A Geospatial Knowledge Infrastructure To Enhance The World Economy .

Introduction 7—IntroductionHumans are thirsty for knowledge. Formillennia, maps have guided exploration,supported trade, helped defend againstenemies, maintained the social fabric of oursocieties and influenced history. The precisesurveys provided the raw location data of thetime which was the base for the map.However, maps are but one output of vastamounts of location data and analytics in ourinterconnected world - a world of discoveryand opportunity that is growing throughsmart technologies like, Big Data, ArtificialIntelligence (AI), Advanced Robotics,Automation, continuous internet connectivity,sensors everywhere, and digital disruption. Itis the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR). We maysee it as evolution, but history will regard it asa true revolution, almost as extensive as thefirst. It is merging human, physical and digitalenvironments and leading to unprecedentedsocietal changes that embrace living, health,leisure, work, wealth and poverty, industry,and our social selves.Through contextualized on-demandknowledge, people and machines can achieveindependence and interdependence neverpreviously imagined.5 Problems are solved,opportunities taken, services delivered, anddecisions made through a partnership of users,data, technologies, and people, allinterconnected through the web. There is nosingle way to navigate this incredibly complexsystem but the trajectory is such that that wecan increasingly solve yesterday’s ‘wickedproblems’ at scale and get knowledge at thepress of a button. This encompasses all walksof life, from the desire for instant gratification tothe speed of development of Covid-19 vaccines.Epidemiology is a recent example - it is aboutdetermining the spread of disease by pullingitogether many sources of existing knowledgewith powerful analytics to model the future.Time and place become ever more powerfulintegrators in providing that knowledge. Theknowledge provided by epidemiology thencontributes further – towards complexanalyses of health, economies and humanbehavior to enable evidence-basedgovernment decision-making in nearreal-time. Decisions then become actions inplace and time, and change is enabled.Another example is that of driverless cars. Itis similar but real-time - instead of the humanbrain making spatio-temporal predictions anddecisions, machines do it automatically.Time and place are the essence of the terms‘geospatial’ and ‘location’. It is generallyconsidered in two overlapping contexts.First, it is a location-based approach togaining understanding and includes thepeople and technologies that manage,integrate and analyze information, withassociated location, be it GPS position,physical address or relative position. Second,and related, ‘geospatial’ is the digitalrepresentation of the physical world thatprovides the scaffolding upon which much ofthe world’s physical, human, social anddigital activity takes place.The strength of our 4IR networked anddata-centric world is its ability to integratemany varied data sources, whether real-timeor historical, with varied analyticalcapabilities, to model real-world challengesfor humans and machines.6 Oftenunappreciated, much integration is anchoredin location, making ‘geospatial’ central to4IR, whether for one-off COVID-19 tracingapps or for enabling safe automated dronesabove city streetsi. or Covid, South Korea re-used applications developed for previous pandemics. This re-use of applicationsFillustrates the Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-Usable principle for data also applies to applications.This is described later in this Paper.

8G e os patial Kn owle d ge Infra st r u c t u r e W hi t e Pa p e r‘Geospatial’ is no longer a specialist domainbut is everywhere, from ubiquitoussmartphones applications to deep spaceexploration. As a result, the geospatialecosystem of the last century has beenovertaken by new 4IR industries that consider‘geospatial’ as one facet of business models intoday’s knowledge economy. Most of theseindustries do so on the biggest infrastructurein the world - the Internet. The 4IRtechnologies coupled with internetpenetration have set a new bar for the wholegeospatial ecosystem. Expectation is,providing ‘what was where yesterday’ toenabling ‘what is going to happen when,where, how and why?’ The GeospatialKnowledge Infrastructure (GKI) aims to fulfilthis new expectation set.New data-hungry and digitally driventechnologies operate in a complex world.There is just too much information forhumans to process, making understandingmore difficult. Singular linear technologieswill be replaced by integrated technologies,forged on new partnerships and multiplesources of data and analytics. Qualityfoundation geospatial information is valuablewhen portrayed as a map. However, as ascaffolding for data and applicationintegration it truly adds value. With a knownprovenance and quality it can help overcomeuncertainty and risk. National geospatialagencies, as part of the ecosystem, providethat trusted scaffolding, hence the importanceof the UN IGIF in helping all nations deliverimproved geospatial informationmanagement.7 GKI is a far broader concept butsupports the UN IGIF by setting out the meansfor governments and industry tocollaboratively bring together geospatial andwider digital agendas and infrastructures inan increasingly automated, dynamic, andreal-time global environment.AimThe aim of this Paper is to set out the conceptof a Geospatial Knowledge Infrastructure thatsupports governments and industry deliversustainable economic, social andenvironmental benefits to Planet Earth and itspeople, as part of emerging digital andknowledge ecosystems and infrastructures.This Paper builds on a July 2020 discussionpaper, GKI Summit held in February 2021 anda series of consultations across the World.8One common theme expressed byparticipants during these consultations wasthe need to integrate geospatial thinking withwider digital thinking over the next decade,welcoming that the GKI seeks to do this. Thisreport is a geocentric view but provides thebasis for an infrastructure that integratesgovernment, industry, citizens, and academicgeospatial capabilities with the wider digitaldrive to better the world economy, society andenvironment. Over the next two years,engagement with industry and Governmentdigital policy staffs will lead to significantfurther exposure and development of theconcept. It is intended that this include ablueprint for a technical architecture.

Tomorrow’s Worl d9—Tomorrow’s WorldTechnologyTechnology affects all business sectors - fromagriculture to infrastructure, the blueeconomy to retail, health to transport, andothers. Data and applications are the commonthemes in the 4IR technology revolution. Data,increasingly, has location and time attributes,thanks in large part to Global NavigationSatellite Systems (GNSS) which havedemocratized ‘position’ for humans and theirmachines, and is the single most valuableenabler of this GKI. Data is exchanged, value isadded and measured, money is made.However, the true value of data lies in the useof data, people and technology to deriveknowledge that is applied to solving problemsand meeting needs.4IR technology will continue to develop overthe decades ahead and there are no signs ofits development slowing, indeed predictionstowards the fifth industrial revolution arealready being made.Developments in the quality and reach ofGNSS and wider positioning, navigation, andtiming continue. The European GNSS Agency2019 report predicts 1.1 GNSS devices perperson in the world by 2029, with 0.2 mabsolute accuracy to smartphones being thenorm.9 As governments have provided ‘openGNSS service’ in the world, GNSS has driventrillions of dollars in economic value anddemonstrates why fundamental geospatialdata and services should be high quality, openand free.iiThe volume of data is quadrupling every fiveyears and it is estimated that by 2025 it is willbe worth 5.8% of EU’s GDP.10 Sensors will beeverywhere, from space to smartphones andcars, and even clothes and food products, allproviding geo-located data. This will lead toan explosion in the volume of geospatiallyreferenced data linked to value-chains andprovide a new understanding of how societybehaves and the processes we have created.Conversely, distrust in data, information,analytics and knowledge will also increaseand the need for a trusted, in many casesauthoritative, information baseline will alsogrow. This, coupled with connectivity throughtechnologies such as 5G and satellites, willcreate both opportunities and privacy issuesas data is integrated and analyzed to becomeknowledge. It will also increase concernsabout cyber-security.Real time geospatial data collection fromsensors has been increasing, especially fromspace and on vehicles, but much is not usedor is single use at best. ‘On-the-fly’ edgecomputing enables processing of this data toReally, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collectiveenlightenment(Elon Musk)ii o demonstrate the value of GNSS, London Economics in 2017 estimated the economic impact to the UK of aTfive-day disruption to GNSS at 5.2bn ( 7 bn). London Economics, Economic impact to the UK of a disruptionto GNSS, Showcase Report, April 2017 nomic-impacton-the-uk-of-a-disruption-to-gnss

10G e os patial Kn owle d ge Infra st r u c t u r e W hi t e Pa p e rprovide re-usable information, some of whichwill enable automatic updating of foundationgeospatial information. The journey towardsautomation across society will continue,under-the-sea, on the ground, in air and space,in factories, and in digital services such asfinance and retail. For years defense, theextractive industries and agriculture haveused geospatial data in automated machines.Now, automotive industry are also usingautomation.iiiMost of the investments in ArtificialIntelligence (AI) will be centered onautomated vehicles, face recognition andhealth. Continued development of AI andMachine Learning (ML) applications andmodeling will enable the ‘knowledgeon-demand’ that is increasingly expected bysociety, with immersive technologies aidingrapid understanding and decision-making.This will result in an ability to predict at speedand scale, and for a wider population, thanpreviously imaginable. Although trust inanswers will be more difficult to assure.The interaction between people and machineswill change faster than at any time since theFirst Industrial Revolution (1IR), impactinglives, jobs and skills directly or indirectly. Wewill see growth in new work and leisureexperiences, such as virtual and augmentedreality, especially as user device prices reduce.Gaming, mission rehearsal, advertising,architecture, medicine, and city planning arejust some of many use cases that canincorporate geospatial data. Businesses willdevelop new digital products, services andexperiences, and seek new markets.Internally, worker experiences will beenhanced and operations streamlined butcontinuous skills development will beessential. Planned business process changeshave been accelerated during the Covid 19iiipandemic as end-to-end online workflowsand digital user experiences have becomeessential. Technology is not the answer toeverything; human social needs and theimpact on poorer nations or elements ofsociety not so able to adapt must beconsidered in policy.Increasing the pace of change is leading toincreasing innovation and disruption,particularly at the boundaries betweentechnologies. New businesses are agile andcan meet niche requirements, some of whichquickly become mainstream. However, thereis some uncertainty here as the cost of newdevelopments may proportionally outweighthe potential rewards. Investors will have tobecome more selective.The complexity of the knowledge ecosystemand the range of use-cases are such that noone organization or company will deliverend-to-end solutions; partnerships andcollaborations are commonplace, increasinglycross-sector, and with a greater need forrewards to be shared across the value-chain.Likewise, users are spread across thisvalue-chain and a distinct end-user forgeospatial information becomes increasinglydifficult to identify. It is not quite like ‘cash’ butdemonstrates why data is increasinglyconsidered as capital.Governments and institutions will have toadapt policy and regulations aroundtechnology and sensor use, data andknowledge governance, use and ownership. Itmay eventually be technologies likeBlockchain that give control data back to theindividual and enable data brokering. Many ofthese technologies offer opportunities forimproved and efficiently maintained nationalfoundation data for all nations.I n our world of GNSS and absolute position it is also worth reminding ourselves that humans evolved overthe Millenia to think spatially in a relative “self-centered” way, not by absolute position. Amazingly, in a fewdecades humans have developed machines to do the same

Tomorrow’s Worl dKnowledgeData, Information, Knowledge.iv TheData-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom (DIKW)pyramid in Figure 1 explains the conceptualrelationship between data, information andknowledge. Over the last decade, AI and othertechniques have progressed sufficiently toturn pixels and wider data into information,unlocking the content and allowing realintegration. It is cognition that derivesknowledge from information, described as“the mental action or process of acquiringknowledge through thought, experience andthe senses”.11 Going forward, machines willenable some of these thought processes to besimulated using self-learning algorithms thatdraw on data mining, pattern recognition andnatural language processing. ‘Experience’ isavailable across the web and Cloud as existingalgorithms and knowledge, and the ‘senses’are increasingly automated, real-time andeverywhere. The conditions for automatedknowledge generation through analytics,modeling and applications are here and beingused. This will develop further as a powerfulcombination of the semantic web andanalytical and integrative techniques,including AI development, and deriveknowledge for new sectors and use-cases.Knowledge on Demand. It is recognized thatthe knowledge necessary for solving manychallenges is constructed over time andcannot be delivered ‘on demand’. However,users along the value-chain seek to red UnderstandingKnowledgeCollection of information withits associated context, givingunderstandingPredictKnow WhyKnow Howition Knowledge and Insights services11Cogn Software services Analytics servicessingWhatWhereWhenProces Data servicesInformationCollection of data arranged andordered in a consistent wayDataFacts, signals, or symbolsFigure 1: The Knowledge Management Cognitive Pyramid demonstrates the relationship between data and knowledge. 4IR technologies increasingly enable knowledge to be generated 'automatically', improving decision making and adding value.Source: Adapted from DIKW Model for Knowledge Management and Data Value Extractioniv he term Intelligence is often used to cover knowledge, the most prolific being Geospatial IntelligenceTprimarily used in the Defence and Intelligence community, Environmental Intelligence, Retail Intelligence,Business Intelligence and Location Intelligence.

12G e os patial Kn owle d ge Infra st r u c t u r e W hi t e Pa p e rknowledge quickly or the moment passes, theimpact diminishes. With knowledge,decisions are made, benefits accrued andcapital realized. In our ‘on demand’ world,‘timely’ is not days and weeks but minutesand seconds for both humans and machines.Value, therefore, lies in effective and efficientmethods to extract user-specific knowledgefrom vast amounts of data, information andexisting knowledge from relevant sourcesanywhere. This derived knowledge needs tobe trusted, determined in requiredtimeframes, contextualized for the user, andincreasingly delivered frommachine-originated and natural languagequeries.The geospatial ecosystem is far wider thanever before, across the digital ecosystem’smodeling and applications communities, andacross most industry sectors. The geospatialecosystem now needs to play into this widerdigital, or knowledge ecosystem. Focusing ondata and information alone does not achievethis, even though fundamental geospatialdata is a foundation element of a GKI.

Global Chal l en ge13—Global ChallengeMuch has been written about the major globalchallenges we all face, but there is far lessrecognition about the role geospatial capabilitiesplay in managing them. Let’s select fivechallenges from many:y Climate Change is altering the very fabric of theearth’s ecosystem upon which humans depend.After decades of wrangling, many nations arenow moving to implement carbon neutralpolicies. Hard evidence-based decisions lieahead for governments, businesses and citizens;geospatial knowledge underpins them. WhilstEarth observations help, it is the complexinteraction between climate, the

4 Geospatial Knowledge Infrastructure White Paper This is the age in which humans and machines come together. We call it the Fourth . real-time, but this carries far more value if place and time are brought into consideration. In fact, 'what', 'where' and 'when' questions . lies. It brings the geospatial ecosystem firmly