What Infrastructure-Grade, Decision-Ready Terrain Systems Must Deliver
Nearly every facet of modern civilization increasingly depends on terrain models to support operational decisions. As automated systems begin interacting directly with the physical world, terrain models are becoming inputs to machines as much as tools for human analysis. Infrastructure planning, logistics optimization, risk modeling, and a growing class of automated systems all rely on […]
Closing the Gap Between Digital Promise and the Physical World
The inevitable rise of a scalable terrain baseline As the economy is increasingly coordinated through digital systems, geospatial data is shifting from supporting analytics to serving as infrastructure. Terrain is among the primary physical reference layers underlying virtually all other classes of spatial data. This article asserts that terrain data as infrastructure only scales as […]
Distinguishing Regulatory and Operational Agency Functions in the Context of Improving Federal Efficiency
Introduction Amidst growing pressures to streamline the federal government and reduce fiscal waste, it’s critical to distinguish two distinct roles federal agencies serve: regulatory functions and operational functions. Regulatory functions involve creating and enforcing rules to safeguard public welfare, while operational functions focus on delivering services, sharing resources, or producing outputs that provide direct value […]
High Quality Data: the Cornerstone of Action-Oriented Geospatial Products
Last week I wrote about realizing the value of geospatial technology. This requires understanding the ultimate problems our technology will be used to solve for consumers and building action oriented technology to make solving these problems easier for operators. This week I’ll dig into what building action oriented technology means and what’s required to produce […]
Realizing the Value of Geospatial Technology
This week I’ll be exploring the value of geospatial technology. I hold that geospatial technology does not create value, but rather serves as an important tool contributing to the creation of value. This distinction is important because if we want to build more impactful technology and sustainable profit growth we must understand how value is […]
Street-Level Data: The White Elephant of Spatial Data
White elephants are larger than life, rare, and beautiful to behold. Their unrivaled beauty and power make them more than mere symbols of prestige, but endow them with great economic value. They’re also incredibly burdensome and costly to maintain. I can’t imagine a better analogy for street-level data. In this week’s blog I’ll be diving […]
What Is Geospatial Technology Anyway?
The goal of this blog is to bridge the gap between the nerds of the geospatial industry and those who are often left wondering what the heck we’re talking about when we rave over the wide world of geospatial technology. I love the business, technical, and operational aspects of the geospatial industry, they’re exciting! But […]
The Liberty Implications of Modern Geospatial Technology
As I sat down to write this article I was amazed at how quickly my outline ballooned beyond the scope possible to adequately cover in a mere blog post. The interplay between geospatial technology and liberty is rife with rabbit holes extending from philosophy and law to technology and business. So instead of my typical […]
5 Things to Consider When Planning Your Org Structure
Whether you’re just starting to expand beyond your founding team or you’ve been operating with a few dozen employees for years, it’s important to be thoughtful about the way your organization is structured. Your leadership and entry-level employees alike depend on a well-defined org structure to orient themselves in your company. Not only will a […]
What Does Google’s RT-2 Mean for the Geospatial Industry?
Google’s artificial intelligence lab recently published a new paper explaining the development of Robotic Transformer 2 (RT-2), a novel vision-language-action (VLA) model that “learns from both web and robotics data, and translates this knowledge into generalized instructions for robotic control.” This technology promises to upend many industries, as robots will be able to perform increasingly complex tasks […]