The old adage “location, location, location” started as advice for the real estate and retail industries. Today, it is an apt reminder for businesses to capitalize on data with geospatial intelligence.
Organizations everywhere are using geospatial information to transform operations and generate new opportunities. Now businesses and governments can add continuous air traffic data to their geospatial intelligence. It is a powerful resource that helps reveal insights about the global movement of people and cargo.
“The world of geospatial data is larger than just maps,” explained Shay Har-Noy, general manager of Spire Aviation. “It includes a wide range of data that is organized by geography.”
Traditional types of geospatial data include descriptions of a location’s physical features, like land type, topography, infrastructure, weather conditions, and environmental characteristics. Demographic data or descriptions of human behavior are standard components. We are also seeing new data produced in a range of use cases that contains location information. For example, credit card transactions include location tags, as does data from connected devices and social media.
One of the first modern uses of geospatial intelligence sciences was Canada’s Department of Forestry and Rural Development efforts in the 1960s to map the country’s natural resources. Since then, its public applications have spread to touch many parts of our lives. You see it in election maps that depict voting tendencies. It reveals insights into the evolution of climate change. And even before Covid-19, geospatial intelligence helped doctors track disease outbreaks.
Commercial industries are also capitalizing on the resource. In particular, supply chain management, insurance, forestry, banking, and health services can all benefit greatly from geospatial intelligence, according to the Spatial Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California.
“Businesses everywhere are identifying relevant experiences and ways of making their products more relevant for their customers based on this location data,” said Har-Noy.
Geospatial information has many applications partly because satellites have vastly expanded what we can study at scale. Advancing satellite technology, coupled with a range of powerful sensors, has allowed experts to gather highly detailed information about our world that would have been unattainable only a few years ago. A prime example is air traffic monitoring.
The backbone of modern aircraft tracking is Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast. ADS-B is an industry-standard technology for enhancing air safety and navigation. Aircraft use ADS-B transponders to regularly broadcast their airspeed, location, and other critical information to nearby planes, ground stations, and satellites. Satellites are a crucial part of the network because they extend coverage into areas inaccessible to ground-based surveillance technologies. While building stations across the Pacific Ocean or Himalayas would be absurd, satellites orbiting overhead can receive signals broadcast from aircraft in remote areas.
ADS-B may have been designed to aid surveillance, but it turned out to be a rich source of geospatial information packed with insights about commerce and society. Better yet, satellite coverage helps ensure the data collected worldwide is relevant, consistent, and timely.
“It can help us understand economic activity and about how people interact with their environment,” said Har-Noy. “You can look at the volume of traffic going into airports. You can look at the changes in the type of aircraft. You can also look at the number of airports in an area and their growth. There are so many questions you can answer by understanding the pulse of the world.”
by Dr. Shay Har Noy
GM, Spire Aviation