Geospatial FM

Mike Spaeth is Global Vice President at US Artificial Intelligence Institute (https://www.usaii.org/). He has a career in environmental, sustainability and governance analytics at Moodys before moving on to Maxar then Earth Daily Analytics. Here he gained experience in geospatial foundation models. We are privileged to have him on regarding his latest role at USAII where he talked about the possibility of standing up a certification for the geospatial profession in GeoAI.

Gideon Singer is a Solutions Engineer at CARTO. He is another guest from Geospatial Risk Summit. Gideon gave a technical presentation on the first day about processing pipelines in CARTO. It was a sign of how far the platform has progressed since I began using it over a decade ago. Back then it was called CartoDB. In this episode he continues the demonstration of analysis, mapping and presentation in CARTO. This time in the context of broadband network access quality for senior citizens. He was also game for a description of spatial indexing which I didn’t warn him about! Another aspect of this conversation that I appreciated was being able to talk about my efforts to animate the Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia War bombing sortie dataset, using CartoDB back in the day. Gideon showed us that he and by extension CARTO have an interest in applications of our profession to map and examine injustice.

Ajay K Gupta is Chief Executive Officer of HSR.Health. This is a company in the Global Top 100 Geospatial Companies – 2025 Edition from Geoawesome (https://geoawesome.com/global-top-100-geospatial-companies-2025/). I voted on the selection panel 2022-2023 but not the year HSR was voted in. Another item discussed was AWS funding for their Anna platform (as it is novel tech). Additionally we talked through Poseidon Plastic Tracking System, an ocean trash programme. Finally, there was discussion of their Heat-Health Risk Index. Toward the end of the discussion Ajay made some comments about how foundation models could help in health applications of geospatial. It was good to see mention of this outside of the usual earth observation applications.

Links:

1. HSR.health datasets on AWS: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/seller-profile?id=seller-wkcurkbvz22ak
2. Company website: https://geomd.hsrhealth.org/
3. Related recent whitepaper from HSR.health: Mapping Health Risks: The Role of Geospatial Data in Protecting Communities and Driving Decisions

Upcoming Domain ChangeDue to launching Geospatial FM, I will change the domain from www.geospatial.money to www.geospatial.fm. This will occur over the next few days. Just a heads up. You will still receive emails as normal.Nelson Roque

Nelson Roque is Assistant Professor, Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State University. He studies the brain as it develops and ages. He also lectures in cognition. It was a deliberate choice to kick of Geospatial FM with him. If we are to create foundation models to use artificial intelligence for solving in geospatial then we had better be sure what intelligence is. Nelson started by saying cognition is the preferred term. The word intelligence comes with connotations that are to be avoided by those in a healthcare context serving the vulnerable. From the outset, then, it was a productive session driven by two studies he has conducted about an early version of ChatGPT and our incapacity to detect AI generated imagery. This included a live demo where I failed every single test! The episode concludes with an epilogue prompted by this from Matt White: https://matthewdwhite.medium.com/i-think-therefore-i-am-no-llms-cannot-reason-a89e9b00754f. Here he contends that modern versions of Gemini and ChatGPT leveraging chain of thought functionality do not actually involve reasoning.

The impression from Nelson is that Matt White is right and no reasoning is going on. This is a good accompaniment to Apple's blockbuster paper doing the rounds which carries the same message: "The Illusion of Thinking" (https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/illusion-of-thinking). It was good then to secure commentary from this research psychologist on the implications of the latest versions of these tools.

Nearmap is a name near and dear to our hearts in geospatial. They were a rocketship as a stock before Thoma Bravo took them private end of 2022 (https://www.thomabravo.com/press-releases/thoma-bravo-completes-acquisition-of-nearmap-ltd). Chris Sams is Government Product Solutions Leader at Nearmap. I met him in January at Geospatial Risk Summit. He has some great commentary on how an earth observation company assists government clients to monitor climate hazards, natural disasters and their impact. He also provides insight on what the DOGE cuts mean for industry. Most importantly, however, Chris is the man who won my impromptu GIS HYPE MAN competition on LinkedIn a while back, showing what it takes to get a role at the best aerial imaging company in our industry.

Thanks Chris.

Miles Kauffman, Masters Of City and Regional planning student at Georgia Tech, came on the show to tell us about an Atlanta to Orlando high speed rail study he is conducting.

It was such a privilege to connect with him after attending a Georgia Geospatial Association (https://gageospatial.org/) networking event in Atlanta a few months ago then being referred to him by an attendee there.

At the beginning of the video, a couple of tram/trolley animations were shown. For Adelaide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tFV4WMZUNc. For Los Angeles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH9toJw6-k8. Thanks Miles for coming on and giving us hope that there is a future for high speed rail in the American South beyond Florida's Brightline.

Next #GISchat is with Michael Bartholomeusz about NOVI.

✒️ https://open.substack.com/pub/geospatialindex/p/novi-and-a-new-venture-geospatial

📽️ https://youtu.be/4z40_uU8gIs

Novi describes themselves as an edge compute and space infrastructure company. They advise one can obtain these benefits: "get real-time earth observation data at a fraction of the cost with VISTAsat - a full-stack, next-generation compute and AI open-access constellation platform in space, specifically tailored for dynamic Earth Observation (EO), autonomy and Space Domain Awareness (SDA) applications."

In a nutshell, earth observation involves producing an incredible amount of data. A lot of this is of no use. With compute available on the satellite, in space, one can vastly reduce the amount of data brought down for later use. This is by deploying algorithms at the point of capture to automatically detect what is needed in a given image, transmit that downstream, and nothing else.

CEO Michael Bartholomeusz was an incredibly engaging speaker. He made effective use of props and metaphors to make the complex topic of edge compute in space easy to understand. It was a privilege to have his attention and find out how cheap it can be to run analyses in space and finally start to solve what the earth observation industry has struggled with: signals from a noisy planet.

Thanks Michael.

THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX

The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5.4% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For ~$400,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment.

NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER

NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY

NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE

Bluesky: ⁠https://bsky.app/profile/geospatial.fm

LinkedIn: ⁠https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialfm

Watchlist: ⁠⁠https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/⁠

Website: https://www.geospatial.fm

Newsletter: ⁠https://www.geospatial.money⁠

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC

Why I am reporting on the NEOM human rights situation and publicly traded engineering consultancies involved. It is an introductory episode for the final stretch of this series. NEOM is a collection of projects in a northern province of Saudi Arabia accompanied by violations of Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

⛔️ this ep again mentions suicide.

Covering all loose ends from my recollections about working at Amec Foster Wheeler in Kuwait. Finally got to a point where I can move on from #GISchat about Kuwait.

Discussed:

0:00 - 3:24 - Emotional impact

3:24 - 3:42 - Agenda

3:42 - 22:50 - Use of ChatGPT to interpret arterial blood gas (ABG) test results and fully understand the brutality of the context of the assistant electrician being fired. The system also tells us the consequences in general of H2S gas poisoning.

22:50 - 32:56 - Use of ChatGPT to support whistleblowers more generally

32:56 - 38:23 Questioning a safety item on p. 37 of the 2016 Amec Foster Wheeler Sustainability Performance Report (https://ungc-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/attachments/cop_2017/394131/original/AmecFW_Sustainability_Report_2016_lower_res.pdf?1497623860),

38:23 - 42:36 - Using ChatGPT to help on the North Korean workers angle, leading me to UN Resolution 2397 (http://main.un.org/securitycouncil/en/s/res/2397-%282017%29)

42:36 - 50:00 - Use of ChatGPT to support whistleblowers more generally, this section also contains the system's useful summary of all that I have recounted.

50:00 - 53:58 - What would be expected to happen _to someone left untreated_ who presented with the particular ABG test results this person had.

53:58 - 58:56 - Justice regarding the NBTC Camp 4 building fire and respect for the dead.

58:56 - 1:09:21 - Wood PLC compliance officer participation in the cover up and validity of an invitation from a colleague to do a secret investigation,

1:09:21 - 1:14:54 - National Crime Agency, invitation to make a police report and plan to do so

1:14:54 - 1:18:25 - International Labour Organisation and human trafficking charity (believe it may have been Unseen UK), engaging an investigative journalist

1:18:25 - 1:27:41 - Financial Conduct Authority, the stock price since I began whistleblowing and risk for pensioners who depend on these firms being properly policed such that their collapse does not put people's retirement at risk.

1:27:41 - 1:28:50 - Short sellers.

1:28:50 - 1:32:50 - Princess Bibi Nasser Al Sabah.

1:32:50 - 1:37:32 - Emotional impact and concluding thoughts about responsibilities of the safety staff who made these reports to me.

1:37:32 - The Map Maker's Border poem recital.

A final round exposing the evidence I collected during my time at Amec Foster Wheeler in Kuwait about human rights, ethics and safety violations. This is in the service of disclosing how safety matters to do with manpower company NBTC Group were handled by Amec Foster Wheeler, superintendent's representative on Kuwait Oil Company projects. Why? In 2024 a fire in an NBTC worker accommodation facility killed 49 men. One safety breach was that a door to the roof was locked, stopping them escaping to safety. I provide this disclosure in order that the public may understand Amec Foster Wheeler did not do enough in 2017 to control the poor safety standards of this company. This was something they were required to do as superintendent's representative. If they had, the chance would have reduced of this building fire killing 49 men 7 years later.