2022 Geospatial Predictions by the President
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We thought 2021 would be the year we put COVID-19 behind us, and we would move back to normal, pre-pandemic life. Instead, we have gained a resiliency that we didn't have before, an ability to recover more quickly from the difficulties we continue to face, realizing the normal we knew is changing and taking on a new form. For that reason, some of the things we predicted in the past are not as evolved as we thought they would be by 2022. However, these ideas and innovations are still moving forward and are shaped by the challenges and opportunities of today.
Digital Twins
A Digital Twin is a geospatial technology that creates a virtual image that mimics a physical thing. Think of the Second Life game from the mid-2000s or Facebooks Metaverse but applied to real business applications. Digital Twins came into existence to speed decisions and make more accurate predictions using a digital model of real-world assets. In 2022, they will have a disruptive impact on enterprises simply because a Digital Twin can offer much more robust and actionable information.
In the past, business enterprises or government agencies may have relied on simulations, or more recently, machine learning, to determine potential outcomes or predict events. However, simulations generally do not consider real-time data and usually run based upon assumptions. Digital Twins technology creates a replica of a physical object, which shares data with that physical object. Digital Twins can be used for facilities management, R&D, product lifecycles, improving efficiencies, and overall procedure or process improvements.
Digital Twins can majorly impact production and supply chain management, which proved to be a significant problem for many businesses in 2021. Using Digital Twins to calculate everything from raw material needs to maintaining production systems and even recycling old products should prove immensely valuable.
Supply Chain
As I wrote in 2021, an organization's ability to fuse geospatial data with other data and collaborate across their business globally will prove to be a key differentiator. We started in 2021, but 2022 will be a big year for this kind of collaboration.
Supply chain logistic experts have found this global visualization of the supply chain essential to their business and are accelerating the adoption of geospatial analytics at an intense pace. Startup companies like ESP Logistics Technology, which GeoDecisions has a business interest in, and Project44, have received significant interest from the investment community. Supply chain visibility has become instrumental in managing the considerable demand shift for items such as paper products during the pandemic and the broader demand disruption around the globe.
Using data from tracking sensors, satellites, drones, and through tabular data with geolocation attributes, supply chain logistics can better understand the location of raw materials, products, or assets. Understanding where demand is located helps organizations optimize limited resources and grow market reach cost-effectively. The visualization of information and analytics provides the ability to predict better global logistic disruptions critical for business resilience.
The Democratization of Geospatial
The democratization of geospatial has been happening for several years now but is now entering its third phase. Those that have heard me speak at conferences know that this has been a central theme of where I see our industry moving in the future. Our geospatial community has become very adept at sharing those tools and techniques so that individuals can easily understand them without extensive experience, skills, or training. Geospatial companies have aggressively pursued crowdsourcing, big data, and data science, whether for honest data gathering or to sell location-based data to the highest bidder. Location-based applications, including smart buildings, self-driving cars, and crowdsourcing, will continue their upward growth in 2022.
Today, we are witnessing the emergence of a new wave of geospatial democratization, as governments realize the value of delivering geospatial data directly to consumers. For example, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, health departments worldwide release data daily about virus testing rates and vaccination rates directly to consumers. This raw data, in turn, enables comprehensive analyses of disadvantaged populations, transportation needs and disparities, digital access needs, and health equity. This geospatial data can be imported into various tools to analyze and contextualize the information, further broadening the knowledge base available to consumers, planners, aid agencies, and legislators.
Geospatial data is now accessible to everyone, regardless of the extent of their geospatial knowledge. Standard data formats, open-source tools and APIs, and open markup languages have made data interoperability easy. Open web tools support the rendering of map data and live queries of rich datasets. Finally, cloud-based computation and storage, and analytics tools, make largescale geospatial data processing possible for all developers.
5G Ultra Wide Ban
I've talked about 5G as far back as 2018 as a game-changing technology. What we have in our new phones right now is 4.5G, not 5G. 5G Ultra Wideband is the actual 5G technology. It will be rolling out across the country in 2022, provided the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) does not block it.
What will the 5G Ultra Wideband provide? 5G Ultra Wideband will accelerate the growth of geospatial edge computing in 2022. This will combine Big Data and cloud, visualization and augmentation, automation and intelligent machines, distributed computing, and artificial intelligence to derive insights from data generated by billions of connected devices worldwide. 5G Ultra Wideband's connectivity, low latency, and 100 times greater bandwidth than 4G will also present businesses with a geospatial platform to help drive new revenue opportunities leveraging that data and enabling whole new experiences.
5G Ultra Wideband will also usher in new technology trends that will impact the current location-enabled market. The value of location-based services for industries such as marketing, transportation, and retail, will only increase since the 5G Ultra Wideband rollout and its expansion will enable more mobile geospatial opportunities.
Industry Consolidation
Late 2020 and through 2021, there have been many well-known, geospatial industry-leading firms that have been acquired by private equity. Industry consolidation in the geospatial data acquisition market started several years ago and has reached its peak, but geospatial consulting firms' consolidation is just beginning. Our community is small business based. Even the larger geospatial consulting firms are considered small businesses. Many of these businesses were started in the late 1980s and '90s. The owners of those businesses are now looking to retire, turning to private equity-backed firms as buyers. This trend will accelerate in 2022 and beyond.
In 2022, we are innovating, adapting, creating. I've mentioned just a few of the big trends I see coming to fruition this year, but I would love to hear from you if you see others. Please share your thoughts in the Comments section below.
As President of GeoDecisions, Brendan Wesdock is responsible for 12 offices and more than 100 employees. He works with the company's leadership, supporting clients across the nation, and applying strategies for growth and innovation. Brendan previously served as senior vice president and operations manager, responsible for the firm's day-to-day operation and program manager for the patented IRRIS® geospatial decision support system. Brendan currently operates out of GeoDecisions' Newport News, Virginia, office.
