Over the past decade, geospatial technology has undergone a lot of transformation that has changed the way businesses operate and fulfill their commitments toward their customers. Geospatial technologies include different types of tools and techniques to leverage spatial information.
With the advancement in technologies, it is unfolding new possibilities in the area of urban planning, space exploration, retail, transportation, and so on. By implementing these emerging trends with geospatial technology and GIS software or applications, experts can capture and visualize global geospatial intelligence.
Take a look at five important geospatial and GIS trends that are influencing several industries:
Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) both are playing an important role in spatial analysis and mapping. Uses of AI have been evolving from the past few years and now it has found its usage in geospatial solutions as well. In geospatial, data processing is a time-consuming task. However, with AI, it gets easier as it can handle multiple tasks easily, find patterns and assist with training. One significant example of GeoAI is in urban infrastructure, where it can easily track and monitor the changes in an area over a period of time.
3D Mapping
3D mapping refers to adding the three dimensions to map the objects in the real-world. It creates a virtual infrastructure to build the vision. It is generally used in smart city planning, regional analysis, global information, and building information to simulate the impact of development projects on the surrounding environment. With growing technologies such as drone technologies and LiDAR scanning, 3D mapping has become more accessible. 3D mapping has the potential to change the way, geospatial data is analyzed.
IoT and AR/VR
IoT or Internet of Things describes physical objects embedded with sensors and other technologies that allowed them to collect and store data. In geospatial, that data can be used in variety of ways such as in improving the accuracy of location-based services and enhancing customer experience.
Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) help to interact with outside world by adding or enhancing 3D features. AR/VR has already been in use in GIS applications and providing immersive and interactive experiences. Especially, in construction, AR is used to see the visual impacts in architecture and building design, it is best to put the 3D model and see how it is going to look and where it is going to end.
Indoor Mapping
Indoor mapping helps visitors/consumers to navigate inside the malls, airports, railway stations, and all types of places. From the past few years, indoor mapping has evolved to become more user-friendly and flexible, from the traditional indoor maps, which were complex. Indoor mapping platforms take the building floor plans and convert them into a 3D digital map, which also helps in public safety emergency response system by providing accurate location even inside of buildings.
Digital Twin
Digital twin refers to a virtual 3D representation of physical environment, whether it is a river, ocean, highway, building or earth. 3D model of physical objects acts like a base twin using real-time information, like sensor data (IoT), weather data or up-to-date information from the public transport or electricity system. Businesses around the world are deploying digital twin in various applications from designing of complex equipment and 3D environments to bringing precision in complex medical procedures as well as in studying digital agriculture.
GIS-based technologies will continue to make considerable advancements in the coming years as technologies improve.
