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’.
