Although the celebrations of the holiday season are well past us, there are still predictions being made as to what will occur next year for many industries, worldwide. Whether it is in the area of security, transportation, healthcare, recruitment, supply chain, logistics, etc., there will always be those so-called pundits, trying to predict everything. The GIS industry is no exception to this, either.
Although the GIS industry has been around for a very long period of time, it is only in the past couple of years that the largest number of breakthroughs, in terms of service and product development, has occurred. We have actually covered some of these latest innovations in our blog postings.
The following are a few things that are predicted, in terms of advancements and innovation, for the GIS industry in 2019:
- The “Democratization” of Geospatial Tools. Rather than purchasing enterprise-level solutions, customers are now much more interested in acquiring services that fit their own unique needs. In other words, they want locally based solutions, where the vendor will provide customization in terms of data acquisition, systems implementation, and coding of the software applications.
- Geospatial Apps for Smartphones and Wireless Devices. Rather than creating products and services that have to be accessed from a third party (such as a value-added reseller), it is highly anticipated that the continued demand for geospatial technology will take the form of integrated apps which can be accessed in only a matter of seconds. In fact, it is highly anticipated that the demand for these apps will continue to be strong, as they bridge the gap from the digital world to the real world. It is also expected that these apps will take the form of 3-D based solutions.
- Big Data will be needed. This is a term that may not be familiar to everyone. This simply refers to the use of large sets of data in order to extrapolate unseen or unpredicted trends. It is expected that Big Data will start to play a very key role in the GIS industry, to be used in such things as satellites, aircraft, and UAVs, as well as static and mobile sensor networks.
GeoTel is a telecommunications research and GIS mapping firm that researches and provides telecom datasets for more than 6,000 cities in the United States and worldwide. GeoTel’s expertise includes specialists in economic geography, geospatial engineering, web GIS, and telecommunications GIS Data infrastructure.
