Governments are preparing and outlining how we will progress into the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This will be the cross-over of real world and digital environments, and beneath this is a vital component that holds it all together, location.

When we speak of location, most people think “mapping”, “survey” or “GIS”, but when you speak with any of these users, they talk of how the spatial data is underused and underappreciated. Many of these users talk of how they have built systems that combine non-spatial and spatial data together to improve a company’s business or to solve an obvious spatial problem. Without knowing it, they were creating Location Intelligence solutions.

Location Intelligence (LI) is essential in business to understand where things happen. Applying a Business Intelligence solution will only get you so far, as everything happens somewhere and by analyzing those places as a whole, you can gain valuable insights.

In this edition, we pull together interviews with people from different businesses and geographies to know about the value they have gained from implementing Location Intelligence solutions. LI has thrived in businesses like Uber and Deliveroo, where there is a shared economy and a dependence on location. Unlike office-based business where the need for location may not be so obvious, these companies benefit as they gain more insights from the data they use. This edition highlights the growing value and utility of location data in sharing economy, with focus on companies heavily dependent on LI.