Predicting the future
Last week the United Nations Initiative on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) put out a paper titled 'Future trends in geospatial information management: the five to ten year vision' (available here as PDF).
Now I must confess prior to reading the document and seeing tweets from people I knew who appeared to be attending a session of this group in Qatar I hadn't heard of the UN-GGIM. However it appears to be a group that's been set up in recognition that geospatial information can assist with development of nations; national and region initiatives on geospatial information need to be better coordinated and that 'developed' countries can lend a hand and resources to the benefit of less-developed countries. Some laudable aims there certainly, but anyway I digress slightly from the future-trends document itself...
- Overall I think the document is a well-constructed ‘snapshot’ on the current main trends in geoinformation. Whilst those people already well versed and up to date in all things geo are unlikely to be surprised by any of the trends and topics outlined it is nice to see all of it packaged up concisely and in a fairly digestible medium. I’d definitely recommend it be read by anyone relatively new to the industry or currently doing a GIS-type course as it does provide a good overview of what’s current.
- In some ways I think it plays a little safe and the document itself concedes that predicting the future of technology is notoriously difficult. The future trends it outlines are in many cases already well-established trends or at least emerging trends already. There’s nothing particularly ‘left-field’ amongst the themes outlined and yet I'm sure within the 10-year time frame of the document there’s going to be quite a few other, more disruptive technologies and trends. The document appears to have had a fairly extensive and pretty distinguished list of contributors and personally I’d love to find out whether there were ideas and thoughts amongst those contributions which were deemed too wacky and far-out to make the final cut.
- The document is heavily influenced by the Ordnance Survey, both in some of the themes presented and the actual authoring and it is great to see our national mapping agency taking a lead role on the international scale.
Definitely worth a read; and is something I’ll
hopefully remember to come back to in 2018 and 2023 and assess how well the
document matched the actual trends on reflection.
Thanks for bringing this report to my attention Phil-it made for an interesting read.
ReplyDeleteThe main thought I had though, was WHY has this report been written? It appears to have taken several dozen experts a couple of years to produce, so no light undertaking, but what for? Other than it being interesting for spatial enthusiasts like our selves, why is it important to try and predict the landscape in 10 years time? Which by their own admission is very tricky get right anyway.
Could this effort not have been better spent on something more tangible such as a report into making geospatial information available in less developed areas, or similar?
Would be interested in your thoughts!
Whilst of interest to the likes of ourselves, my guess is that it is probably intended equally (or even more so) for non-spatial audiences and is a tool to convince and persuade that location-based information and services are at the very core of the 'information economy' and 'digital world' in which we live and therefore we (nations) should support and invest in it as it can add value.
ReplyDeleteAlthough of interest to us, in some sense the 10-year horizon is almost irrelevant; suffice it does leave one with a sense of 'things are happening... and quickly' and that lots of 'new opportunities await'. With initiatives such as the UN-GGIM and this document I think (and I'll happily be corrected) that it is almost a way of promoting 'geographic information' and the geo-community being seen to add thought-leadership to the wider arena of economic development. If they do that then I guess they continue to be funded for lots more initiatives which do then start to deliver more tangible benefits. A bit of an analogy might be a tech company putting out a white-paper, in many ways you could look at it as a negative (i.e. they cost time and money to produce and some people see them as 'giving away your knowledge for free') but often their impact is positive (i.e. they tend to help build trust and a reputation for expertise, which in turn drives opportunity)0.