Five Forecasts for 2024 for Experts in Geospatial Information

• An overview of potential developments for geospatial experts in the upcoming year.
• A significant year for the geospatial industry was 2023. Take a look at these highlights:
• Yale University and Montana State University have announced the establishment of new geospatial studies center’s.
• A few months ago, Hexagon debuted a first-person laser scanner at Intergeo, among other innovative items.
• A natural language processing business named Danti raised $2.75 million in pre-seed funding for its geographical data search engine. An overview of potential developments for geospatial experts in the upcoming year.
• A significant year for the geospatial industry was 2023. Take a look at these highlights:
• Yale University and Montana State University have announced the establishment of new geospatial studies center’s.
• A few months ago, Hexagon debuted a first-person laser scanner at Intergeo, among other innovative items.
• A natural language processing business named Danti raised $2.75 million in pre-seed funding for its geographical data search engine.
• Building on the industry’s 2023 momentum, 2024 might end up being an even more significant year for the geospatial market.
• As 2023 draws to a close and the holidays approach, anticipating what the geospatial industry may bring in 2019 will help you kick off the new year strong and give you the tools you need to develop and carry out 2024 roadmaps.
• Here are my five forecasts for 2024 that geospatial experts might find useful:

     Artificial intelligence and generative design

• Since the release of Google’s Bard in March of this year and ChatGPT at the end of 2022, dramatic headlines concerning generative AI have dominated news cycles this year. In recent years, generative design has become more popular in the fields of architecture, engineering, and construction. It enables designers to automate design logic, adjust design parameters, and produce a wide range of solutions at scale that go beyond what is humanly feasible for a single person or team. While PTC included generative design into their CAD programmed Creo, Siemens and other companies have expanded their additive manufacturing solutions to include this technology. Customers across a variety of industries, including automotive, aerospace, industrial machinery, and yes, architecture, construction, and building products, are being empowered by Autodesk.
• The understanding of how BIM and generative design can be utilized simultaneously to automate fire safety engineering has already started in scholarly research. Neural networks can be used to provide “suggestive site planning […] for morphological analysis for city’s urban fabric,” according to studies in the geospatial field. Neural networks may also find usage in the real estate industry and by urban designers. The researchers suggest that “fast-prototyping design iterations at the very early stage of a real state financing project that involves complex site planning” could be facilitated by such a tool.
• Undoubtedly, the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence developers and the widespread implementation of AI features and products by businesses indicates that the time for widespread acceptance is very near. More chances to integrate AI, especially generative AI, into a geospatial workflow will probably arise as 2024 approaches. For example, IBM’s geospatial models have aided in reforestation and water sustainability efforts in Kenya, helping to “track tree planting activities, aiding local efforts in restoring forests and measuring carbon sequestration impact.” IBM has already enhanced geospatial AI to help battle climate change.
• Large language models (LLMs) and generative AI combined with geographical data, however, can “simplify geospatial intelligence.” It can streamline the processing and creation of “completely new data, encompassing maps, images, and text, all based on existing data sets” and aid in the creation of a “interactive geovisualization of billions of points.” Kinetica informs Geospatial World that the end result is a substantial simplification of the “process of analyzing geospatial data, uncovering hidden insights that were once obscured.” Generative AI is also used by Amazon’s Bedrock platform to automate geographic processes with autonomous agents and an intuitive API that can route data from third-party sources such as Grab, OpenStreetMap, Esri, and HERE.
• Even if these recent developments have a lot of potential, business owners should be aware of the hazards associated with any technology and know how to manage them.

 Growing Need for Geographic Experts in Infrastructure Projects

• Through a clean power grid, significant investments in public railroads, EV charging infrastructure, electric school buses, and more, the Biden Administration has committed substantial resources to sustainable infrastructure initiatives and infrastructure grants to help empower environmental imperatives, create jobs in the clean energy sector, and lay the foundation to address climate change.

       Persisting Demand for Cloud-based Systems and IoT

• IoT sensors and location analytics can aid with a variety of tasks, including processing, analyzing, and visualizing real-time GIS data and project tracking tools.
• Real-time data gathering and monitoring for the aforementioned infrastructure projects is becoming more and more necessary, and this may be achieved by integrating the Internet of Things. The effectiveness of this kind of integration was investigated by academic research on the use of smart IoT devices in GIS settings. The results showed promise for increasing productivity in projects that combine “real-time data collection and monitoring along with the capability of GIS to deal with geospatial data and attributes [, which] makes it a suitable choice for addressing many challenges.” Further investigation revealed that the architecture of an IoT-GIS platform executing automated analytical undertakings.
• Real-time locating (connected cars, soil moisture monitoring feeds, smart power meter’s) is one benefit of integrating IoT with GIS.
• Instantaneous spatial analysis
• analytics for big data

 Persisting Utilizing BIM in AR/VR Integration Projects

• According to a Dodge Data & Analytics report (via For Construction Pros), BIM is essential to the AEC sector’s digital transformation. Builders constantly use BIM to increase client satisfaction, quality control, and the resulting cost savings from reduced rework.
• Major advancements in AR/VR have been made possible by the introduction of products like Microsoft’s Halo Lens, Meta’s Quest 3, and Apple’s revolutionary Vision Pro. It is possible that more businesses will use AR/VR in BIM to enable their GIS specialists and planners to collaborate and complete tasks more accurately by allowing them to experience 360-degree panoramic VR experiences.

Data Synchronization Will Continue to Be a Sector-wide Priority

• I’ve written before about the value of interoperability and the constructive changes that technologists may make.
• Integration has been a hot topic and industry-wide priority as the sector fights a labor crisis; take, for instance, the fact that 77% of Southeast Asian construction companies stated they are dedicated to integrating data into their operations. This tendency is probably going to continue everywhere.
• Integrated GIS and BIM applications can facilitate the more efficient construction of smart cities.
• The design and onsite execution teams can exchange critical project data by integrating BIM and asset management. Additionally, smart tool usage data can be sent, enabling the creation of reports that confirm installations were completed in accordance with specifications.
• Ersi demonstrates the benefits of combining AI with GIS data.

Last Remark

• For the AEC sector in general and the geospatial sector in particular, 2023 was a significant year. Geospatial experts will probably still be in demand in 2024 since projects involving infrastructure and clean energy will probably need accurate geographic data and mapping.
• With the help of developing technologies like generative AI and established ones like BIM and AR/VR, geospatial specialists will be able to operate more productively and produce better project results than in previous decades.