Geoinformation as a new engine for entrepreneurship
ISBN 978-85-88783-11-9
Authors
1Ciołkosz-styk, A.; 2Lattes, P.
1INSTITUTE OF GEODESY AND CARTOGRAPHY Email: agata.ciolkosz-styk@igik.edu.pl
2AEROSPACE VALLEY Email: lattes@aerospace-valley.com
Abstract
Currently, more data than ever is gathered and processed. Data, called ‘an innovation currency’ and ‘the lifeblood of the knowledge economy’, is an essential raw material for a wide range of information products and services. They create new possibilities to visualise and analyse data from different sources (public and private databases, programmes such as INSPIRE or Copernicus, crowd-sourcing, various sensors). These products range from decision support systems for businesses, location-based services to weather forecasts and other ‘apps’ for our smartphones. Their common aim, however, is to put national economies onto a sustainable growth path, fostering the use and reuse of all available resources. Geographic Information (GI) plays a vital role among all available data (open and commercial) and becomes a strategic resource for public users, private sector and citizens, mainly for 2 reasons. Firstly, it is able to illustrate and analyse the existing patterns on the Earth surface. Secondly, can be refined and integrated with models and simulations scenarios in order to predict contemporary and future phenomena. Therefore, intelligent processing of data, including spatial data, is essential for addressing societal challenges and can be used to enhance the sustainability of many branches of the economy. In parallel, we are witnessing a revolution in the technologies for data explanation and visualisation. Data exploitation holds enormous potential for the global economy and consumer welfare. According to the Google report, global geoservices industry collects and analyses data on an unprecedented scale as it is valued $270 billion per year. It is estimated that nearly 425000 geospatial professionals were employed in the US in 2010 and predicted that 150000 additional positions would be created by 2020. Examples of the European GI environment show that the German market was estimated at €1.4 billion in 2007, a 50% increase since 2003.The mapping business is expected to grow by 30% annually. The GI branch has also a great impact on skills and jobs as modern cartographers are involved in diverse projects: tracking fleets of vehicles or products, modelling environmental scenarios or studying the spread of diseases. It is foreseen that the pace of openness (data, software, policies, standards) will be accelerating, becoming an engine for job creation. The process can be run more efficiently, if supported by novel methodological approach, creating a favourable environment for fostering emergence of the new companies. In the article the factors, indispensable in such approach, are introduced. They have heterogeneous nature, nevertheless might be generalised into several groups, namely societal tendencies and challenges, technical evolution, existing and new value chains, clusters’ support and development of specific GI regional platforms. Also the analysis of the aforementioned factors is conducted in a profound way and illustrated by real-life examples. The factors are presented along with the barriers, causing a major bottleneck for massive application of novel solutions and the creation of knowledge based jobs and services in the field of GI. Recommendations for implementation of a holistic approach, based on the analysis of the legal, societal and economical tendencies, directions of the evolution of branches of the economy (agriculture, forestry, transport) and GI development trends (technology, tools, data availability) are also presented, in order to identify the most promising axis of innovation. The idea of setting up a regional GI incubators, fostering development of new companies by combining available local and global data with a methodology of identification of the most promising services in a regions and a close collaboration with the regional sectorial clusters, is discussed as it brings an opportunity for reduction of raw data consumption and replacing it with tailor made services dedicated to particular sectors.