Geospatial FM

Caution - this episode contains some details of suicides that happened when I worked at Amec Foster Wheeler in Kuwait. If you need it, these are helplines you can call for the top 5 most popular countries for this newsletter:USA: 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.UK: 111 for the NHS.Canada: 988 for the Suicide Crisis Helpline.Australia: 1300 22 4636 for Beyond Blue.India: 9820466726 for Aasra.Continuing the testimony regarding my career in the worst country to be an expat, Kuwait. Until I joined Jacobs later on, I would also have contended it was at the worst place to be a consultant - Amec Foster Wheeler.

The story of injustice whilst at Amec Foster Wheeler in Kuwait continues.

Here we look at a missed opportunity to avoid the death of 49 people in an NBTC accommodation fire last year in Mangaf, Kuwait. The missed opportunity was in the firing of a worker in 2017 for calling an ambulance in response to an H2S gas poisoning at GC-30 in the North Kuwait Asset. Instead, he could have been listened to for stating that people are punished for speaking up about safety issues. NBTC, Amec Foster Wheeler, Petrofac and the Kuwait Oil Company could then have changed their safety practices. One is invited to wonder if the building fire killing 49 people 7 years later in 2024 would not have occurred if this change had occurred.

We will have one more episode on Kuwait, then move on to Qatar and London, UK.

Caution - this episode contains some details of suicides that happened when I worked at Amec Foster Wheeler in Kuwait. If you need it, these are helplines you can call for the top 5 most popular countries for this newsletter:

1. USA: 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
2. UK: 111 for the NHS.
3. Canada: 988 for the Suicide Crisis Helpline.
4. Australia: 1300 22 4636 for Beyond Blue.
5. India: 9820466726 for Aasra.

Continuing the testimony regarding my career in the worst country to be an expat, Kuwait. Until I joined Jacobs later on, I would also have contended it was at the worst place to be a consultant - Amec Foster Wheeler.

We went in to the weeds geospatially finally! Here is a link to the Mapillary track, showing the security workers at the first gate on the road to GC 31.

This is AMEC's office at GC-31 - https://maps.app.goo.gl/mwe8FrhLCKyiY8318.

This is the other gathering center they were working on in North Kuwait, GC-30: https://maps.app.goo.gl/GAsQJdn1yXNVB8Pu9.

For the separate video I made years ago animating the safety and other violations mentioned at these sites: https://youtu.be/9Ko-vrcIgEk?si=-MvPPxkslS-WgWtZ.

For the video uploaded years ago about my site visit to verify the circumstances of the fatal car accident at GC-31: https://youtu.be/Deg64MWKSsI?si=rKQUpyxBoDjUCjXo.

For a speech I gave in 2019 summarizing all this stuff at Spatial Information Day in Adelaide, South Australia: https://youtu.be/q-xkK3tKlpk?si=AyJcviEJ7F0Xq3wP.

Caution - this episode contains some details of suicides that happened when I worked at Amec Foster Wheeler in Kuwait. If you need it, these are helplines you can call for the top 5 most popular countries for this newsletter:

USA: 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

UK: 111 for the NHS.

Canada: 988 for the Suicide Crisis Helpline.

Australia: 1300 22 4636 for Beyond Blue.

India: 9820466726 for Aasra.

This is part 2 in a mini series about my career across Cambodia, Kuwait, Qatar and London. It contains reflections on my time in Kuwait working for Amec, Amec Foster Wheeler before it was purchased by Wood PLC in October 2017.

I continue to use Nick Haslam’s dehumanization continuum diagram as a tool to interpret what I saw. Here is the diagram again but against an animation of the bombs dropped on Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam:

https://youtu.be/wrIOj5zWzig

Reflections on doing geospatial in Cambodia. Prompted by Free The Map, a book about change in the way we do cartography. This is in the lead up to an episode with the author, Henk Van Houtum.

Dehumanization: An Integrative Review: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6927454_Dehumanization_An_Integrative_Review

Eviction and relocation events 1982-2012 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia: https://youtu.be/-7TEcs3lQFs?si=vL575_mAFsaENPjb

Kabul Falling, Episode 8, Still Falling: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4EvXclesyIwQGoL9xWHsNW

US Bombing of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. This is an animation of 1.6+m bombing sorties over Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam in the decade from 1965. It was an attack to stop communism: https://ndthl.carto.com/viz/3d0dbb10-a36e-11e5-91e4-0e5db1731f59/public_map

Free The Map: https://freethemap.org/

Making Maps Without Borders, a travel blog I kept about my time in Cambodia: http://v2.travelark.org/travel-blog/gisnoborders/1

Sahmakum Teang Tnaut: https://teangtnaut.org/en/

This episode relates to the just concluded Geo Week in Denver. I went yesterday after receiving free entry to the exhibition hall by the guest from today’s podcast. Similar to the Iceye episode released during Geospatial Risk Summit 2 weeks ago, this episode is a way to get a feel for the things discussed at Geo Week and who attends.

Hayden Howard is Executive Vice President atCompassData, Inc. We return to the theme of global base maps created by tech companies in this episode. It extends the last one of the topic withJordan Regenie. He mentioned CompassData as participating in the Microsoft campaign to create 3D cities and Streetside imagery for Bing Maps. Hayden was decent enough to come on and explain what they did. In their own words, they’re a “Leader in providing Global Ground Control Points (GCP) Survey data for remotely sensed data by satellites and other GIS applications.”

Hayden also told us a story about how epic these surveys can be - such as going around Australia.

A great episode and high time we hit the surveying subindex on the pod.

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.money⁠

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

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

Newsletter: ⁠https://www.geospatial.money⁠

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

Christian Rouffaert is founder and CEO of Teragence. This is a map driven web app showing mobile network signal strength. It enables such modern products as robotic lawn mowers. This is because they rely on mobile data to control and position the robot so it does not munch expensive, pretty flower beds.

The conversation also covered the practice of entrepreneurship more broadly. For example, I believe he has given the most detailed answer so far about working backward from customer needs. Christian showed what it means to have a management consulting background in answering this question. The conversation was also useful for providing an outsider's perspective on what is interesting, and not so interesting, about geospatial.

Here, Christian offered the perspective that what he and others are waiting for is a Tableau moment for geospatial. Tableau offered an intuitive, graphical interface for general data and information interrogation. Suddenly vastly more people had the power to derive insights where before that was the province of software developers.

What will be the Tableau of geospatial?

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.money⁠

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

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

Newsletter: ⁠https://www.geospatial.money⁠

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

Leo Wang⁠ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lwang1022/) is founder and CEO of ⁠Lucius⁠ (https://lucius.space/). This is a turnkey solution for satellite constellation operators or imagery resellers to take orders and distribute data. The conversation covered the following topics:

1:14 Introducing Lucius.

1:51 Content creation.

13:13 Imagery sales and marketplaces commentary.

27:13 Platform to store humanitarian satellite data.

A key learning is that Lucius charges $USD25,000 a year for their satellite data ordering and distribution platform. Carrying on the point Kevin Bullock made in the episode about ⁠Development Seed (https://youtu.be/MOFS6il0Oj8?si=SkPv5abhwZPgQa79)⁠, a SpaceX launch costs ⁠nearly $USD70,000,000 (https://www.spacex.com/media/Capabilities&Services.pdf)⁠. Here he observed that if just 1% of the cost of those launches were spent on a platform to distribute the data during humanitarian disasters, that would make a strong impact. That is $USD700,000 for a SpaceX launch. Or 28 years to run Lucius.

I should start a consulting career!

Thanks Leo for contributing to the cause and the appetite for philosophical reflections on how the species uses the power of satellites.

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.money⁠

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

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

Newsletter: ⁠https://www.geospatial.money⁠

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

We are privileged to have Anke Sielker (https://www.linkedin.com/in/anke-sielker-89690431) on to explain the business of Iceye and some of their unique offerings. They are a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite constellation operator. They are also a charter partner of the ⁠International Charter: Space and Major Disasters⁠ (https://disasterscharter.org/membership-history). This has been discussed in the past few episodes in the context of the LA fires. The focus was on insurance because they are presenting at The Geospatial Risk Summit. This guest is also relevant due to heavy use of SAR to map building damage in the recent #LAfires that have been a theme of recent episodes.

Additionally, it came up in the episode with SeerAI where Alex performed amplitude change detection analysis to detect surface disturbance on The Line in Neom, Saudi Arabia. As luck would have it, yesterday he informed me he extended the analysis coverage back to 2020 like I requested in the episode with him, check here:

https://seerai.maps.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?webmap=dda6a70dba2344a0afda174d6e5de6cf

The Geospatial Risk Summit is happening right now at Hard Rock Hotel, Manhattan. I confess I am distracted from a panel discussion posting this right now from the audience😬. I wanted to offer you all an impression of the kinds of discussions happening at the event. I am very grateful Iceye was willing to provide that service to us all.

Thanks Anke!

Something to note is that I was a bit flat for this episode because of the 6am start time and lack of coffee. I will improve!

Iceye is a Finland based synthetic aperture radar (SAR) constellation. They claim to have “the world's largest synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite constellation, ICEYE provides objective, near real-time insights, giving customers unmatched access to actionable data, day or night, even in challenging environmental conditions.”

More: https://www.iceye.com/company.

All right that’s enough distraction for now I better start paying attention again or Priscilla will start getting annoyed…

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.money⁠

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

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

Newsletter: ⁠https://www.geospatial.money⁠

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

For the month to 2025-01-27, a summary of:

Growth of pureplay Geospatial Index and subindex breakdown. Growth of adjacent Geospatial Index. Growth of Geoawesomeness Top 100. Contribution analysis. Exposure analysis. Valuations. Job highlights by world region by Vikas: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7289542933962219520-PnZT/.

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.money⁠
LinkedIn: ⁠https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex⁠
Watchlist: ⁠⁠https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/⁠
Newsletter: ⁠https://www.geospatial.money