US: Recognizing the need to document the thought s of leaders in the geospatial world as to the future of this industry over the next decade, the United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) has released the Second Edition of the UN-GGIM Future Trends report. The report, which was produced by Ordnance Survey, has been adopted by the UN GGIM Bureau. The document highlights that the most significant changes in the geospatial industry will come not through a single technology, but rather from linking multiple technologies and policies.
The emerging trends of Smart Cities and the Internet of Things, coupled with of smart resource management and interoperable services, will lead to a focus on citizen services, better land management, and the sustainability of resources. Moreover, the development of intelligent information processing technologies will provide easier access to a wide range of different services which were previously used for separate applications. These include home and industrial automation, medical aids, mobile healthcare, intelligent energy management, automotive and traffic management.
The role of National Spatial Data Infrastructures is more important than ever before. They can provide the means to organize and deliver core geographies for many national and global challenges including sustainable development. The paradigm of data availability is changing; there is a huge increase in the tracking and availability of real‑time data. It is no longer just for mapping and delivery, but for integration, analytics, modelling and aggregation.
In tackling major global challenges, governments will face the problems of poor data quality, lack of timely data and a lack of interoperability between different sources of data. This may result in governments using, and then relying on, inaccurate or low quality data on which to base their decisions.
In developing countries, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is likely to be a trigger to accelerate the development and adoption of legal, technical, geospatial and statistical standards. These include, but are not limited to: openness and exchange of data and metadata, including interoperability of data and information systems; demographic and geospatial information, including management and change.
The following trends have been recognized by UN-GGIM:
1. Smart Cities and Internet of Things
- Increased urbanisation leading to global challenges
- The growth of Smart Cities
- Connectivity through the Internet of Things
2. Artificial Intelligence and Big Data
- Artificial Intelligence and machine learning
- Value realized through Big Data
3. Indoor Positioning and mapping
- Trends in technology for indoor positioning
- Integration between outdoor and indoor positioning
- Standards
- Requirements for mapping
4. Integrating statistical and geospatial information
- Integrating different data sources
- The role of standards
- Integrated approach to the 2020 Round of Censuses
5. Trends in technology and the future direction of data creation, maintenance and management
- ‘Everything happens somewhere’ – the new wave of data creation
- Cloud computing
- Open‑source
- Open standards
- Trends in ‘professional’ data creation and maintenance
- Positioning ourselves in the next five to ten years
6. Legal and policy developments
- Growing awareness within the Geographic Information (GI) community
- Funding in a changing world
- Open Data
- Licensing, pricing and data ‘ownership’
- Privacy
- Liability and the issue of data assurance
- Disparities between legal and policy frameworks
7. Skills requirements and training mechanisms
- Skills for effective organizations
- Extractive value from a world of data
- Education and Advocacy
- Investing in research and development
8. The role of the private and non‑governmental sectors
- Making mapping accessible to the masses
- The future role of the private sector
- The future role of VGI and crowdsourced geospatial data
9. The future role of governments in geospatial data provision and management
- The impact of change
- Bridging the gap: coordination and collaboration
- Marine geospatial information
- Developing a national geospatial information infrastructure
- Maintaining an accurate, detailed and trusted geospatial information base
Source: UN-GGIM
