Our sustainable future, empowered by the geospatial ecosystem
Project the value, enhance adoption, evolve understanding of geospatial knowledge for social, economic and environmental development in the Digital Age
The ‘Geospatial Way’ is the future. It is the most efficient and effective way to collect, process, integrate and utilize information for overall global, national and individual development. Geospatial Knowledge is the result, enabling us to identify, contextualize and understand the many challenges and opportunities facing society within a geographic context. However, realizing the potential of this future state, particularly for developing countries, requires three key enablers – partnerships, knowledge sharing and capacity building.
With the objective to project the value proposition of Geospatial Knowledge, forecast its relevance and connectivity with fundamentals of next generation economy and society and to redefine the role of stakeholders: government, industry and civil society, the campaign on Advancing Role of Geospatial Knowledge Infrastructure in World Economy, Society and Environment was launched in January 2020. This is a three-year long project, looking at assessment in a broader frame for the first year, detailed strategy development in the second year and transformation in the third year.
As the world adjusts to new ways of working, living and operating, people across the globe are increasingly valuing the power of ‘where’ or geospatial knowledge. It is this geospatial knowledge that enables governments to make data-based decisions at scale and determine the type of interventions required for different programs, it helps businesses make strategic decisions and plan resource allocation intelligently. Geospatial Knowledge has touched the lives of billions of people across the globe making it more connected and comfortable. What then is the growth trajectory of Geospatial Knowledge? How does the new-age technology, including AI, Big Data Analytics, Cloud Computing, Robotics and Drones influencing Geospatial adoption across user segments? Are governments and businesses ready to scale up geospatial adoption for supporting diversified programs, business outcomes and development goals? What is the paradigm shift required to look at this critical infrastructure from a new light, so that the process of its enmeshment within the digital infrastructure is pervasive?
Geospatial Media and Communications has embarked on a journey with the United Nations Statistics Division and a host of partner organisations from different contexts to define, develop and help countries establish a Geospatial Knowledge Infrastructure. The project aims to bring out the value proposition of Geospatial Knowledge, forecast its relevance and connectivity with fundamentals of next generation economy and society and to redefine the role of stakeholders: government, industry and civil society. The campaign launched in January 2020 is titled, “Advancing Role of Geospatial Knowledge Infrastructure in World Economy, Society and Environment”.
As part of the outreach activity of the project, Geospatial Media and its partner organizations presents a two-hour intensive webinar to uncover three key topics that will develop your understanding on Geospatial Knowledge Infrastructure.
Agenda
Welcome and Remarks on Geospatial Knowledge Infrastructure
Sanjay Kumar, Chief Executive Officer, Geospatial
Media and Communications
Presentation on Geospatial Knowledge Infrastructure:
Components, Value and Relevance followed by Q&A
John Kedar, Strategic Advisor - Geospatial
Infrastructure Geospatial Media and Communications
Integration of UN-IGIF and Geospatial Knowledge
Infrastructure
United Nations-Global Geospatial Information Management
(UN-GGIM) has developed the Integrated Geospatial
Information Framework (IGIF), which focuses on
national geospatial information in its broadest sense.
It provides guidance to countries on development
of country-specific action plans, based on 9 strategic
pathways, to incorporate new and innovative approaches
to national geospatial information management.
Geospatial Knowledge Infrastructures (GKI) ensures
that geospatial data, services and knowledge meet
the requirements of tomorrow’s next-generation society,
solving tomorrow’s challenges with tomorrow’s tools.
GKI builds upon the framework of IGIF, focusing from
the user demand perspective, in place of geospatial
information supplier perspective. The panel will
consider the following questions:
Moderator: Dr Derek Clarke, Advisor, World Geospatial Industry Council
Panellists:
Rolando Ocampo Alcantar, Statistics Division,
Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean
United Nations
Dr Zaffar Sadiq Mohamed-Ghouse FRGS FSSSI,
Executive Director – Strategic Consulting &
International Relations, Spatial Vision, Australia
François Robida, Deputy Head of Division,
Information Systems and Technologies, French Geological
Survey (BRGM)
Panel on Spatial Dimension to Data Ecosystem:
Foundation to Geospatial Knowledge Infrastructure
The axiom ‘everything happens somewhere’ still stands.
Data from all sources must be brought together with the
necessary advanced tools, human and machine cooperating
to derive knowledge to solve challenges. These needs
might be one off, e.g. COVID-19 tracing, or common such
as enabling safe automated vehicles on city streets.
As geolocation becomes ubiquitous for human and machine,
time and place become ever more powerful data attributes.
Understanding of complex problems involves: What? Where? When? Who? How? and Why? Data Ecosystems see several actors interacting with each other to exchange, produce and consume data to create value. Today data ecosystems are driving data and knowledge-based economies. The Spatial Dimension delivers a critical or foundational component in building the power of a Data Ecosystem Analytics can be more nuanced and contextualized, serving Governance, Security and Public Safety, Business Enterprises and Citizens alike. Spatial Dimensions to Data Ecosystem helps to measure value impact and Return-on-Investment, as well as render accountability and transparency in systems. This panel will explore:
Moderator: Greg Scott, Inter-Regional Advisor, UN-GGIM, United Nations
Panellists:
Michael Lutz, Digital Economy, Joint Research Centre
Tan Boon Khai, Chief Executive, Singapore Land
Authority
Carl D. Shapiro, Ph.D., Director, Science and
Decisions Center, U.S. Geological Survey
Collaborative Approach Towards Building Geospatial
Knowledge Infrastructure
The web is a collaboration by definition, and the hallmark
of a knowledge ecosystem is collaboration. Value is
created by partnerships that enable data creation,
maintenance, exchange, analytics and consumption.
Few organizations or businesses work across sensor,
data, platform, application and consumer in the
knowledge economy. In order to get the most out of a
Geospatial Knowledge Infrastructure, the scope of
partnerships needs to be broadened to include the
entire knowledge value chain, from sensor to
citizen. With national geospatial agencies in mind,
this panel will discuss:
Moderator: Anamika Das, Vice President – Professional Geospatial Market, Geospatial Media and Communications
Panellists:
Basanta Shreshtha, Director of Strategic
Cooperation, International Center for Integrated
Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Nepal
Albert H. Anoubon Momo, Vice President &
Executive Director, Emerging Market and Funded Projects,
Trimble, USA
Paul Janssen, Geo-standardisation Expert,
Social Engineering, Geonovum, The Netherlands
Closing Remarks
A select set of 20 countries will be chosen by the partners to hold in-country roundtable meetings with the geospatial ecosystem stakeholders to deep dive into understanding the contexts and readiness for supporting a geospatial knowledge infrastructure. Discussions will revolve around current geospatial data infrastructure, policies, institutional capacities, industrial capacity and user capacity. The roundtable meetings will also explore various possible partnership networks, including government to government, government to private, government to multilateral and private to multilateral agencies.
Apart from the roundtable meetings, the team will also have several other one-on-one meetings as part of the primary inputs for the final report.
Training course on Advancing Role of Geospatial Knowledge Infrastructure in World Economy, Society and Environment will be held at a global scale.
Mapping/Geospatial agencies have traditionally worked in-house or through specific project contracts to deliver mapping, data and data services. Increasingly geospatial data and its derived geospatial knowledge are core to many aspects of digital society, and single agencies cannot deliver efficiently or effectively on their own. Indeed they may not survive on their own and need to find new business models and partnerships, including those that allow transformation in outputs in resource constrained environments.
A state-of-the-art showcase on Geospatial Knowledge Infrastructure will be displayed at GeoSmart India 2020. The display will highlight the concept of Geospatial Knowledge, its relationship with the 4th Industrial Age technologies, including Big Data, Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Robotics etc. All partners will contribute case studies and good practices revolving around various themes and aspects of GKI highlighting the social, economic and environmental impact of GKI. The aim of the showcase will be to communicate a wholistic vision of Geospatial Knowledge Infrastructure to the larger community, which stimulates innovation around and adoption of GKI.
The final output of the campaign will be a report detailing GKI as a concept:
