As we move towards digitalization, geospatial technology is fast becoming mainstream, touching every aspect of our day-to-day lives. From agriculture to economic growth, infrastructure building to transportation, geospatial technology is being used in every sector to enhance output. The rising application and popularity of geospatial is making it one of the hottest job skills that companies are looking for in their future employees. Recently, Upwork released its quarterly index of the 20 hottest skills in the U.S. freelance job market. The Upwork Skills Index highlights new and emerging skills that have grown more than 170% in the past years. Apart from geospatial, robotic process automation, urban design and architectural rendering were the other desired jobs. Interestingly, geospatial plays an important role in these three domains.
Why is geospatial in demand?
Geospatial technology facilitates better understanding between people and their environment. Approximately 80% of all data has a spatial or location-based component. Geospatial element in the data makes it possible for experts to address large-scale problems, from enhancing humanitarian efforts in disease control and city planning to providing business intelligence solutions for product management and marketing. The increasing demand for geospatial data is leading the growth of numerous geospatial companies and thus attracting fresh talent. From someone wanting to work outdoors tracking wildlife in the Arctic to someone spending days tracking down an insurance fraud in the Midwestern United States, geospatial has something to offer to everyone.
A career in geospatial presents many opportunities to make a difference in society at large. There’s no end to the spatial information to be mapped and analyzed so one can use his/her skills to develop a neighborhood, conserve wildlife habitat or defend his nation.
Robotic process automation
Robotic process automation (RPA) is the use of software with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning capabilities to handle high-volume, repeatable tasks that previously required humans to perform. As the world is on the cusp of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, AI is going to change the way we see the world. It is widely speculated that machines will take up jobs performed by humans.
Urban design
Urban design is a process concerned with the development and design of land use and the built environment, including air, water and the infrastructure passing into and out of urban areas, such as transportation, communications, and distribution networks. Urban planning deals with physical layout of human settlements. With smart cities emerging rapidly all across the world, introducing new practices and services and impacting policy making and planning, it is now needed to understand the its contribution in the overall urban planning and vice versa. The field of urban design is multi-dimensional and therefore offers many types of employment for individuals passionate about designing cities, towns, and all other public spaces. Either by big picture standards or micro-delineation, urban design offers something for every artist seeking to contribute to urban development.
Architectural rendering
Architectural rendering, or architectural illustration, is the art of creating two-dimensional or three-dimensional images or animations showing the attributes of a proposed architectural design. With the digitalization booming in the Architecture Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry it is on high demand. It is easy to communicate design ideas with clients and partners with architectural rendering. With this it is also easy to develop design ideas more accurately and identifying problems in the early stage that help to reduce cost. There is a huge demand of architectural rendering skill in gaming industry as well.
Earlier, in a research report by Devex, USAID and DAI revealed that 86 percent of the respondents believed that the technology, skills and approaches development professionals use in 10 years will be significantly different than they are today where geospatial was number one choice for them.
