Facing the Abyss

As we near the completion of the first quarter of the 21st century, the world is witnessing crisis after crisis. Climate Change is becoming a reality as the weather patterns are changing – the frequency of violent weather episodes is increasing, leading to extreme flooding, forest fires, cyclones, and other natural disasters.

Compounding these natural calamities are the two major wars that were supposed to end in weeks but are extending to months and years. The damage to life and property is humongous, while the geopolitical scenario is teetering at the abyss of an Armageddon.

However, there is still a flicker of hope that the world will recover its balance. Geospatial systems and applications will play a very large role in this redemption. A fleet of EO satellites, both government sponsored and privately owned, are at the command of nations to observe every centimeter of the lithosphere, biosphere, and atmosphere.

A vast suite of analytical tools which now include AI are available to extract information from the vast amount of data, past and present, for further planning and decision-making. Administrators are recognizing the value of such information and are integrating systems into their policy, planning, and execution.

Agencies all over the world are depending on Earth Observation systems and analytics to recover from disasters and manage relief and rehabilitation. analytics is now aided by Big Data, AI, and Deep Learning to model the future impacts of climate change and arrive at mitigatory and precautionary measures.

While geospatial systems are an integral part of the war machines of all nations, they are also useful for relief and rehabilitation of the civilian population. In future, when the hostilities end geospatial systems will be needed to rebuild the destroyed assets: power stations, airports, railways, roads, institutions and homes. Maybe some good may emerge as there could be better and more rational planning of these assets. But it should also be noted that construction activity also adds to climate change.

Indeed, debris is not only on the ground. It affects the atmosphere and the local weather and climate. Another debris that is becoming a problem is space debris which is growing as nations compete to have their own systems for EO, communications and PNT, not to mention the ever present threat of weaponization of space. Tracking, reducing and perhaps later recovering space debris promises to be a major space activity in the future.

We are very familiar with the tool and technologies of these systems. Professionals have learnt to grapple with all the acronyms from GIS, GNSS, SAR to GeoINT, CIVILINT, DT, AI ML, DL, QC and what have you. In this maze of technologies and acronyms a question must be asked: what is all this for?

This question has only one answer: ‘For all humankind’, and yet this element is totally missing from all discussions on applications of geospatial systems.

If geospatial is to become an essential part of governance it must take into account the human element, nay, the human element should be the center of all planning.