My key takeaway from GeoBusiness 2019? It’s time for partnership

I have just returned from GeoBusiness 2019 at the Business Design Centre in London. It was a great couple of days where I was able to catch up with peers as well as meet many new contacts during my session as part of the Insurance Seminar, where I discussed the impact satellite analytics could have on the insurance sector.

Both inside the seminar and throughout my more general discussions, it was apparent that there is a significant amount of amazing work happening within the geospatial sector. So much so, that we could be learning a whole lot from each other and doing a lot more collaboration than we already are.

Partnerships in the space sector are booming – even NASA and the European Space Agency are getting involved. And why not? There seems little point in duplicating efforts (and data) when there is little need to.

From our perspective, business is booming globally. While GSI is a relatively young EO company, our client reach is significant – from Australia to North America. However, there are also many other organisations experiencing just as much success, but as an industry, we continue to be driven by a hunger to grow even more. There is also a lot more recognition by client organisations on the benefit of our industry to them than there was even just two years ago.

I am fortunate to be able to meet organisations large and small (some of whom attended GeoBusiness last week) who are pledging business growth upon the insight that can be gained on land they own or manage. They want to be able to use this real-time access to data to better inform what they do with the land (could they grow more crops or discover an encroaching structure?), as well as survey it more regularly than is usually possible from an individual attending it once every year (or less).

Equally, it is often the case that there is more than one stakeholder invested in the success of that same plot of land. Whether it’s the farmer tending to the land and needing to understand the yield, and therefore profit that will make from the land; the supply chain manager of a food distributor who wants to capture the quality and sustainability of the crop; or the insurer of the land who requires insight into the risk of the crop being wiped out by flooding caused by a nearby river. Each of these different interests from a spectrum of parties will result in a significant amount of data being captured by multiple organisations to examine the same plot of land for each stakeholder. But is there a need for multiple organisations to capture and hold this same data – or could we share and collaborate more?

The advent of more partnerships within the industry would remove the duplication of both work and data capture, allowing organisations to develop a broader expertise and extend their product offering to clients.

Coming together to share technical skills and specialisms will not only create a better offering for clients but will also mean that organisations can better train their algorithms to identify certain land traits for the future.

As organisations fully realise how remote sensing could benefit them and provide added value to their business, we will see the advent of more partnerships within the industry. So, let’s use that teamwork and intelligence to win a championship, shall we?

By George Lindsay, Chief Operating Officer at GSI

Note: An extract of this piece was original featured in an article by George Lindsay in GeoConnexion International