There’s also a key question of ultimate demand. Between three and four billion people on earth are estimated to be unserved or underserved in communications and internet access, and demand is still increasing in developed economies as new applications emerge. The key question is how

investment, export controls, and economic competitiveness of the Space industry.

We also cannot ignore the Chinese satellite communications constellation as an additional source of price competition and the introduction of anti-competitive behavior. China’s overall aims in Space, and its ‘belt and road’ initiative designed to lock up emerging Space partners, could negatively affect market size and fair competition in this arena.

Finally, we need to deal with the urgent issues of Space debris and congestion. Remnants of rockets, dead satellites, and other bodies litter Space in every orbit, and threaten the lives on board the International Space Station, the billions of dollars of US and international investment in Space, and the growth of the Space economy.

Solutions lie at the nexus of a very complex set of legal, technical, and international issues. First up is the need to improve our understanding of the Space environment in order to provide more timely warnings about possible collisions (also known as conjunctions) to Space operators.

Changing national security interests

Security interests and the nature of strategic competition are changing. China’s recent white paper speaks to a “new stage of rapid development and profound transformation,” and posits developments in “Space exploration, Space transportation, the modernization of Space governance, and new forms of international cooperation.” Russia’s highly irresponsible destruction of one of its own satellites in November 2021, followed by explicit threats to the United States’ GPS constellation, reflects growing geopolitical competition that can extend to Space activities.

Aside from strategic consequences, any conflict in Space could dampen investor and entrepreneur confidence and therefore the growth of commercial Space activities. Moreover, traditional military Space competition, the growing importance of the Space economy brings strategic importance to issues like foreign

Space debris and congestion

Beyond that lies the opportunity and necessity for a much more diverse Space safety industry as fundamental to the growing Space economy. New tools to enhance Space situational awareness and active debris removal are entering the market, although the international political and legal frameworks to effectively use them are still lacking. Dealing with this challenge is an absolute necessity if we are going to realize the scientific and economic benefits of Space anticipated over the next decade and beyond.

Kevin M. O’Connell Founder & CEO at Space Economy Rising; and former Director, Office of Space Commerce, U.S. Department of Commerce kevin@spaceeconomyrising.com

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Just like the diversity in the launch business, the LEO communications business will see directto-consumer models, ones that will leverage traditional telecommunications companies, and yet others that will leverage Cloud-based connectivity. These competing delivery systems will use price as one competitive tool.

many of these constellations will respond to actual market demand, and at what price points? This is another potential source of intense price competition.

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Aside from strategic consequences, any conflict in Space could dampen investor and entrepreneur confidence and therefore the growth of commercial Space activities.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Enhancing LiDAR Performance for Better Data Collection

BY JOHANNES RIEGL JR.

President, Riegl USA Inc. & Riegl International GmbH

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oday, LiDAR is being used in a variety of applications and as a leading provider of 3D laser scanners, RIEGL is convinced that excellent results can be achieved by combining top quality data with best-in-class software solutions.

The company is committed to making it as easy as possible to access datasets like point clouds, oriented imagery, and trajectories.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Broad performance features

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RIEGL’s Ultimate LiDAR™ 3D scanners offer a wide array of performance characteristics and serve as a platform for continuing innovation in 3D for the LiDAR industry. The principal advantage of scanning tools and technologies is their inherent 3D quality and the added morphological value that such data provides. 3D spatial data, derived spatial statistics and relevant 3D map products are now becoming an integral part of our interconnected reality and decision support systems. We fully expect these technologies to become embedded components

of almost all physical applications and processes.

Data integrity is critical to historic and/or recurring analysis to ensure reliable and consistent results. RIEGL contributes by providing inputs to various committees and organizations focused on these topics (for example, MAPPS). We also provide a manufacturer’s perspective on how to maximize data quality and implement best practices to ensure users are empowered to deliver the best available raw data for subsequent analysis.

Emerging technologies and prospects

New technologies such as machine learning (ML) or deep

Technology improvements and new software solutions in the next few years will result in better performance by LiDAR sensors.

learning (DL) are boosting point cloud classification and feature extraction. This has the advantage of easier adoption of changed requirements, which may well affect software product life cycles on one hand and open up new applications for LiDAR on the other.

Today, ML and DL applications require massive computing power and are likely to require this in the near future too, which, in most cases, can only be addressed by Cloud processing. It is the Cloud environment that enables the creation of new business models for service providers.

RIEGL’s new US headquarters in Florida serve the North American customer base and have been built with future growth in mind, to provide state-of-the-art sales, service, support, training, and calibration facilities to RIEGL customers. At the company’s global headquarters in Horn, Austria, an additional manufacturing facility has nearly doubled the available production space. And finally, the company’s international regional office network, with RIEGL offices in Australia, Hong Kong, China, Japan, and Canada, has been expanded by opening a new regional office in the United Kingdom. It is apparent that RIEGL is innovating for the future and creating lasting infrastructure within the geospatial community.

What the future holds

Technology improvements in the next three to five years will result in increased performance by LiDAR sensors with respect to speed and overall accuracy, which means more data will be collected in shorter amounts of time. In addition, instruments will become more compact and lightweight for further integration with additional sensors.

We expect sensor fusion to gain momentum, with a variety of optical sensors entering the market.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Satellites for Disaster Response and Sustainability

BY DR. MOTOYUKI ARAI

I

Founder & CEO, Synspective Inc.

n order to cater to the booming Space sector, many companies, including ours, are building a commercial SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) constellation.

Right now, our key focus is on market expansion across segments: from commercial applications to national security.

SAR satellite monitoring and analysis are also useful in the insurance sector due to their ability to provide accurate information for disaster mitigation and management.

There’s also a big synergy between SAR satellites and infrastructure development projects.

Other relevant domains for us are Cleantech and energy. Achieving the sustainable development goals by 2030, as laid down at a UN summit in 2015, is crucial for socio-economic development as well as preventing ecological crises.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Disaster mitigation

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SAR satellites can complement the efforts of policymakers and ground workers in creating a

SAR satellite monitoring helps solve crucial ecological and sustainability challenges, and in planning disaster response and mitigation.

strategy for climate change mitigation. Using EO and SAR satellites, we can monitor biomass volume, air pollution, land heat, etc.

Different satellite sensors are used for the purpose of environmental monitoring. There’s a need to integrate all satellite monitoring data to get a clear picture of the extent of ecological degradation.

Synspective has undertaken SAR satellite projects for disaster response. SAR satellites can also monitor flood damage, and, for instance, the destruction caused by a typhoon. They can also help identify the shortest and safest paths for first responders to help with evacuation and rescue missions. As soon as we have a 30-satellite constellation, we will be able to capture data from anywhere in the world at intervals of every two hours. We will then be able to automatically analyze the data to gain actionable insights in real-time.

International projects

Guatemala is prone to natural hazards such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Synspective is actively working there , along with the government and other partners, in disaster mitigation and emergency response.

Synspective and JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) use satellites to monitor ground movements in Guatemala City as part of an information-gathering project. From July 2018 to June 2021, our company conducted a ground deformation

analysis in Guatemala City using Land Displacement Monitoring.

Land Displacement Monitoring can identify the risk of landslides and avalanches in mountainous terrain. Our satellites can monitor the entire area at one time and our interferometer SAR analysis tool can provide accurate insights.

We are expanding both our local partner network in Japan and our footprint in India, Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, and Australia.

Recently, Synspective signed an MoU with AMH Philippines to use SAR data for geohazard mitigation.

Towards sustainability

Curtailing deforestation and loss of biospheres is a prerequisite for lowering carbon emissions and making the world a better place for posterity. Humans can only understand environmental changes or track forest cover loss through satellite monitoring and cutting-edge analytics. For gaining accurate insights in a data-driven ‘learning world’, satellite monitoring and analytics is crucial.

With the help of satellites, we can gauge the economic impact as well alongside ecological impact.

Data-driven management for sustainable development is our vision. We strongly believe that there’s a need to ‘go beyond capitalism’, not in the sense of an ideological or political rejigging but making ecological conservation and sustainability an integral part of all business models.

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Coupling Artificial Intelligence with Earth Observation for Deep Insights

BY ABHAY MITTAL

T

CEO and Founder, EOfactory

he impact of artificial intelligence (AI) is crucial and tangible in the Earth Observation (EO) business sector and the integration of 5G technology allows for faster delivery of insights at the edge. During any disaster, there are various agencies that provide Open Data that can be ingested and automated for deriving real-time insights with existing algorithms and AI models. This helps to extract vital information required for mitigation and recovery.

EOfactory is centered on data and infrastructure.

We have multiple partnerships with global satellite data companies and high-performance computing providers. We cater to multiple sectors within the EO domain. Currently, defense, urban municipal authorities, and mining are some of the sectors that are implementing sustainable practices within their value chain through EO data.

We adopt deep learning procedures with continuous learning across different countries to perform change detection. We also manage the data in spatial and temporal formats within a data cube to efficiently derive insights from multiple data based on user requirements.

EOfactory harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to derive insights from Earth Observation, which benefit multiple sectors while removing the silos.

AgTech

Our offerings for the AgTech sector are simple and start with identifying the farm locations. We deploy AI to extract field boundaries from across the country and then derive key insights from satellite data integration with these boundaries.

Our mobile application, FarmVigil, allows for integration with the EOfactory platform to deliver analytics to farmers for understanding their requirements on a regular basis. This does not just enhance their productivity, but also goes a long way in empowering them.

Satellite imagery plays a crucial role in crop insurance, allowing for faster and accurate claim validation, and ultimately payouts to farmers based on the various government schemes. This brings transparency to the entire value chain, starting right from the government to the farmer, who is the end beneficiary.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Road ahead

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EOfactory’s outlook for 2022 and beyond is to ensure increased adoption of satellite data and scalability within the fragmented industry of satellite data providers who cater to geospatial solutions. We envision ourselves as the world’s leading platform for both the production and distribution of EO insights. The launch of our Insight Studio aims to revitalize the research that is not easy to highlight on simple dashboards.

Helping enterprises and governments worldwide to harness EO insights and enabling them to realize their sustainability and security implementation and goals has been EOfactory’s mission. We do this by offering an AI-driven platform that connects governments, students, engineers, scientists, and businesses in an unprecedented way.

We have made geo-intelligence more accessible for everyone.

AT EOfactory, our vision is to make geospatial intelligence tools more accessible so that we can minimise the barrier between ambition and action.

Remotely-sensed data from the world’s leading providers Powerful APIs and visualisation tools Interactive AI for model creation with zero coding AI-powered drag-and-drop BI dashboard Flexible payment plans

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Affordability, Scalability Key to Ubiquitous Space Access

BY YUYA NAKAMURA

T

President & CEO, Axelspace Corporation

echnology advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) make it easier to extract data from satellite constellations. In order to analyze datapoints and fetch information that can be converted into actionable insights, AI plays a crucial role in meeting accuracy, efficiency and customer expectations. AI is crucial for business diversification and value enhancement as well.

We are hiring AI engineers and partnering with analytics companies all over the world to provide solutions for end users.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Enabling access

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Affordability remains another key factor in democratizing Space access. We have a slogan: Space within Your Reach. In the past, everything about Space was prohibitively exorbitant.

Hundreds of millions of dollars were needed just to make one satellite. The advent of microsatellites proved to be a true gamechanger. AxelSpace has been a pioneer in microsatellites. The first commercial meteorological micro satellite was made by us.

We are able to offer insights from our data sets at a really low cost.

AxelGlobe is our key platform.

A lot of our constellation data is processed and stored on it.

We capture data every day and

Tech advancements will make Space access more widespread in the years to come.

analyze it according to change detection, as per client needs.

Currently, we have five satellites in orbit. We will be launching four additional satellites by the end of this year. With nine satellites, we can monitor things anywhere in the world on a daily basis.

Axelspace uses satellite imagery for various purposes such as forestry, agriculture, and infrastructure monitoring. We are also working with organizations on linear infrastructure detection, be it for railway monitoring projects or Smart City initiatives.

Our aim is to lower entry barriers for clients who wish to utilize Space data. So we are providing them not only with satellite data but also with insights we can get from analysis.

Disaster response and resilience

Japan is vulnerable to many natural disasters, so disaster mitigation and resilience have always been our focus. Disaster mitigation and assessment are areas where satellite imagery plays a key role.

We’re actively looking into how our data can contribute to monitoring the environment.

Another interesting application of satellite imagery is in supply chain monitoring. Due to COVID, no one can travel freely. But even in this situation, monitoring is vital.

While satellites cannot solve every problem, they can definitely help garner crucial information. Supply chain monitoring is an emerging application area that would become ‘the new normal’ in the near future.

One of our key strengths is tasking capability. Many

organizations don’t have flexible tasking mechanisms, but we are able to task as per client requirements.

Way ahead

We want to make a scalable business for supply manufacturing.

To achieve that we are working towards a mass manufacturing system. By 2024 we aim to manufacture at least 50 satellites a year. The Japanese government is supporting us in this project.

Going forward, we will be focussing on both the upstream and downstream satellite business. From the upstream point of view, we will be in mass manufacturing of satellites for various use cases. And in downstream, we will use AxelGlobe to solve lots of different issues: sustainability issues, ecology, defense, land monitoring, etc.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Expanding Excellence in Space

BY DR. SIMONETTA CHELI

Director - Earth Observation Programmes, European Space Agency

T

he Space sector has a long history of pushing the borders of knowledge through scientific missions.

Exploring Space required breakthrough innovations, which subsequently spilled over to broader applications in society. In recent years, new technologies like edge computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), quantum computing, Internet of Things (IoT), Digital Twins, and Blockchain have transformed the business world with new efficiency and insights. This has expanded our knowledge of Space, reduced costs, and boosted our ability to gather and process critical information with greater speed and scale. The emerging private Space industry, or New Space, doesn’t rely on government support but follows game-changing business models that either compete with or complement the existing commercial Space services.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

New Space initiatives

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These initiatives are generally characterized by:  Simple spacecraft architectures, often standardized with miniaturized elements.

Exploring Space required breakthrough innovations, which subsequently spilled over to broader applications in society.

 Use of commercial components, streamlined testing, automated operations.  Fast, incremental development providing quick return of experience.  Constellations of small satellites produced in series, exploiting paradigms derived from the large production industry to achieve very frequent revisit, targeting applications often not addressed by other missions.  Data distribution and data analysis through hi-tech IT platforms, allowing application developments on Cloud.

As a result of these new directions, the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) role has also evolved in recent years, and it has acted as an anchor customer by buying data provided by New Space companies through the EU Copernicus Contributing Missions activity for operational purposes, the ESA Earthnet Third Party Missions activity for scientific purposes, and the ESA InCubed EOP commercial co-funding program.

Space ambitions

Europe’s Space ambitions, in particular Earth Observation (EO) ambitions and results, are recognized worldwide. Copernicus is the most ambitious EO program to date. It provides accurate, timely, and easily accessible information to improve the management of the environment, understand and mitigate the effects of climate change, and ensure civil security. However, it is also facing growing competition from private actors. While keeping the fundamentals of Copernicus in place, we need to rethink how it works and how it can better answer evolving user needs towards more green, more digital, and more responsive society.

To meet our ambitions for a green, digital, safe, and inclusive Europe and world, ESA has defined, and is implementing its Agenda 2025 — a plan for Europe to maintain and expand its excellence in Space. Last year, a highlevel advisory group convened to discuss ways to accelerate the use of Space in Europe; it identified three main thematic areas of action and recommended that ESA adopt a new approach. They termed this new way ‘Accelerators’. The approach was endorsed

by ESA member states during an inter-ministerial meeting in November last year, which resulted in the Matosinhos Manifesto. The three Accelerators are:  Space for a Green Future,  Rapid and Resilient Crisis Response, and  Protection of Space Assets.

The objective of these Accelerators is to strengthen Europe’s leadership in Space and to benefit society and the economy with a particular emphasis on the commercialization dimension.

Partnering for a cause

The European Commission and ESA have signed Contribution Agreements for the implementation of the Destination Earth (DestinE) initiative. In line with the goals of the ‘twin transition’, green and digital, and the objectives of the European Green Deal, the partnership will significantly improving Europe’s environmental predictions and climate crisis management capabilities.

BY DR. JOSEF ASCHBACHER

Director General European Space Agency

T

here is a lot of innovation happening in the Space sector. We are pushing the technology frontier — from launchers, Earth Observation, and telecommunications to quantum communication and navigation. Artificial intelligence (AI) on board satellites is going to be the future. That’s why this term is called cognitive cloud computing — with AI and machine learning (ML) on the one hand and systems of interconnected satellites on the other — thereby building a mesh of network capabilities and then transmitting

the data down to individual users.

All of this basically amounts to personalization of acquisition, processing, and dissemination.

On the ground we’re using geospatial data to build a Digital Twin Earth, a simulation of our planet on a big computer. Again, we can apply AI on different models, and combine Earth Observation with socioeconomic data and information to gain valuable insights. In this way we can study climate change, assess its impact on people, and analyze what if scenarios.

New opportunities

On the launchers side, more and more small launchers are being established. They are very flexible in terms of launch schedules, masses, and orbits.

In Europe, we have more than a handful of projects in the pipeline and are expecting maiden flights of small launchers in a year’s time. These launch systems are complementary to our classical launchers, such as Vega, which will have its maiden flight in May this year. We will also have the

The green push

We have recently defined three new accelerators and two inspirators. One of the accelerators is called Space for Green Future, which is aimed at implementing the Green Deal. There are many equations that need to be examined, starting with the transition towards low carbon emissions of energy, cars, and traffic, to the use of modern methods in agriculture and forestry. Several domains will be impacted by a carbon neutral or carbon friendly economy that is currently being built.

There is a lot of innovation happening in the Space sector.

We are pushing the technology frontier — from launchers, Earth Observation and telecommunications to quantum communication and navigation.

A survey was conducted in Europe recently and 90 percent of the respondents, especially young people, were in favor of taking serious measures in terms of policy and technology implementation to protect our planet. To do that you require a two-pronged approach: make changes on the ground and monitor what’s happening where, so that the policymakers have the right decision-making tools at their disposal. Space will play a critical role in this process.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Today, quantum gravimetry is emerging as a concrete technology process, and it is quite exciting.

It works on the ground and on airplanes and uses cold atom interferometers to provide higher gravimetry measurement precision, based on a new measurement technology, with accuracies by a facto 10-100 better than from today’s satellites. Just imagine measuring changes to gravity from Space with such accuracy; it can open up so many new applications in different domains.

Ariane 6 flight. Together, these developments are going to create many new opportunities.

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

New Developments in the Space Sector

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Our Planet is Incredibly Complex and Ever Changing

BY DR. STEPHEN VOLZ

Assistant Administrator for Satellite and Information Services, NOAA

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Y

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ear 2020 was among the three warmest years in records dating back to the mid-1800s, even with a cooling La Niña influence in the second half of the year, setting new high-temperature records globally. The 31st annual State of the Climate Report for 2020, which was led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) and published by the American Meteorological Society in August 2021, also found that the major indicators of climate change continued to reflect trends consistent with a warming planet.

Several markers such as sea level, ocean heat content, and permafrost once again broke records set just one year prior. Notably, CO2 levels in the atmosphere reached record highs in 2020, even with an estimated 6-7 percent reduction of CO2 emissions due to the economic slowdown from the global pandemic.

The effects of climate change are there for all to see now. Both 2020 and 2021 were among the most devastating in terms of extreme weather events. In the United States alone, there were 20 weather and climate disasters in 2021, while 2020 recorded billion-dollar events, the highest number of disasters recorded in the country in a calendar year.

Overall, these 20 disasters in the year 2021 resulted in the deaths of 688 people — the most number

of disaster-related fatalities since 2011 and more than double the 262 recorded in 2020. Total damages from these 20 disasters were approximately USD 145 billion.

The number and cost of disasters have been increasing over time due to a combination of increased exposure (that is, values at risk of possible loss), vulnerability (that is, where we build and how we build), and climate change, which is increasing the frequency of some types of extremes that lead to billion-dollar disasters.

More specifically, these trends are further complicated by the fact that much of the growth has taken place in vulnerable areas like coasts and river floodplains.

NOAA’s Satellite and Information Service is responsible for one of the most comprehensive data holdings on Earth. We archive and provide access to data and information from the surface of the sun to the bottom of the ocean. Some of our data records extend back millions of years, while we also serve real-time satellite observations to users. Understanding past environmental conditions is paramount to putting current events and future projections into a proper historical and climatic context. Our Earth Observation (EO) data provides critical inputs for climate projections, which allows us to better prepare for a changing world. We provide the foundational data that allows policy- and decision-makers at all levels to make informed decisions based on past, current, and future environmental conditions.

A favorable policy environment

The policy environment in the US has provided enhanced opportunities for federal agencies to work collaboratively on issues of critical importance to the country, from the fires in the West to our changing climate.

We are pursuing multiple policy advancements in data sharing, in environmental justice, in Space operations standards and orbital debris management, in collective climate observations, and climate change mitigation monitoring.

This is a lot to process all at once, but it is reflective of the clear national and global awareness of the critical value Space provides to address these challenges.

Each of these initiatives has an immediate audience or set of participants, both inside and

Global Earth Observation System of Systems

Our planet is incredibly complex and ever changing. Improving our forecasting of weather, water and Space weather events, enhancing understanding of our changing climate, and monitoring environmental hazards requires highquality, timely, and global observations from EO satellites.

We cannot accomplish our mission using NOAA satellites alone. To meet the level of coverage needed, we work with the international community, sharing the EO data required for weather and environmental predictions on a full, free, and open basis.

We also benefit when one country or agency makes an

analysis, and with other observations of the land sea and air taken by other instruments and satellites at the same time to produce new understanding of different phenomena.

Data without analytics cannot lead to understanding and application. But models with sparse data are limited as well. We live in

Improving our forecasting of weather, water and space weather events, enhancing understanding of our changing climate, and monitoring environmental hazards requires high-quality, timely, and global observations from Earth Observation satellites. advancement and the others follow its example. For example, our Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite — R Series (GOES-R) improvements in the Geostationary Lightning Mapper instrument, now being followed

by Europe and China, and in the Advanced Baseline Imager, were deployed by the Japan Meteorological Agency and Korea Meteorological Administration for their global coverage. Also EUMETSAT and China Meteorological Agency’s deployment of Hyperspectral Infrared Imaging from geostationary Earth orbit is a technology the US intends to develop as well.

Data and analytics

Data may be like the new oil, but much better and cleaner of course.

Even better, it can be used over and over again by different people for different applications. An atmospheric sounding observation is critical for the Numerical Weather Model to produce today’s forecast, but then it becomes part of a Climate Data Record (CDR), where it can be combined with the 50-year history of for climate

a world of incredible satellite data richness, and are pressed to integrate the data to produce better understanding and forecast/ predictions. Like a lot of things in the information space, it depends on the problem. If you ask a scientist, or someone studying the planet, they would almost always say more data, or higher resolution data, or new data, is better.

But can we make the data we already have more vital than it already is?

Absolutely. We have been doing so for a long time with realtime and retrospective data. In the past, we would refine data by making maps, atlases, analyses, and summaries. These were ‘analytics’, using yesterday’s tools. In today’s world, technology has enabled a much greater demand for, and many more tools to perform, this kind of work. Meeting that expanded demand is a wonderful challenge for us. At the same time, we see clearly the value of more and better observations to improve our models and forecasts.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

We receive three times more meteorological data from our international partners than we provide the international community. We receive data from our partners in Europe, particularly the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), the European Commission’s Copernicus Programme of Sentinel satellites, as well as our partners in Japan, India and Canada to name a few.

Moreover, we use our participation in a variety of multilateral

venues (CGMS, CEOS, WMO, GEO) to support identification of observing system requirements, coordinate commitments of Space-based assets to meet global requirements, and to promote full and open data sharing.

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

outside the federal government, who are working on this agenda.

But there is also a lot of overlap amongst the communities involved and their experts. Our collective challenge is to make coordinated and collective progress on the initiatives and to take advantage of the synergies when we see them. For example, an initiative in Open Data sharing is essential to successfully address the need for global climate observations, and you can’t successfully address the long-term orbital debris problems without talking about Space operational standards and norms.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Building Synergies to Strengthen European Space

BY RODRIGO DA COSTA

Executive Director, European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA)

T

he primary role of the European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA) is to ensure uninterrupted, safe, and secure satellite navigation services from the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) and Galileo. As part of an extended mandate, this agency now promotes commercial utilization of Copernicus data and services.

We also closely coordinate Governmental Satellite Communications (GOVSATCOM), EU’s satellite communications program focused on user requirements in the Member States. EUSPA is also in charge of security accreditation for all components of the EU Space Programme through its Security Accreditation Board.

Our agency has a proven track record of boosting Space innovation and entrepreneurship through various tools. EUSPA is capitalizing on this legacy by providing financial incentives, technical expertise, and market know-how to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), start-ups, academia, and innovators, so that they can make EU Space an integral part of their businesses. Our role will continue to grow in the coming years as we will be responsible for the launch of Galileo satellites in 2023.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Working towards a greener future

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Data from EU Space Programme components, especially Copernicus, is a valuable tool for the Member States, offering trends on atmospheric changes, emissions, air quality, etc. By having access to real-time information about such trends, governments can develop and modify their mitigating policies. The EU satellite navigation system is playing an important part in its green transition, mainly by providing information about key sectors. For example, the aviation sector creates 13.9 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, making it the second biggest source of emissions after road transport. It also accounts for 3.8 percent of

Building synergies can ensure great results. For instance, we know that oceans produce over 50 percent of the oxygen we breathe, regulate the climate, and are home to millions of Earth’s plants and animals. Since oil spills can have detrimental effects on our aquatic habitats, high-resolution imagery from Copernicus can track these spills in real time, while the precise location provided by Galileo can enable authorities to reach the incident site and take timely action. At EUSPA, we make sure we multiply such opportunities. We recently launched a Horizon Europe Call with a focus on the Green Deal. The budget for this specific Call is EUR 14 million (USD 15.82 million) and it will require synergy between the Space program components.

Boosting economy, ensuring safety and security

We also engage with various users, raise awareness about Space benefits, and provide those interested with financial incentives, mentoring, and GNSS and Earth Observation know-how. We have created a vibrant ecosystem of start-ups and SMEs, most of which are now upscaling their operations using Galileo, EGNOS and Copernicus.

EUSPA is the gatekeeper of the security of the EU Space Programme. The security of our Space assets, both in Space and on the ground, is the basis for the provision of high quality and uninterrupted services. The Galileo Security Monitoring Centre is an integral part of Galileo infrastructure that acts on

security threats, alerts, and the operational status of system components.

We are in-charge of ensuring the security accreditation of all the components of the EU Space Programme. All components of our Space programme are critical systems for the Union.

Addressing position, navigation and timing vulnerabilities

Intentional satellite interference is not a new issue. Lately, however, the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) industry has been facing lots of challenges concerning jamming and spoofing, driven mainly by the growing awareness and the availability of low-cost, illegal disruption equipment. GNSS signal falsification can have disastrous impact on applications and markets that rely on precise position, navigation, and timing (PNT).

To contribute to the detection of certain types of data-level GNSS attacks, EUSPA and the European Commission are currently testing the Galileo Open Service — Navigation Message Authentication (OSNMA), which is a new feature of Europe’s positioning system that meets a clear user need — the provision of a more robust and trustworthy GNSS. This forthcoming service is an authentication mechanism that allows open service users to verify the authenticity of its navigation message, making sure that the data the users receive is indeed from Galileo and has not been modified in any way.

In cases where strong reliability is required, the overall PNT solution does not rely on a single source of information and is composed of complementary technologies in addition to GNSS, such as inertial sensors, LiDAR, cameras, etc. At EUSPA, we are prepared to deliver a great package of opportunities to those who look to make EU Space a part of their business and develop new solutions and services. With Copernicus onboard, we are ready to level up our game and forge synergies that will boost Europe’s resilience and help it deliver on its ambitious EU Green Deal.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

EUSPA contributes to the growth of the European economy by providing value-added services to users and supporting the EU Space companies. A fine example of great returns on investment is the use of Copernicus and Galileo in precision farming and variable-rate technology (VRT), a technique based on satellite technology that automates the application of fertilizers, chemical sprays, and seeds in a given piece of land. Satellite imagery provides information about soil quality, moisture, and other climatic factors to agronomists and helps farmers accurately steer tractors through the areas that need soil treatment. This results in better yields and less fertilizer and water consumption.

GNSS signal falsification can have disastrous impact on applications and markets that rely on precise position, navigation, and timing.

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

the overall CO2 emissions. The European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) helps reduce the frequency of aborted landings (go-arounds) and, therefore, emissions, by enabling aircraft to land safely under challenging weather conditions. By 2025, an estimated 80,000 flight delays and 20,000 flight diversions will be prevented across EU due to EGNOS.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

3D Capture to Blur the Line Between Digital and Real

BY GEORGE ZHAO

C

CEO, CHC Navigation

HC Navigation (CHCNAV) is structured as a technology-driven company. Since its inception, it has aimed to be a technology enabler for precise positioning and navigation applications. The company has endeavored to provide optimal solutions to customers for solving their geospatial positioning challenges.

The fusion of technologies allows for positioning accuracy in the millimeter or centimeter range.

A few years ago, it was based on GNSS. Today, it is hybrid positioning solutions that merge the strengths of GNSS, MEMS, IMU, LiDAR and optical data. The result is greater availability, reliability and accuracy of position, navigation and timing data. CHCNAV’s precision positioning solutions cover a wide range of applications, including land and airborne surveying with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) RTK surveying, 3D mass data acquisition with integrated LiDAR systems, precision agriculture, unmanned navigation and robotics, realtime GNSS reference station networks, and more.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Towards precision and autonomy

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These days fully robotic and unmanned solutions for positioning in closed or semi-closed scenarios are gaining momentum. These include CHC Navigation’s USVs and UAVs, which require even more advanced technology fusions, such as anti-collision systems.

More recently, we have made significant progress toward democratizing GNSS RTK systems for tractors. Our auto-steer systems give farmers access to high-performance but affordable retrofit kits to upgrade their tractors to optimize their work efforts and reduce input costs and fuel consumption.

The interplay of a gamut of technol-ogies and real-time positioning will rapidly transform sectors ranging from navigation and construction to AgTech.

3D capture technology

The demand for hybrid GNSS, IMU and MEMS fusion systems applied to assisted and autonomous driving to ensure reliable lane-level accuracy is constantly growing.

In China alone, the electric car market is expected to grow from three million in 2021 to five million in 2022, with 40 percent of built-in L2 or L3 driving automation. The technologies we develop for these applications will benefit other business segments such as machine control, drones and agriculture.

We foresee strong growth potential as most of our customers are looking for reliable and affordable technology solutions to move from 2D mapping to 3D reality capture using LiDAR and imagery. This also applies to Digital Twin projects for which mass 3D data collection of assets in a real environment scenario is steadily increasing. The need for high-definition augmented reality maps is also positively impacting the demand for LiDAR, GNSS and imaging systems.

Mobile mapping and construction

The mission of our mobile mapping division is to build bridges between the real world and the digital world, for greater interoperability and accessibility of data.

Mobile mapping surveys have proven to be four to ten times faster and three to seven times cheaper than traditional methods. In addition, LiDAR-based data capture not only provides complete 3D models but also reduces workload, avoids costly errors, simplifies data use and provides design based on reality.

Digital Construction encompasses not only GNSSbased guidance systems for excavators, graders and compactors, but also dedicated solutions for project management in areas such as airport and road infrastructure. The use of complementary technologies is a fact of life on construction sites with the integration of traditional GNSS-based surveying, 3D machines automation, and LiDAR drone surveying for 3D data capture.

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Geospatial Ecosystem Beyond SDIs is Our Future and storing data for analysis, coupled with visualization, has evolved into concepts such as the Metaverse. The real-time consumption of high-quality visual information, with high accessibility across devices, is quite challenging. For this, the geospatial sector will utilize a range of technologies in the future, some borrowed even from the gaming industry.

Newer avenues

BY DR ZAFFAR SADIQ MOHAMED-GHOUSE

Executive Director, Strategic Consulting & International Relations, Spatial Vision

G ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

eospatial information has become ubiquitous in day-to-day decision making, be it at an individual, organizational or governmental level. Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) previously dominated industry conversation.

But now there’s a shift towards a more comprehensive Geospatial Knowledge Infrastructure (GKI).

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The next evolution in geospatial intelligence will lead to an integrated geospatial ecosystem that will combine GKI with the United Nations Integrated Geospatial Information Framework (IGIF) and Industry 4.0 components. This will pave the way for a consolidated and holistic approach for geospatial advancement. Geospatial ecosystems beyond SDIs are the way forward.

3D and 4D spatial data are emerging as new norms for the geospatial sector. This era of capturing, organizing,

The increasing convergence of Space and spatial industries offers an exciting future for the next generation. Smart Space sensors for Earth Observation (EO) provide opportunities for the EO community to build capacity, minimize ground truthing, and optimize satellite data to produce near-real-time information products that can be readily integrated into government and private sector applications and workflows.

To support these developments, we continue to engage clients in management and technical advisory services such as ‘future state’ geospatial architectures, modern data management policies and support for capacity development.

Cadastre modernization

Accurate, modernized cadastres integrated with geospatial Digital Twins will provide a data-rich, and information-fueled platform for citizens, government and the private sector to support key

The integration of Space and spatial sectors will propel digital transformation.

decisions. Developing an accurate digital cadastre is crucial and various state governments are investing in modernizing their cadastral data in phases.

Spatial Vision is working to implement government digital cadastre modernization initiatives. The Intergovernmental Committee for Surveying and Mapping — an arm of ANZLIC (Australia and New Zealand Land Information Council), a peak government body — is developing a 3D model for land information.

The state of Victoria has invested in modernizing its entire cadastre, and we are actively working with them for the adjustment of over 3.5 million land parcels.

Collaborative endeavors

We continue to develop strong partnerships with like-minded organizations, many of whom we work with as part of consortia to deliver large-scale government projects. Spatial Vision is an active member of many industry organizations, including the World Geospatial Industry Council, United Nations Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) Private Sector Network, Geospatial Knowledge Infrastructure Alliance, and Australia’s Spatial Industries Business Association and Surveying and Spatial Sciences Institute.

For decades, we have coordinated industry-specific user groups, bringing together GIS professionals in the Australian water and local government sectors to exchange knowledge and insights. We are also partners of an international cooperation initiative, the Australian Water Partnership, as well as members of the Smart Cities Council Australia New Zealand.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

GPS and 3D Location are the Backbone of Our Infrastructure

BY GANESH PATTABIRAMAN

T

CEO & Co-Founder, NextNav

he rapid digitalization of the world over the past few years has emphasized the need for 3D geolocation technologies, especially in urban areas. This trend only accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic with the use of technologies like contact tracing. Everything from the Metaverse to building Smart Cities requires reliable and more resilient location technology. Over the next few years, we will see even greater crossover of the digital and the physical worlds, and 3D location technology will play a fundamental role in this crossover.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

This technology plays a major role in building more immersive augmented and virtual reality capabilities. The digital layer that will live on top of the physical world is not two dimensional. Z-axis capabilities will need to be involved, especially in urban areas where skylines are populated with multistory buildings. Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) games like Pokemon Go (which has achieved mass popularity) will continue to develop further as 3D geolocation becomes more widely adopted and, with it, even more realistic digital worlds will be made.

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We are already seeing significant traction with AR and VR developers. In July 2021, NextNav Pinnacle software development kit (SDK) became a Unity Verified Solution, enabling developers to seamlessly integrate 3D vertical location into all game applications on the platform. This enables developers to bring a new level of immersion, precision and accuracy to game development and create a true sense reality in these applications. Additionally, we received an Epic MegaGrant to bring vertical location to the Unreal Engine, which we completed in August 2021 with the release of our Unreal Engine plug-in that allows developers to utilize 3D location on the Unreal platform.

The third dimension

GPS and 3D location are the backbone of our infrastructure, in more ways than people realize. GPS is absolutely essential in numerous cases, including telecommunication, autonomous navigation, electrical infrastructure, air traffic control, and many more. Smart Cities rely on this critical technology, so it is extremely important that it not be disrupted.

Weak signals create even more problems in urban areas, as they can’t penetrate tall buildings very well.

A key problem in Smart Cities is that GPS doesn’t deliver service in the vertical dimension. In cities defined by skyscrapers and multi-level structures, vertical location is a necessity for safety and efficiency. The factories, warehouses, and cities of the future need a location-services solution that works along the Z-axis and is compatible with existing GPS infrastructure. Until we fully implement an alternative such as our Pinnacle service, GPS limits us to a two-dimensional world.

We are seeing rapid adoption of the Z-axis. It's a transformation that is long overdue: the industry as a whole needs to think about the end user experience, because customers don’t just exist in X and Y. Public safety departments are quickly adopting the Z-axis for better situational awareness in emergency situations.

But that’s not all — we are also seeing its adoption

NextNav’s Pinnacle service exceeds the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) Z-axis requirement for nationwide Enhanced 911 (also known as E911) — which automatically provides caller location to 911 dispatchers — since we are fully deployed in more than 4,400 cities in towns across the United States, reaching 90 percent of the buildings that are more than three stories high.

Last month, we announced a partnership with a top wireless carrier to bring Z-axis GPS capabilities to cellular devices. This implementation will deliver critical vertical location information to public safety answering points (PSAPs) when a 911 call is made.

Our partnership with this top tier provider is a step in the right direction, and we expect more carriers will adopt this technology ahead of the deadline.

First responders have been asking for 3D geolocation and improved situational awareness for a number of years now, as it can literally save lives. In its assessment for more precise geolocation, the FCC estimated that it could save over 10,000 lives.

Towards resilient location tech

TerraPoiNT uses a dedicated, terrestrial network of transmitters to deliver critical PNT services where GPS can’t — indoors and in urban areas. Our service is secure, offering fully encrypted signals resistant to GPS spoofing and jamming. It has been evaluated by the US Department of Transportation and the Department of Homeland Security, and has been a part of recent tests conducted by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. TerraPoiNT is fully deployed in the Bay Area, and partially deployed in roughly 50 US markets today, with a presence in Japan as well.

Along with this, we expect 5G technology to be transformative to emergency response in not only

providing greater information, including multimedia, but at a much lower latency. The faster that someone in distress can be assisted by a first responder, the higher the likelihood of survival. Providing the vertical location (or Z-axis) of emergency callers will save an estimated 10,000 lives per year in the United States, according to studies, by reducing the time it takes for first responders to locate a caller in need. In addition to improving operational response strategy, Z-axis helps to keep first responders safe in these situations as well by providing incident commanders with the precise location of first responders — helping them to better direct first responders to the safest avenues of approach.

Partnerships and collaborations

In October 2021, we announced a partnership with Qualcomm to enable our Pinnacle software and network-based services for use with the Qualcomm Location Suite. The partnership allows device manufacturers and vendors to integrate Z-axis capabilities into existing carrier infrastructure. It gives first-responders access to the location of the 911 callers in case of an emergency, giving them the ability to understand the exact location of the person in need sooner. We are excited to collaborate with Qualcomm to bring Z-axis capabilities to feature phones, wearables, and other commercial devices.

We’re working across the chipset level, with carrier partners, device manufacturers, and mapping companies to help bring precise floor-level location for emergency callers and first responders.

I believe that NextNav’s journey to become a public company is an important milestone for the geolocation industry, as it is indicative of investor interest in the Space and also exposes the public markets to the vulnerabilities of GPS. The Spartacus Acquisition gives us an opportunity to rapidly grow our footprint. We have successfully deployed our Pinnacle service across the United States, and we can now focus on further adoption of our service across industries and on deploying our TerraPoiNT service.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

GPS is extremely vulnerable to disruptions, spoofing, and jamming, which presents a national security risk. NextNav’s TerraPoiNT service exists to provide a resilient layer to existing GPS systems through enhancement and supplementation in particularly dense urban areas. TerraPoiNT is a terrestrial system that delivers alternative PNT (positioning, navigation, and timing) with a signal that’s over 100,000 times stronger than GPS — making it more precise, available and resilient compared to GPS.

We are seeing rapid adoption of the Z-axis. The industry as a whole needs to think about the end user experience, because customers don’t just exist in X and Y.

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

across a variety of industries, including gaming and retail, in which companies are realizing they can better serve their customers when they have a better picture of their location in our three-dimensional world.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Analysts Don’t Want Oceans of Data

BY ALEX FOX

Executive Vice President of Global Growth, HawkEye 360

C

ommercial innovators across the New Space industry have worked around COVID-related economic challenges to raise incredible capital and advance the industry. Like many businesses, we have had to adapt our rhythms of working, traveling and interacting with customers and investors. Our team did an incredible job and much of our company’s most transformative growth and investment milestones have taken place during the pandemic.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

It’s good to see policymakers understand the urgency, importance and value of commercial Space innovation. We will increasingly see the government leverage commercial Space capabilities by altering their strategic planning, budgeting and acquisition processes to better integrate fastfielding technology.

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We will also see the US government spurring commercial Space capabilities for uses beyond US satellite communications, defense and national security.

The value proposition is multifold: commercial providers like us offer fast-fielding technology and services that scale to support the exponential demand for global insights and add a layer of resiliency, all while remaining affordable.

Top technology trends

The top trends are the rapid advancements in data science, machine learning and artificial

intelligence (AI), and Cloud capabilities. Our constellation of satellites collects an enormous amount of RF (radio frequency) data, and we need to be able to understand and extract insights from that data in an efficient, timely manner. By fusing new analytics capabilities with our RF data and data from other sources, we are able to unlock actionable insights automatically.

Another trend is a shift towards the seamless orchestration of multiple modalities, each of which provides an important perspective to understand the environment.

This multi-intelligence integration allows us to see an activity from different dimensions to discover patterns in human behavior or anomalies. For example, our satellites can scan millions of sq km on a single pass — more area than visual imagery or SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar). This enables us to precisely cue other modalities to collect data on activities we need to understand, finding the unknown and fleeting important activities.

The commercial Space industry is eager to apply its innovations to the world’s most pressing environmental challenges, and we have seen many successes or proofsof-concept in the field. One of the major benefits of commercial

It’s good to see policymakers understand the urgency, importance and value of commercial Space innovation.

Space insights is their shareability, allowing clients to use high-resolution sources where classified systems have previously been unable to help.

For example, our RF insights have supported governments and environmental organizations looking to address illegal or unregulated fishing activities, such as the encroachment by Chinese fishing fleets on protected waters near the Galapagos Islands. We have also supported terrestrial activities such as a trial providing RF signal geolocation data to park rangers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Garamba National Park to help identify illegal poaching activities.

The business outlook

The field of AI can lead to leapahead capabilities for the remote sensing industry.

For instance, HawkEye 360 leveraged the AI capabilities of AWS to develop maritime security and vessel monitoring capabilities that incorporate our RF data, as well as underlying vessel characteristics and behavior data, to anticipate whether a given vessel is likely to engage in nefarious activity.

Analysts don’t want oceans of data; they desire actionable insights so they can focus their attention on information that is of value.

BY REMA MATEVOSYAN

A

CEO, Near Space Labs

s the pandemic amplified all the opportunities and challenges that existed, the Earth Observation (EO) industry suddenly received more attention because people were looking at different ways of monitoring the Earth remotely. The effects of climate change were also very visible during this time.

Data about our planet is key to understanding how we protect ourselves against climate change.

This has led to an increased demand for not only better data but also data that captures the reality of our rapidly changing planet. Decision-makers need this information to work efficiently and effectively and come up with new solutions to the climate crisis.

I think the movement of capital markets and venture capital toward climate-related solutions is very exciting and an important step toward tackling these issues.

The transforming EO market

We are already seeing the emergence of new uses for EO data. For example, there are new sensor fusions on the market, by radar satellite companies working with optical imagery providers to create new solutions. We’re seeing the

emergence of emissions tracking.

At Near Space Labs, we are going to be an active participant in this new wave of technology and are planning on making some exciting announcements later this year.

But the future of EO is still very wide open. We are at a really exciting point where the shape of the industry in general is being defined and written, which makes it even more enticing for venture capitalists to participate and more companies to enter the space.

Users need their issues addressed

Like in any other industry, it’s critical for EO companies to center their business and product development around their users.

The beginning of the pandemic was tough on Near Space Labs in terms of trying to figure out what’s next. We launched commercially in July 2020. In response to the rapidly changing market dynamics, we accelerated the development of our fleet of autonomous robots called

We are at an exciting point where the industry is being defined and written, which makes it even more enticing for venture capitalists to participate in and for more companies to enter the space.

Swiftys. This was a key product decision to accommodate the need to avoid physical contact.

Something that we are proud of at Near Space Labs is the flexibility of our technology and the ability to iterate not just on our software, but also on our hardware because we control the full technology stack, from R&D to manufacturing to engineering. Since we don’t depend on rockets and big aerospace suppliers, we’re able to adapt more quickly to changes in the market.

The demand for our product has been massive. Within nine months, we experienced a 7X increase in revenue. That allowed us to raise another round of funding in September 2021 and continue our growth.

We saw success by starting with a customer need that hadn’t been addressed by the existing industry model. Our offering is unique because there are no trade-offs between resolution, frequency, and nimbleness. As the cherry on top, we are also more cost-effective for our customers at as low as USD 10 per sq km, which opens access for many industries and use cases, from conservation groups to insurance companies to governments, and more.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

It’s very exciting to see so many new start-ups and companies entering the EO market. More capital flowing into fast-growing companies that can tackle these challenges across industries means that we have more resources to develop more innovative technologies.

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

The Future of Earth Observation is Wide Open

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Earth Observation in a New Normal World

BY NICOLE ROBINSON

T

President, Ursa Space Systems

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

he COVID pandemic has significantly impacted our daily lives. The satellite industry, for example, has witnessed an enormous growth in appetite for Cloudbased, digital insights into the changes in our world.

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One of the most used phrases throughout the pandemic has been the description of things as the ‘new normal’, an acknowledgement of the impact COVID has had on a whole host of daily dynamics.

Take the global supply chain crisis. Most people never gave much thought to supply chains and how they worked. Now, logistics are top of mind around the world. Customers want to know how the Earth Observation (EO) industry can shed light on supply chains so they can better understand the new patterns that have emerged — the movement of goods around the world and where congestion is worsening or improving. This is an opportunity for the EO community to analyze new and emerging economic patterns.

A game changer for EO

The proliferation of small satellites in orbit has been a game changer, creating new opportunities for downstream applications.

With this, the need for speed and access to critical insights has become quite prevalent.

Gone are the days where an EO result turnaround of three to four days would meet a customer’s needs. For a first responder or special forces operator, the

difference between a couple of hours and a couple of days can be a matter of life and death.

Another trend is the fusion of different sensors into a single deliverable to meet complex problems. When you start to mix-andmatch different sensors, the outcome can be more robust and go further in painting a complete picture of the ground situation.

EO to mitigate climate challenges

EO has served an important role in monitoring climate change for many years. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), for example, is ideal for monitoring sea ice melting, deforestation, flooding, wildfires, agriculture, snow cover et al. The beauty of SAR in the climate monitoring Space is its ability to see through cloud coverage, smoke and at any time day or night.

funding to study and apply here, but when we consider what commercial value and tertiary impacts ice melting can have, it changes the dynamic and opens the marketable opportunity.

Hurdles in the way

The EO industry is positioned to contribute in a meaningful way because at its core, there is a strong geospatial element to this issue that we can tackle head on. A good example is sea ice melting. Perhaps there isn’t a huge market of government

As dynamic as the New Space industry is, the community is limited by the methods of access, standardization and practical applications in daily life. Today, many of these capabilities require long term commitments, steep minimum consumption rates, and foreign formats in order to access and leverage the services.

As dynamic as the New Space industry is, the community is limited by the methods of access, standardization and practical applications in daily life.

One of our missions at Ursa has been to standardize the formats across all our satellite intelligence providers, solidify the licensing terms, and give access to the insights EO can deliver right from our website. It’s with this ease of use and access that we can truly leverage the full global market reach and potential this exceptional industry has to offer.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

No Better Time for Earth Observation than Now

BY STEPHANE GERMAIN

E

CEO, GHGSat

arth Observation (EO) had a bit of a coming of age in the last two years. All of a sudden, everyone could see with their own eyes the stark impact of the drop in human activity during lockdowns around the world, such as the reductions in greenhouse gases and pollutants like NO2 around cities or the sharp drop in maritime traffic. On our part, GHGSat, global leader in high-resolution remote-sensing of greenhouse gas from Space, observed changing patterns in CH4 emissions due to different operational patterns and supply chain issues to support repairs in the oil and gas industry.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

The pandemic has undoubtedly affected our operations; like most companies, we had to learn to all work and collaborate remotely for extended periods of time.

However, we managed to pull the necessary resources together and follow through with our plans. We launched two satellites during this period, and doubled the number of employees around the world.

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Democratization of AI and ML

There has never been a better time for EO than now. For example, several companies have cracked

the code and managed to package powerful synthetic aperture radar (SAR) payloads, once the specialty of governments and Space agencies, into small packages. Innovative sensors to look at radio frequency (RF) signals on Earth are providing invaluable insights into human activity patterns.

However, the advent of analytics and the democratization of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms are supercharging the EO datasets and extracting incredible insights.

GHGSat had already recognized the power of analytics years ago and started combining our unique data with other streams of information to offer actionable insights to our customers.

Cooperation has always been a central pillar for success in the Space industry. This will continue, except now we also see an increase in mutually beneficial commercial collaborations between New Space companies. More and more countries are now realizing the important role they can play in the success of early entrants by providing anchor tenancies, that can be transformational as EO companies strive to grow.

Collaboration between New Space spacecraft and large agency

The advent of analytics and the democratization of machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms are supercharging the Earth Observation datasets and extracting incredible insights.

satellites like those of the Copernicus EO Programme will be crucial going forward as the systems have complementary capabilities to maximize impact. The European Space Agency’s Third Party Mission Program is a great example of such a collaboration ecosystem.

EO to tackle climate change

GHGSat was founded on the belief that small satellites could complement the regional and global scale greenhouse gas monitoring of large EO satellites with measurements of emissions directly from industrial sites.

Since GHGSat pioneered the capability in 2016, there have been multiple announcements of other systems promising some level of capability to look at GHG emissions. GHGSat’s technology is now available not only for private companies or regulators, but also for the international community to understand what emissions are on a global scale; the information will allow international collaborators and those developing international policies in setting new goals, to have the data they need to truly understand where we are starting from, and the goal we want to achieve together, in reducing methane globally.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Make Space Science Relatable and Simple

BY THOMAS VANMATRE

Vice President, Global Business Development, Satellogic

S

ince the initial COVID lockdowns, budget-conscious economies have put resources behind ‘doing more with free’ data, seeing if they can derive consequential insights from more economical data sources. However, the larger economies have veered towards spending at the same rate as previous years.

At Satellogic, we have observed a voracious appetite for economical satellite imagery in every commercial and government vertical. Providers of economical data and solutions always stand to gain market share in times of budget austerity; so while COVID continues to shape budgets, we will continue to see market demand for our products and services.

Platform fatigue

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

We continue to see everyone trying to build ‘one platform to rule them all’. This is an unfortunate trend that is only exacerbating the ‘platform fatigue’ we hear of from customers.

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However, two positive trends we are seeing are around pricing transparency and API (Applica-

tion Programming Interface) or SDK (Software Development Kit) strengthening. Pricing APIs will soon become normal within the Earth Observation (EO) industry, simplifying the purchasing process.

Companies with customer-centric philosophies manifested in elegant API design and architecture are gaining substantial traction by allowing customers to easily integrate EO data into their work.

COVID also brought about the popularity of data dashboards, an easy way to present complicated spatial datasets, allowing the abstract to become intuitive and digestible. Dashboards play into the user experience and design evolution we are witnessing. No longer is it enough to provide data in a raw or processed state; it is incumbent upon providers to help customers easily understand the significance of the data they are seeing/buying.

The analytics ecosystem

To design, build, launch, and operate satellites (no matter how small) is no easy feat. The barriers to entry in the small satellite industry are high, but with an influx of VC funding, they are coming down. In reality, Space remains an unforgiving environment in which most early-stage start-ups do not succeed. That said, the ambitious few that do succeed are pushing legacy operators to lower costs, increase agility, and become more customer-centric.

Artificial intelligence/machine learning analytics firms now number in the thousands globally.

This exploding industry of analytics providers is growing the total addressable market by

No longer is it enough to simply provide data in a raw or processed state. It is incumbent to help customers easily understand the significance of the data they are seeing/buying. creating new customers, while also expanding the intellectual capital in our industry. This creates opportunities for mergers and acquisitions for larger industry players, and increases the ‘speed to insight’ for the industry customer base.

The challenges

There is a massive supply shortage in quality, affordable EO data.

In some areas, all the satellite capacity to produce EO data is bought up before new satellites are even launched. There is simply not enough supply to meet regional and global demand.

Further, our industry has a relatability problem. The lay person cannot relate to multispectral, hyperspectral, or synthetic aperture radar data. Outside of weather images on the local news channels, we have done a poor job of explaining data from Space. It is incumbent upon our industry to make this science simplistic.

There is no lack of demand for EO data and analytics. We are of the opinion that prolonged technology gaps or sluggish user adoption are largely driven by poor storytelling, marketing, and product development. It is the industry that must adapt to meet the needs of the customer (no matter what the state of technology), not the other way around.

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Geospatial Data is Crucial for Future Innovations and Decision-Making

BY PV RAI

L

Managing Director, Pixel Softek

ocation data is vital for businesses. The proliferation of smartphone usage is driving the location-based services market. Spatial data and digital mapping are playing a pivotal role in logistics, food delivery, and other app-based business functions like transportation and mobility.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Further, when it comes to emergency response in the event of floods, firestorms, hurricanes or any other natural calamities, real-time information such as geospatial/location data plays a vital role.

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With advancements in technology, many industries are willing to adopt new systems to improve their efficiency. As a result, the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) and e-commerce sectors are expected to see significant growth. The healthcare sector too will witness a transformation, with a growing number of Internet of Things (IoT) applications, devised with healthcare requirements in mind, contributing to market growth.

Future technologies

Pixel Softek strongly believes that most services and analytics will be concentrated around geospatial data in the future, as it is the key to sustainable development.

Innovations in geospatial data analytics will be the industry driver contributing to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are certainly game changers. Many innovators are focusing on these technologies to help solve practical industry problems. This will enable the industry and end users to access technology at a lower cost, without the need to invest in resources to build geospatial datasets for analysis.

Geospatial data and technologies are also crucial for effective planning and design of 5G networks. Once built, 5G networks will help connect millions of people living in urban areas and connect devices to implement IoT, AI, cloud computing and Big Data analytics. These technologies will not only strengthen geospatial

Innovations in geospatial data analytics will be the industry driver contributing to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

solutions but substantially enhance response times in the connected world.

Decision-making and empowerment

Geospatial technologies provide a visual platform to study the possible impact of various decisions and enable users to make informed decisions. Pixel Softek wants to be a key player in offering customized/configurable solutions using AI, ML and data analytics to make informed decisions, optimize resource utilization, and enhance productivity in the farming, infrastructure, and utility sectors.

Rural empowerment is vital for sustainable development.

We have a dedicated Geospatial Rural Infrastructure Information System that focuses on the deployment of geospatial technologies in rural habitats. We also do a functionality analysis of infrastructure, which addresses the rural ecosystem in terms of crops and natural resources’ endowments and exploitation.

The farm holding data, along with the integrated resource variation, enable the farming community to devise suitable practices to reap the best harvest for increased production.

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

The Evolution of a Data Organization

BY FRANK TIEROLFF

T

CEO, Kadaster, The Netherlands

he Netherlands’ Cadastre, Land Registry and Mapping Agency, also called Kadaster, has evolved considerably in the past three decades. It has developed itself from a labor-intensive organization towards a capital intensive organization by adopting automatization and automation. Now, it has become a data organization.

Also, in the last 20 years, the number of public tasks has increased. For instance, we are now responsible for maintaining energy performance certificates, tax valuation, and exchange of data related to it. Also our role in the real estate sector has changed. Apart from being responsible for land registry and legal certainty, we now add value to public tasks in society and contribute to policies related to climate change, energy, and housing.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Information to power decision-making

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Despite the financial crisis and the pandemic, the real estate sector has continued to grow in the Netherlands, and is, as such, an important pillar of the national economy. Nevertheless, housing demand remains a

challenge; the country is in need of another 900,000 houses in the next eight to ten years. Kadaster is providing spatial information based on data that is fundamental to timely and effective decision-making in this sector.

Together with other partners, Kadaster provides information to other stakeholders for better decisions and outcomes as well.

The organization has built, and continues to build strategic alliances with organizations like the Central Bureau of Statistics and the Netherlands Enterprise Agency in order to support the Dutch government in its digital governance and digitalized services efforts.

New processes, new approach

As a data organization, Kadaster focuses on datasets and the processes that lead to those datasets. The organization collects data, validates it, registers it, maintains datasets, makes it accessible and uses the data to build products and services.

This also allows it to provide a more integrated picture to its customers.

Tech exploration

Previously the way of dealing with data was exchanging it; a more effective way is to share

We collect, validate, register and maintain data, make it accessible and use it to build products and services for society.

it, for which Kadaster employs Cloud technology and application programming interfaces (APIs).

We are also involved in the creation of Digital Twins, for which we provide information fundamental to these digital replicas.

We are also using and exploring technologies focusing on point clouds.

Data governance and ethics

An important aspect of sharing data, is the attention to ethics; we are covering that with new techniques. For instance, we are now doing a proof of concept for an algorithm register, together with others, just to think about how we should be more transparent in the way we use artificial intelligence.

Main idea behind it is using and sharing data with transparency and responsibility.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Geospatial Data is a Strategic National Asset

BY THALIA BALDWIN

U

Director, Geospatial Commission

se of good data helps us function more effectively as a society. It ensures efficient delivery of public services and creates new opportunities for businesses to improve and expand their products and services. In the United Kingdom, data will be used to target economic recovery in the post-pandemic era. We recognize that location data, in particular, can bring great value to both the economy and society, and so the UK Geospatial Commission has been established to unlock the value of location (geospatial) data for the country. We published the national Geospatial Strategy “Unlocking the Power of Location” in 2020; it identifies nine opportunity areas that inform our work, covering big themes like infrastructure, transport, housing, environment, public health, etc.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Better data quality, delivery

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With our partners we are establishing transformational data projects to ensure better quality and delivery of economic value across these opportunity areas.

A good example of this is the National Underground Asset Register (NUAR), supporting the United Kingdom’s Build Back Better priorities. NUAR will create a single, digital map of the UK’s

buried assets, revolutionizing the way we install, maintain, operate and repair our buried infrastructure whilst also improving workers’ safety and minimizing disruption to critical services. The register is of great value to the economy. Our analysis suggests that it will deliver around GBP 350 million (USD 475 million) annual monetized benefits to society by avoiding accidental asset strikes alone.

Our work will also support improvements in policy and help in achieving the United Kingdom’s Net Zero target. We have recently started the National Land Data Programme, investing GBP 4.5 million (USD 6.19 million) in three pilot areas across the United Kingdom to deliver a blueprint for future land use data needs, which can help meet competing demands on land from housing and infrastructure to carbon sequestration and biodiversity.

Importance of location data

From a public policy perspective, geospatial data is proving increasingly relevant for delivering government priorities. High-quality geospatial data and technologies are advancing fast and provide a foundational capability that underpins a range of other sector-specific strategies. One of the UK Geospatial Strategy’s four missions includes raising awareness about the

High-quality geospatial data and technologies provide a foundational capability that underpins a range of other thematic and sector-specific strategies.

relevance of geospatial data and we achieved this by demonstrating its value in real social, environmental and economic terms through our pipeline of targeted programs and investments. For example, one of our next projects is to explore a more coordinated approach to electric vehicle charging infrastructure — taking data out of local silos to increase our national capability.

Privacy concerns

We are often asked whether geospatial data is special. Is it distinct from other data? I think geospatial data has a critical part to play as a subset of the wider data strategy in the United Kingdom. It has interesting and diverse characteristics too, not least because a person’s geospatial identity in some circumstances can reveal their actual identity.

We’ve started some work in the form of a public dialog about location data ethics, to understand both what people know and how they feel about how their location data is used — by government and by businesses. We can see that this is on the international agenda, for example through the Locus Charter. We’re keen that people understand the benefits and have confidence in how their location data is used, and innovation that can transform the delivery of public services and drive economic growth is unconstrained. We see exciting times ahead for our geospatial journey!

BY INGRID VANDEN BERGHE

Administrator General, National Geographic Institute, Belgium

W

ith the advent of digitization, some national mapping agencies are broadening their role to become geo-information brokers for governments. This is the direction that the National Geographic Institute of Belgium is taking. The brokering works in two ways — outwards to provide government information publicly and inwards to ensure that government has the data it needs.

Second, mapping agencies have to ensure that government has accurate geospatial information to take good decisions. This

involves collecting data from different agencies and sources and making it available nationally. It also requires working with neighbouring countries to meet crossborder information needs through products and services.

Our change in direction is not through political mandate. We are a politically uninteresting organization. That said, the government is supportive of what we do, because we do our job well.

Data policy

It is important we have a good data policy. I am personally not convinced about providing all data for free. The private sector is more concerned about data quality and accessibility than (reasonable) cost.

Data governance does provide some challenges that we work with others to overcome. There are certain areas in which access to geospatial information has to be limited for security and defense reasons. I think the role of a mapping agency is to make sure the data that is put out in the public domain is compliant with national security constraints and so we work with the Ministry of Interior to get this right. On the issue of privacy, we are establishing a dialog with the Privacy

Rapid innovation around technologies has had a great impact on everyone, and national mapping agencies are no exception.

Commission on how to treat geospatial information, so that data providers and users do not face unexpected challenges.

Tech impact on business

Rapid innovation around technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning and the Cloud has had a great impact on everyone, and national mapping agencies are no exception. Today, you can just get into the Cloud on your phone and do all your work easily. It is this growing use of technology that mapping agencies must embrace and support.

Although we started adopting the digital approach in 1990s, today we are not amongst the early adopters of new approaches. The stress on resources since we work with public money is a factor in this. Also, there is a growing idea that everyone is a mapper and that government mapping activities are becoming irrelevant. So we have to demonstrate the necessity for authoritative geodata and therefore we have to prioritize resilience and security and the underlying needs for authoritative geodata and services.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

The first way is about providing access to people.

The INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community) initiative in Europe has made it mandatory for governments to ensure that environmental spatial information is shared among public sector organizations, facilitating public access to spatial information and assisting in policy-making. There is considerable value in governmental spatial data to help economic growth and people’s welfare. Governments need to be encouraged to take a geographical approach when dealing with information, be it environmental data, economic data, or public health data. We have to make people understand the geospatial elements in information, so they can access and apply the necessary tools to use it for better outcomes.

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Mapping Agencies as Geo-Information Brokers

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Demonstrating the Power of Geospatial

BY LÉA BODOSSIAN

Secretary-General & Executive Director, EuroGeographics

E

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

uroGeographics is the not-for-profit association for European National Mapping, Cadastral and Land Registry Authorities. Its members cover the whole of geographical Europe — from Iceland to Russia and from Norway to Azerbaijan. It’s a coalition of official national sources of geospatial information that is willing to exchange best practices and knowledge.

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We have recently launched a gateway called Open Maps for Europe, through which we are making available three of our key datasets that are pan-European and are made of official authoritative data from our member organizations. This is an important project that delivers trusted data and will conclude at the end of 2022. It’s co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility of the European Union.

We are doing this because our members believe in the power of ‘where’. Data is essential to support public policies in terms of designing them, accessing the

The biggest challenge in policymaking is to make people realize that every time a policy is developed or implemented, there is going to be an element of ‘geo’ in it.

necessary statistics, and implementing them efficiently.

Addressing key challenges

When it comes to Open Maps for Europe, the challenge is that not all datasets are open at the same level within Europe. So, we had to issue licensing agreements and pay to ensure that the data was available with uniformity. It’s a financial challenge and we had to review our agreements with many of our partners. This is an issue that brings into question the issue of long-term sustainability. We know about the power of ‘where’ and are confident that the data we are providing is going to be beneficial to the entire society.

I was trained as a geographer and I feel that geographers have things to say that are extremely interesting and useful for the world. However, they are not good at saying those things, so we should be demonstrating the power of geospatial data in a way that everybody can understand. As far as policymaking is concerned, the biggest challenge is to make people realize that every time a policy is developed or implemented, there is going to be an element of ‘geo’ in it.

Visualization and emerging tech

An important part of information sharing is to ensure that the language is common and easy, so that it can be understood both by policymakers and the public.

This is where visualization comes in, and it has tremendous power. Someone has rightly said that ‘one good image is better

than explaining 100 times.’ Thus, visualization is a very significant tool to make data understandable by all.

With members creating and processing more and more data, EuroGeographics aims to support them by providing ways to share experiences of using technologies that enable visualization of this information. There are still maps of course but there also many new ways of presenting geospatial data to gain insight and value — from Digital Twins to Metaverses — all of which require a different mindset.

We are committed to supporting our members with the tools and knowledge to maximize their understanding so that society as a whole can benefit from exciting new ways of visualizing their data.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

GIS Empowering a Stronger India

location in it and this increases its value enormously. To gain a competitive advantage, businesses are progressively taking cognizance of location intelligent insights and consumers’ craving for location-rich personalized experiences.

Consequently, as stated by the Geospatial ‘Artha’ Report, India’s geospatial economy is expected to grow to Rs 63,100 crores (USD 8.5 billion) by 2025 with a CAGR of 12.8 percent. As a leader in the domain, Esri India aspires to continue playing the role of a significant contributor to the growth story, helping the country achieve numerous milestones through innovative GIS-based solutions.

India — growth drivers

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

The liberalization of geospatial data under the new guidelines is going to be a game-changer for the Indian economy. Additionally, the willingness of government departments and key private players to work together and adopt common parameters and standardized frameworks for different types of data will make the discrepancies and differences go away, thereby enabling broader collaboration and higher innovation.

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BY AGENDRA KUMAR

I

Managing Director, Esri India

n recent years, the Indian Government has exhibited increased commitment towards making geospatial mainstream. The new geospatial data guidelines that foster open and easy access to geospatial information are probably the biggest testimony to the changing mindset. Geospatial technologies are now being considered the nation’s ‘digital currency’, as it is

evident they have a high impact on key sectors of the economy, such as, infrastructure, land, utilities, water, transportation, health, and agriculture.

Interestingly, digital transformation, which is the story of the New India, is triggering an explosion of data, and businesses are challenged to make the best use of this data for exceptional outcomes. Most of the data that exists today has an element of

The Government of India is in the process of using geospatial technologies and drones to map over six lakh villages through the Svamitva scheme. This, and other schemes under the Gati Shakti program, will generate large amounts of geospatial data.

Further, the provision of Rs 60,000 crores (USD 600 billion) for providing tap water to 3.8 crore (38 million) households in 2022/23 will be very critical for improving the living conditions in smaller towns and rural areas.

Geographic Information System (GIS) based water distribution network planning, execution and

operations will go a long way towards managing water utilities efficiently. With the introduction of ‘Indo ArcGIS’, which provides bundled solution products for numerous Indian applications and workflows, and commonly required Indian geospatial data, Esri India has taken a major step towards boosting the use of GIS in effectively addressing the important day-to-day challenges of such sectors.

In addition, with a Cloud-based drone data processing system — ‘ArcGIS for Site Scan’ hosted on a government-approved Cloud in India — Esri India has made it easier for the government and private organizations to use geospatial data, technologies and drones for survey and data collection activities. The use of these advanced technologies will create better opportunities for growth and sustainable development.

Digital transformation is gaining pace and the innovative start-up ecosystem is becoming prominent in India. Currently, out of about 60,000 start-ups in the country, around 10,000 are technology-led start-ups. Aided by GIS technology and geospatial data, start-ups have the potential to develop innovative solutions that can solve critical problems. With the intent of providing the required support, Esri India has curated the ‘GeoInnovation’ program. The focus of the program is to aid start-ups in becoming spatially intelligent.

Esri India has supported about 75 start-ups with its software and knowledge access, and the help of dedicated teams. The ‘ArcGIS Platform’ makes it easy for budding digital entrepreneurs to integrate location services in apps, business systems or products they want to create. There are many other features like geo-coding services, routing services and several open APIs (Application Programming Interface) that the ‘ArcGIS Platform’ offers. We see more and more developers using this platform as it enables location access, which is of paramount importance today for almost every app.

Lack of skilled manpower has always been a hindrance to the growth of GIS adoption in India. Through collaboration with various educational institutes and NGOs, Esri India is making efforts to build a stronger geospatial workforce that the country can benefit from.

The future of GIS

With the emergence of web and Cloud-based systems, the investment required in building geospatial infrastructures is reducing. A new wave of customized geospatial tools that can be rapidly deployed by users themselves is emerging to address business challenges. With mobile devices already harnessing geoinformation anywhere, anytime, business applications will soon be powered by ‘Virtual GIS Engines’, replacing high-end laptops and desktops.

GIS is becoming mainstream and integrates well with other business, social and engineering systems. GIS systems integrate with systems such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) for creating additional value through the location component attached with most of the organizational data. The integration of GIS with BIM in the form of ‘GeoBIM’ is supporting better ‘Geo-designs’ and improved resource utilization and gaining higher construction efficiency.

As the economic value of geospatial data gets unearthed and consumers increasingly demand location-rich experiences, the concept of ‘geo-data monetization’ will gain momentum. It will be important to set up a network of geo-portals for sharing the data generated by both government and private sectors, to unleash the value of geospatial data and to create multi-organizational engagements.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Esri India has been incessantly working with some of the biggest users of GIS in the country: organizations like National Mapping Agencies, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), National Informatics Centre (NIC), the census department, and other government agencies. A major focus has been to assist government departments at both central and state levels to make a stronger impact on the lives of the citizens using GIS. With such associations, Esri India intends to create massive public awareness about GIS that could foster cooperation and multi-level engagement.

The support paradigm

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

Geospatial technologies are now being considered the nation’s ‘digital currency’, as it is evident they have a high impact on key sectors of the economy, such as, infrastructure, land, utilities, water, transportation, health, and agriculture.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

The Earth Observation Ecosystem is Expanding

BY ANDREW MULLIN

T

Global Marketing, EarthDaily Analytics

he past decade has been revolutionary for Earth Observation (EO), leading to a massive expansion in the volume of data available.

For example, just the combined fleet of Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 produces terabytes of data per day. The next evolution will be moving from maps to math, that is, analyzing the vast amount of data being collected.

Following that, we believe artificial intelligence and machine learning applications will be some of our industry’s innovation trends.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Space is increasingly becoming more democratized and accessible, which will inevitably bring more human-made challenges to Space sustainability. We are open to some Space governance and believe a stronger system will be needed to effectively address the rapidly evolving ecosystem.

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It is evident that the EO ecosystem is expanding, and the application of technology continues to evolve to assist businesses and governmental entities confronting the world’s most pressing challenges. As the cost required to deploy satellites goes down, the door becomes open to many more use cases and business impacts, but it will require

cross-industry adoption of new technology.

The pandemic was our baseline

EarthDaily Analytics was formed in the spring of 2021, so we began our business during COVID-19. In this regard, the pandemic has actually been our baseline since our inception. Today, with customers in nearly 40 countries, and that global presence means we need to be digitally equipped no matter what. Because of this, we’ve been a fully digital business since our beginning. The benefits of digital have become even more apparent during the pandemic, and in an innovative industry like ours, it’s no surprise that companies are embracing the digital economy.

We initiated construction of the EarthDaily Constellation in late 2021 with committed support from Antarctica Capital. Following planned launches in 2023, the EarthDaily Constellation will combine with the EarthPipeline data processing system to provide unprecedented scientific grade data of the world every day, positioning EarthDaily Analytics to meet the growing needs of diverse industries including agriculture, environmental social & governance (ESG), insurance, disaster prevention and recovery, commodities trading, and more.

The next evolution will be moving from maps to math, that is, analyzing the vast amount of data being collected with artificial intelligence and machine learning applications.

Collaboration and partnerships

Businesses need advanced analytics so they can validate and verify the potential effects of climate change and sustainably adjust to resulting impacts. For example, in agriculture, the topic of carbon sequestration is garnering interest.

EO can help support sustainability efforts by verifying and measuring the impact of sustainable farming practices aimed at improving the amount of carbon sequestered from the atmosphere. EO can do this by establishing a baseline, detecting change and verifying results.

For all this to happen, we need a healthy collaborative environment.

I see public-private partnerships helping to expand the application of EO technology. We are also seeing new private companies, much like EarthDaily Analytics, beginning to push the boundaries.

Then there are affordable launch rockets and new sensors and technologies that are continuing to revolutionize the industry.

Adoption of new technology, including EO, happens over time.

It starts with a small handful of early adopters, moves through the massive mid-market and eventually enters the hands of even the most change-resistant industries.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

GEOINT + FINTECH Placemaking in ‘Downtown North’ Entrance to The Globe Building in the Downtown North Insight District.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

An urban insight district in St. Louis at the heart of America.

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O

ver the past two decades, St. Louis business and civic leaders have worked hard to shed the Gateway City’s previous ‘rust belt’ image — replacing declining traditional manufacturing industries with high tech sectors such as plant and life sciences, information technologies, financial services, advanced manufacturing, and logistics and distribution.

In this more recent reconfiguration of the economic development landscape and ecosystem, physical platforms such as ‘Innovation Districts’ have been created to provide entrepreneurs with opportunities to establish and grow enterprises in these new

sectors. For example, the Danforth Plant and Life Science Center and its companion BRDG District in suburban St. Louis, and the CORTEX District west of downtown, have been cited by Brookings Institution as best practices examples of districts for growing the plant and life sciences sectors.

Now, in conjunction with the current development of the USD 1.75 billion, 100-acre, one-million sq ft new western headquarters of the U.S. Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) on the edge of downtown St. Louis — along with the eventual move of more than 1,000 Square and Cash App employees to a newly-renovated historic building, and the high tech adaptive use and renovation of one of St. Louis’ former railroad stations, The Globe Building, into a destination for geospatial and other tech firms,

both located downtown, just blocks away from NGA’s new HQ — is a first of its kind Innovation District located in downtown St. Louis.

A premier technology hub

The Downtown North Urban Insight District in St. Louis is at the intersection of GEOINT, FinTech and entrepreneurship at-large. It is a premier technology hub — committed to empowering and enriching lives, solving problems, and keeping America safe.

Downtown North is a live/ work/play community home to entrepreneurs and industry leaders in geospatial intelligence and financial technology.

The Downtown North Insight District is anchored by two major entities, The Globe Building and the adaptively renovated

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

former St. Louis Post-Dispatch HQ Building which is becoming the new location for 1,000+ employees of Square and Cash App. The Globe Building and Square and Cash App are joined by the T-Rex technology incubator for start-up firms as the third anchor in the Downtown North Insight District.

As St. Louis aspires to become a global geospatial intelligence hub with the USD 1.75 billion new western headquarters of the NGA — just several blocks away in downtown St. Louis — this unique Innovation District has been taking shape. Square and Cash App and The Globe Building are the two closest properties to the new NGA campus with available hi-tech office and multi-tenant Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) space.

‘The Cube Conference Room’ in the unclassified GEOINT space adjacent to the 75,000 square foot multi-tenant SCIF at The Globe Building.

‘High Tech Castle’ — The Art Deco Globe Building

The 720,000 sq ft Globe Building is a distinctive Art Deco building which once served as a St. Louis railroad station. The high tech adaptive reuse of the Globe Building by owner Steven Stone has become a prime location for a growing number of tech, GEOINT and GEOINT-related firms (such as MAXAR, T-Kartor, Ball Aerospace, the HQ for the Americas of Geospatial World); five major data centers in 145,000 sq ft of space, three direct feeds from the power company and 12 fiber providers; the new headquarters, advanced manufacturing, R&D, and global distribution center for Stereotaxis, a global leader in robotic surgery technology); and a recently-announced 75,000 sq ft SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) — the largest multi-tenant SCIF outside of the Washington, D.C. area.

The new Square and Cash App Building described in St. Louis Magazine as a “cutting-edge workplace

Scifing for Growth The Westway Services Group is a pioneer in the field of developing commercial Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF-as-a-Service, which has changed the way small companies conduct business with the Department of Defense, government agencies, and the U.S. military.

Geospatial World Magazine, December 2021

equipped to help the company expand its local workforce, recruit and retain top local talent, and fuel growth strategies.” The building was the former headquarters of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper.

T-REX is a non-profit innovation and entrepreneurial development center for start-up tech entrepreneurs. The center includes co-working space for entrepreneurs, a technology incubator, and an entrepreneurial resource center. It is home to over 400 founders, tech developers and designers, mentors, and educators.

In the past year, T-REX has become a local hub for geospatial entrepreneurs, academic researchers, and federal employees of NGA and NGA’s Moonshot Labs.

The Downtown North Insight District unites developers, creators, influencers, and policy makers by bringing assets to the needs in corporate and commercial real estate, urban infrastructure, work-life balance, community engagement, and public art and culture.

Charting a new route

Today, Downtown North is charting a new north for St. Louis.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

In partnership with developer John Berglund, Managing Director and Co-Founder of the Starwood Group, Square and Cash App have recently completed a stunning renovation of the 226,000 sq ft facility, with space to ultimately house up to 1,400 employees.

The building has new interior atriums which connect interior floors. Suspended glass sculpture by Third Degree Glass Factory.

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LEADERS' OUTLOOK

The District hosts industry leaders in geospatial intelligence, financial technology, and entrepreneur incubation. Founders are working together to collect, analyze, and distribute insights in support of national security, developing easy tools that empower and enrich people to thrive and participate in a vital economy. By hosting, recruiting, and nurturing companies that advance technological development from start-up to grownup, they encourage creative thinking through urban design.

Companies in the District attract, employ, and retain local talent that is committed to the economic and cultural development of St. Louis.

The T-REX technology start-up incubator

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

The Conference Center at The Globe Building

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The national media have begun to take notice of St. Louis as a ‘start-up ecosystem of the future’ with recent headlines and comments, such as:  Several years ago, Fit Small Business ranked St. Louis #2 for “Best Cities for Entrepreneurs”, behind only Seattle, and ahead of Denver, Austin, Nashville, and Boston, in the ranking.  It further notes that, at 85.3 percent, St. Louis had the “highest business survivability rating in the nation.’  The article points out that St. Louis is the secondbest city for entrepreneurs thanks to its aforementioned high business survivability, lower-than-average tax rate, and very low cost of living.  It concludes: “While this may seem surprising to aspiring start-up owners who equate bigger cities like San Francisco with entrepreneurship, St. Louis” affordability and undersaturation make it the ideal proving ground for new businesses.’  Lending Tree points out that “40% of new ventures in St. Louis are started by Millennials and 42% by GenXers.”  Writing in fivethirtyeight.com about St. Louis’ efforts to build its entrepreneurial momentum as a base for future growth, former Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Casselman’s article carried the headline, “St. Louis Is The New Startup Frontier.”

Fulfilling this immense potential is at the heart of the Downtown North Insight District’s vision — to inspire regional growth and positive social impact by connecting, attracting and retaining companies and their talent force.

Richard C.D. Fleming

View of the former St. Louis Post-Dispatch Press Room with 20’ ceilings with Tucker Blvd. to the Right.

CEO, Community Development Ventures, Inc., St. Louis regionalstrategy@me.com

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ULTRAMAP Post-processing software

DATA PROGRAM Cloud-based image library

Whatever the project size, stage of business or budget, Vexcel Imaging has an aerial camera system that is just the perfect fit for you.

Process UltraCam data in the shortest possible time with the highest degree of automization, supported by control tools & powerful visuals.

Our diverse image collection lets you acquire up-to-date, highresolution imagery and derivatives covering entire states and countries.

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Daily Earth Data to See Change and Make a Difference Planet provides daily satellite data that helps businesses, governments, researchers, and journalists understand the physical world and make data-driven decisions to build a more sustainable future.

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