The world is already in a digital revolution. Digital economy – driven by adoption of digital technologies across all economic sectors is one of the effective measures to mitigate the negative economic news we hear daily. One of the critical components of digitalisation has been the spurring innovation and impact of #geospatialtechnology. While, even today, I find it hard to make people (including my family) understand the meaning and relevance of geospatial technology in our world – their rising impact and influence on varied activities of the government, businesses, and citizens cannot be overlooked. Especially today, when forces of world economics (GDP, Inflation, Employment, etc.) struggle, the possibility of deploying ‘geospatial’ as part of the long-term solution for, say, improving government program’s productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness, increasing business agility and profiles, and facilitating employment and digital inclusion for citizens – is the need of the hour.

The impact of geospatial can be felt across all sectors – from when we use the GPS to navigate through the horrendous traffic or the use of earth observation data for accounting GHG concentrations for carbon accounting. Geospatial is used worldwide, ingrained in all workflows in some form or another, and albeit in some cases as an ‘unrecognised’ feature, for activities such as emergency response, precision farming, efficient asset monitoring – and so on and so forth! While difficult to estimate, the economic impact of geospatial is so much more and goes beyond the depths of economic impact calculations.