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 […]
The Scaling Limit of Buying Lidar Data
Licensing and Purchasing Lidar Data as Refresh Scales Data Volume The way spatial data is bought or licensed determines who pays for it over time, and whether systems scale cleanly or accumulate hidden operational costs. Whether spatial data is bought or licensed determines who pays for its production, who carries the burden of keeping it […]
Safeguarding Spatial Sovereignty in the Age of Rapidly Refreshed Machine-Readable Terrain
“The map is not the territory.” — Alfred Korzybski A map at its core is an abstraction, while the physical world, the territory, is not. The physical world is where our children grow up, communities form, infrastructure is built, food is grown, water flows, and ecosystems sustain the conditions necessary for prosperity. Every road, building, […]
Scanning the Stakes: Lidar, AI, and the Real World
This is the first in a three-part series exploring the convergence of AI and the trend toward rapidly refreshed global lidar, how it could go wrong, how we can steer it right, and the immense good that will follow if we do. As lidar technology advances toward rapidly refreshed global data with centimeter-level precision, it’s […]
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 […]
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 […]
Can Utilities Realize Meaningful ROI from EO Data Without Near Total Automation?
Recent posts by Matt Sheehan highlighting the beauty and potential of fusing various satellite collected geospatial data sets to mitigate utility risk from vegetation have got me thinking: can this type of advanced geospatial technology produce meaningful ROI without near total automation? Don’t get me wrong, I love the technology, it’s awesome, beautiful, and allows […]