Innovation, Automation, Collaboration

In the last couple of months and especially after returning from a short visit to Bucharest, Romania in September, where I've been discussing with one of my dearest friends, Codrina Ilie, representative for the local chapter of the Open Geospatial Consortium, I started to turn an eye to what's happening on the Geospatial market in the UK.

Here I'm a member of a few organisations I identify with, therefore trying to accommodate some meetings and gatherings when something interesting becomes available gets challenging but rewarding.

One of such events has been Smarter Data, Smarter World conference 1Spatial held on 19th Nov 2019 at the British Library, in London. Their core idea as a business is to 'unlock the value of your data'. This conference gathered academics, regulators, researchers, developers, professionals and visionary people from all sorts of industries, for whom Geospatial Information (GI) plays a major role in their daily activities and decisions.

 All tech trends talk about the idea "Data being the new oil", creating a big buzz in the digital market. I stand on a different position and I consider the two shouldn’t be compared. Data isn’t a physical asset in itself, expands exponentially, whereas oil is a definite natural resource. Data does not pay any incentive back to <you> for allowing giant tech companies of using <you>. On the final aspect, we are deliberately creating content on social-media platforms, therefore we have the power of deciding the amount of published information, and on the other aspect, its validity.

Forbes presented in March 2018 the statistics of how much data is generated every single day. To start with, 2.5 Quintillion bytes of data is getting published day in - day out, majority being based on social-media communication channels, internet browsing, digital photo and services. This is only accelerating with the development of Internet of Things (IoT) where from 2 billion intelligent devices in 2006 the projected statistics talk about 200 billion in 2020. This needs re-reading!

The explosive availability of data about nearly every aspect of our lives, together with the rapid advancement of the computational technology, is transforming data science.

The bits of 1 and 0 value NOTHING if we don't know how to extract the information they hold, how to interpret, to correlate and better present the results, better decide upon without disrupting people's lives. Extracting the value requires a great deal of effort, development, brainstorming, research, open-minded people coupled with futuristic and problem-solving skills.

Well, I'm talking about Data Scientists, Developers and all those embracing <change>.

Data Science and Data Analytics is in the <Golden> age, developing tomorrow's (AI)systems using knowledge models coupled with insights and understanding of the world, community, society… all depending on the scale of each analysis we want to conduct.

The conference touched on the high priorities IT/Tech/R&D departments have, especially for an Utility company, and is not being just the high availability of the infrastructure or mitigating the disruption caused by such and such incident, but turning to Data Science, Data Analytics, UAVs, Digital Twin, Smart Cities and modelling, simulation and prediction (ModSimPredict). All these are categorized as Sustainable trends in the new IT/ Digital world. On the secondary position the trend is taken by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning for doing exactly the above, disrupting the old working procedures, automating the manual processes, enhancing the creativity, innovating in one word. Both these concepts, AI and Machine Learning, should represent the future in every plan any business puts forward for 5 - 6 - 10 or 40 years...

Innovation holds the key of the future way of doing or running a business. I will not be entering into details nor definitions but it’s worth remembering that in today’s context, climate change, political or technological advancement, “possibilities and improvements are coming to light all the time through innovation and applications of location and geospatial data” - Claire Milverton, CEO 1Spatial.

Finding the right tool, mathematical algorithm for specific data extraction model is definitely challenging and for the Utility sector is even more due to the nature of the business. But the niche businesses need to improve their processes through data science and analysis, worth mentioning the compliance to Governmental directives for standardization, transitioning all processes to a more robust, standard, simple and automated way of working representing the future.

The conference provided great presentations and just to name a few: Glen Batterham, Business Analyst at Northern Gas Networks and Thomas McKenna, Tech Lead for Utilities at 1Spatial, kept the audience totally engaged and inspired by the core idea of the Smart Apps and Network Module Migration platform created in partnership with ESRI.

David Eagle, FME Division Manager, 1Spatial, touched on the key points and benefits of “Automating the Mundane”, while Seb Lessware message as CTO, 1Spatial, focused on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. AI and ML will disrupt the old fashion working procedures, letting the creative shaping the future.

Samuel Chorlton, Chair at Digital Twin Hub, Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB), brought to the audience the vital message of collaboration. To deliver on this idea the Digital Twin Britain project is now in progress with 6 key organisations building a common platform for decision-making, asset performance and productivity assessment. Through his insights Samuel invited Utility companies to express their interest in the Digital Twin for Britain, pioneering and being part of the decision-making process.

Collaboration has been the key message of Dr. Owen Jackson, Deputy Director at Geospatial Commission, presenting an overview of the Geospatial projects conducted so far. The National Register of Underground Utility Assets is one of the projects looking into bringing economic and social values across the Utility sector, envisaging the creation of a common platform for all Utility underground assets. The datasets will be comprised of almost full water infrastructure, gas, electricity and telecommunication assets. Based on INSPIRE legislation, Netherlands pioneered in this field by developing, back in 2015, the Basic Underground Register.

 A fresh view on innovation, collaboration and automation has been brought to the audience by Dr. Steven J. Steinberg, Geographic Information Officer, Los Angeles County, US. I have been impressed by their struggles for the Address base system where building units have just one address in the register.

How could that be possible... in Hollywood? Lack of collaboration between county departments, not sharing daily problems, mundane manual tasks… the list was much bigger.

Conclusions

Optimistic person by nature, I can see the opportunities the future holds for Utility businesses in the UK. Innovating through technology gives the higher potential in unlocking the value of the critical data generated, in changing procedures for improving services and stakeholder’s engagement, in creating a common platform and working in the interest of people and the country.

Innovate, Automate and Collaborate to steer the ship towards Improve and Excel by allowing employees to be creative, to make use of their imagination, expressing ideas freely and allowing for failure in order to find the right solution of a problem.

In my early career years, through the work on European Space Agency projects I have learned something on this aspect - always create scenarios, always have your mind on 'what ifs', find the right research paper which gives some answers for a current business pain and develop your solution to tackle just that; Share and Network to the point of creating valuable connections for services, insights, being part of forums, knowing first-hand the news.

With this, I’d like to Thank You all for being my first readers on LinkedIn.

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And Thank you, 1Spatial, for a good networking day. With the cold I had exactly at the conference, I kept my profile low, but I’m writing my first article about you to compensate on some terms. Best of luck in achieving and delivering on your values.