Geospatial FM

EXPRESS BROADCAST: COMMUNITY ORGANISING WITH FRANK ROMO OF ROMOGIS

Frank Romo gives us a masterclass in community organising. He just so happens to have geospatial capability also. He provides several fantastic examples of geospatial outputs and acquisition of political power by communities that he has served.

Frank is a hero. Frank provides pathways to prosperity for young men. Frank leverages the power of drones to make youngsters keen about what we do. He has had success all over the US and internationally such as in India.

This is a whole new world for our profession. There is an emerging trend in consulting firms of social value. Thankfully. None however are as successful and heroic in their impact as RomoGIS. A key example is a New York community's latest gun violence dashboard.

We are privileged.

Thanks Frank.

THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX

The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 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/geospatialindex.bsky.social

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

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

Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/

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

Fathom is a flood modeling company based in Bristol, UK (www.fathom.global). They were recently acquired by reinsurance heavyweight Swiss RE. Hence they are a welcome addition to the list of publicly traded companies profiled on this podcast. Gavin Lewis, Head of Engineering, delivered an inspiring message about this scientific organisation.

It is incredibly topical given the two dramatic hurricanes in the US last 2 months, Helene and Milton. Compounding the message here is the devastating flooding of Valencia in Spain 6 days ago (10/29/24). We are facing a barrage of messages from nature that the service Fathom provides will help us become resilient to a situation of our own making.

We also have a follow on episode to the topics raised in our episode with Spatial Risk Systems (https://youtu.be/Ljfm0VNGyRU?si=RCtkWb-sfSQ8C0do). In the accompanying Substack post (https://www.geospatial.money/p/spatial-risk-systems) illustrates the consequences for insurance companies that do not properly size natural catastrophe risk. This makes it straightforward to understand why Swiss RE bought Fathom. It will be interesting to continue to observe the acquisition trend in this space amongst competitor insurance companies.

THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX

The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 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/geospatialindex.bsky.social

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

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

Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/

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

Elizabeth Christensen of Crunchy Data walks us through how to use open source tooling to avoid paying the Esri tax. It was a great tour of the options and also a nice vibe check of the industry. A headline here is she echoes former guest Stephanie May in endorsing DuckDB. She also wanted to pass on that a great way to find out more is to attend PostGIS Day! More here. On the topic of resources, Elizabeth has been very helpful and provided the following set of links: #PostgreSQL, open source relational databasehttps://www.postgresql.org/#PostGIS, open source GIS data storehttps://postgis.net/# PostGIS Day 2024https://www.crunchydata.com/community/events/postgis-day-2024#Crunchy Data, Postgres and PostGIS services providerhttps://www.crunchydata.com/# Open Source Geospatial Foundationhttps://www.osgeo.org/#QGIS download, open source mappinghttps://www.qgis.org/#Simple map SQL queries as QGIS layershttps://www.crunchydata.com/blog/connecting-qgis-to-postgres-and-postgis#pg_tileserv - Tile server for PostGIShttps://github.com/CrunchyData/pg_tileserv#pg_featureserv - API JSON server for PostGIShttps://github.com/CrunchyData/pg_featureserv/#OpenLayers projecthttps://openlayers.org/#OpenLayers + PgRouting + pg_tileserv + pg_featureserv sample codehttps://github.com/CrunchyData/pg_featureserv/tree/master/demo#PostGIS day videoshttps://www.youtube.com/@CrunchyDataPostgres#Crunchy Data’s Postgres Playgroundhttps://www.crunchydata.com/developers/tutorials#Really cool open source GIS people to followPaul Ramsey @ Crunchy Data / cleverelephant Regina Obe @ ParagonRyan Lambert @ RustProofLabsCliff Patterson @ Luna GeospatialMatt Forrest @ Whereabots#Elizabeth's crunchy blogshttps://www.crunchydata.com/blog/author/elizabeth-christensen#Elizabeth's LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-garrett-christensen/#Elizabeth's Twitterhttps://twitter.com/sqllizTHE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 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/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: ⁠https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC

The co-founder and CEO of Esper, Shoaib Iqbal, talks about the grit and grind required to launch Australia's first earth observation mission, a hyperspectral satellite. He and his co-founder Przemyslaw Lorenczak are on this year's Forbes Australia 30 under 30 list: https://www.forbes.com.au/30-under-30-2024-technology/. Like many start ups in the space, pardon the pun, they have met with their fair share of disaster. Despite their first launch 10 months ago failing, Shoaib comments that growth is nevertheless spectacular. They were enterprising enough to strike a deal with another hyperspectral company for the imagery they were going to sell from their first launch. There is similarity in what Esper does to Spottitt using imagery analytics to ultimately write to asset management databases from space. Esper allows resource exploration companies to, effectively, perform geotechnical analysis from space. Instead of drilling expensive boreholes, then analysing the soil for evidence of, for example, lithium, they break the light spectrum up into many bands and look for the spectral signature of this raw material. A nice point Shoaib makes here is this can reduce the environmental disturbance of a large drilling campaign. He also makes a compelling economic case - less than $5 per image tile vs hundreds of thousands per exploration borehole.On the topic of exploration, I also talked briefly about one of the small number of maps that I made over 10 years ago that appeared in an announcement to the Australian Stock Exchange. This is when I worked at oil explorer Central Petroleum: An Asymmetrical Risk/Reward Equation, Asia – Australia Roadshow, 25 February 2013 – 7 March 2013 (https://wcsecure.weblink.com.au/pdf/CTP/01385300.pdf). More on the company: https://centralpetroleum.com.au/investors/. ABSOLUTELY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE.THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 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/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: ⁠https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC

This is the second episode with Stephanie May. She talks about how the first world basemap was created for Facebook. We also spent some time covering how dark mode is produced for a map. Some discussion occurred about human factors and human/computer interface observations about the navigation display system offered by Tesla. This lead us to HD mapping and the pattern of coalitions forming between corporations that rely on this highly expensive form of spatial data. Examples include the various investors in Overture Maps Foundation (https://overturemaps.org/about/members/), Mapmaster (https://www.mapmaster.co.jp/en/company/), Here (https://www.here.com/about/investors) and Dynamic Map Platform (https://www.dynamic-maps.co.jp/en/company/overview/index.html). I have set up a HD Map subindex of The Geospatial Index to reflect this unique category of investment in our industry. Check the overall index here and scroll down to HD Map: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/. It contains 25 publicly traded companies.

Continuing the overview of technology and resources used by cartographers in the context of setting up vector tile-based global basemaps, Stephanie also pointed us at Mapzen (https://www.mapzen.com/projects/) and their associated Tilezen (https://tilezen.readthedocs.io/en/latest/). In terms of data sources, Stephanie highlighted the utility of Natural Earth (https://www.naturalearthdata.com/). This is maintained by Nathaniel Kelso, a star of our industry, who now runs Kelso Cartography. Here is a profile of him in National Geographic (https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/real-world-geography-nathaniel-kelso/). His career shown on LinkedIn is incredible: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanielkelso/details/experience/.

THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX

The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 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/geospatialindex.bsky.social
LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex
Watchlist: ⁠https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/
Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money

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

There is a new crowdsourced mapping campaign underway in India, Indonesia and Nigeria - Proto. Founder and CEO Akshay Aditya takes the view that maps are content. Similar to social media accounts and blogs. This system is about making it just as easy and engaging to contribute. This is the coverage map, showing the majority of content is in India so far. Principally it appears to be driven by the need to send delivery drivers to front doors reliably. It relates to the variance in addressing systems across the globe covered in the OpenCage episode. If you download the app, you'll be presented with a detailed data entry form for a new address. There is also a requirement for 4 photos. This reflects how it can be easier to help a driver identify a delivery point simply by looking at pictures of a property.

We also got into the incentive system Akshay has put in place to get the map populated and kept up to date. They appear to run regular mapathons, have a very active community on Whatsapp and pay people in cryptocurrency to map the world.

Ultimately the system offers $USD500 per square kilometre to map it. But there are lots of qualifications on that. Have a listen to find out more.

Thanks Akshay for taking the time and opening up this part of the world for us on the show.

THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 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/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: ⁠https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC

Eric Love gives us a tour of his fantastic Australian census and real estate mapping tool. This helps me find the 3 best suburbs to buy a house in Adelaide, South Australia. A competitor system is https://heatmaps.com.au/. Following are the custom Mappage outputs from Eric for my housing utility index of maximizing public transport use and educational attainment whilst minimising price. Map: https://mappage.net.au/?s=gzxlwyh0. List: https://mappage.net.au/?s=7z8ipe1w. Scatterplot: https://mappage.net.au/?s=ny6tjksz. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 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/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: ⁠https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC

This is episode 1 of 4 with Stephanie May (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mizmay/). She is a veteran of the web mapping industry. She was Senior, Technical Cartographer at Apple. Next she was Lead Cartographer at Facebook creating their first global basemap. Her most recent position was Director of Geospatial at Stamen. As such we are faced with an excellent follow on guest from Linda Stevens (https://youtu.be/55urfsPH_ws?si=tDa9bQOluLwApKYj). This is because Linda described how Esri came to dominate the market through educating a global army of technicians accustomed to their software. One may describe them as having the career of 'Esri Technician' with various levels of seniority. This raises the question of what a career could look like if one did not become an Esri Technician. Stephanie May is the perfect person to illustrate that for us.

Early on in our discussion we covered her viral kriging analysis of housing affordability in San Francisco. Here are some write ups from the time:

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/most-expensive-neighborhoods-san-francisco_n_2967522

https://burritojustice.com/2013/03/20/rent-from-on-high/

https://goldengatexpress.org/43942/latest/news/interactive-heat-map/

https://stamen.com/stephanie-may-interdisciplinary-cartography/

She also recreated a web version of the map just for this episode in the past week:

https://mizmay.github.io/RentAffordability/RentAffordability_2013_EBK.html

Further on in the discussion we started to talk about the technology behind web maps. She recommended understanding these concepts to make good ones:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_Buffers

https://geoparquet.org/

https://docs.mapbox.com/help/glossary/mbtiles/

https://docs.protomaps.com/pmtiles/

The discussion turned to navigation (pardon the pun) toward the end when talking about her time at Apple Maps. Here is my journal publication on wayfinding that I mentioned:

https://josis.org/index.php/josis/article/view/21

Also during our coverage of navigation aids Stephanie mentioned an NYT op-ed about flaws in Google Maps:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/10/opinion/google-maps-driving-apps-flaws.html

Interestingly, I came across discussion from them also about the need for landmarks in route directions:

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/science/giving-directions-start-with-a-landmark.html.

THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX

The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 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/geospatialindex.bsky.social

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

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

Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/

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

Ed Freyfogle, cofounder of OpenCage, tells us all about geocoding with open data. More: https://opencagedata.com/. He is also the convener of Geomob and hosts a podcast of the same name. The next event is Sept 18th, 2024 in London (https://thegeomob.com/post/sept-18th-2024-geomoblon-details).THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 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/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: ⁠https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC

Linda Stevens joins us for a third time to talk about her experience as a woman leader in geospatial. We also cover how to be an effective team leader for women in this field, although these observations are applicable everywhere. This completes our first encounter with her, after discussing marketing (https://youtu.be/55urfsPH_ws) and vision (https://youtu.be/Pg2wo5kQ3pQ) in prior episodes. She is the founder of the Spatial Spirits consultancy, check it out here: https://spatialspirits.com/. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 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/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: ⁠https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC