Announcing July's Geospatial Champion
Congratulations to Andrew Loveless, Chief Revenue Officer at Gaist for being selected as techUK’s ‘Geospatial Champion’ for July!
The purpose of techUK’s Geospatial Champion campaign is to celebrate the work of those pushing forward adoption of Geospatial in the tech sector. This is also an opportunity to learn from those working in Geospatial about the current landscape and examples of the strides being made in enhancing awareness.
A new techUK 'Geospatial Champion’ will be chosen every other month, so if you would like to nominate a friend or colleague to be the next Champion please drop us a line. You can read out interview with Andrew below
What is your current role and what does a typical day involve?
At Gaist my main role is to lead on the execution of our global growth strategy and support highly motivated colleagues in delivering unique insights about the public domain to clients with an interest high performing services delivered there.
My days vary but I look forward to client interaction most especially since Gaist’s work in countries such as Japan, Uganda, Australia, France, Spain and Mexico.
We are delivering “roads as a service” to people who have an interest in the public realm and the space around the public highway. We combine forensic and dynamic data from different sources to provide them with unique insight into the location, attribution, condition and temporal dimensions of their assets so that they can make informed decisions about proactive maintenance and other interventions. Quite often find myself briefing policy experts and journalists about the potential of the technology.
Why is geospatial data valuable to the UK?
If you start from the premise everything happens somewhere, you are agreeing that knowing the location of an asset or event is valuable to making decisions; from everything to interpreting accident statistics to make everyone safer to knowing the best place to get a signal outside so that you can keep up to date. Since William Booth’s poverty maps or John Snow’s method for understanding the source of infection, people have used location (or geospatial) data with other information to derive value. Now, in a world with more and more data being created from more and more devices an increasingly people are seeking information more frequently and with greater context.
So it’s not enough to tell people, or increasingly machines or algorithms, where something is, they need to know what it is near and how it has changed over time.. Quantifying and isolating the unique value and impact of geo is hard as there are a range of benefits from a general purpose technology, an element of data infrastructure which can support the whole economy and all of society. We might like to consider the different performance of economies with access to high quality geo data or the uplift when new services are made available.
Frontier economics recently analysed the impact of geo in the UK market at £9.2 billion calculated by 5% of turnover attributed to geo. This is thorough work, but it is really hard to quantify both Indirect and spillover values.
At Gaist we see indirect value created from reduced disruption, better air quality and increased access to economic mass when those with responsibility for highways spend money efficiently and effectively prioritizing road repair investment.
Do you think the conversation around geospatial data is changing in the UK? Why/ why not?
I think the conversation about data is changing, and that is terrific. My hope is that we will have much better debates about how to use data to do the most good, protect privacy and security and create the most value. (The Geovation Benchmark on location and data privacy is a great example of starting these conversations)
The UK is home to some of strongest geospatial brands and with it essential elements of a high quality data infrastructure which can support and connect every sector within the economy. Certainly, we see increasing awareness of geo as more people are using maps on their devices to find and deliver services in a way that we didn’t think were possible but I would like to see the growth of data services which are not based on the human as reader, starting to use location as the connector of information rather than as a way of putting it on the map. I’m confident that the thriving ecosystem of 2,000 geospatial firms will use the data in new, exciting and valuable ways for us all. .
How do we showcase the value of geospatial data to the technology sector?
First of all, I would like to congratulate and thank techUK for putting on geo week to support people working with geospatial data. The tech sector is diverse on every dimension but geo data is the best connector, so I am sure there is a way for geo data to collaborate and add value across the board. There are some great stories of tech companies leaning into geo data to support the cost effective roll out of 5G, build better testing facilities for autonomous vehicles and protect vulnerable people by prioritizing their services. We need to get those stories told and accessible to people and I think this week is a great way. We also need to connect those stories to real business outcomes, increased value and more satisfied customers, moving the conversation on from beautiful maps.
What are your key concerns hindering increased deployment of geospatial data in the technology sector?
My experience in technology and geospatial data has taught me that there are always a number of reasons why the best approach or most appropriate technology is not universally adopted. I know that digital transformation is a long journey, and, in addition, geo data has a reputation for requiring special attention. It is true that the addition of location data can often remove anonymity and that spatial referencing of assets can lead to system vulnerability when those with malicious intent can more easily identify pinch points. We therefore need to think hard as we develop new services and new business models which sustainably protect privacy and security and deliver value for users and customers.
Happily, the ecosystem is rich with good ideas and keen to collaborate. We have some of the best data assets in the world here in the UK, we can be a place where new geo data services are invented and exported from.
What steps can companies take to utilize spatial data in their products and services
My advice would be to start small. Anyone who has customers would benefit from understanding their spatial distribution and how that correlates with experience or profitability. By taking steps like this you also make it easier to collaborate with suppliers and partners to increase the efficiency of your business. At a city level Eddie Copeland’s article, Big Data in the Big Apple is a lovely story of how the spatial referencing of data helped the city of New York save firefighter’s lives and a whole host of other stories. .
Can you give an example of where geospatial data has been adopted in an innovative and new way?
There are lots of highly innovative companies and services and the Geovation hub is a great place to catch up people who are exploiting data in new ways and touching every aspect of the economy.
I am excited about the potential of Gaist’s Road as a Service model which will use geospatial data to link together data from different sources in order to give a complete picture of how people are actually experiencing the road and how that is changing. It means we can respond to sudden changes (like an oil spill) very quickly but also monitor decline (or growth in surface cracking) and plan interventions appropriately to avert a crisis and the corresponding disruption.
Regarding data access and availability – what is the position of the UK and in what ways should we encourage data accessibility?
The UK has a strong position with respect to Open Data, with the well publicized approach of TfL and its Open API’s enabling excellent services such as CityMapper. We also have core reference data of the highest quality; datasets like companies House, the NHS and Ordnance Survey provide. This data infrastructure, together with the emergent thinking on data stewarding and the valuing of data assets means we are in the best position to sustain the advantages of our data infrastructure in ensuring wide and appropriate access and availability.
How can we equip the next generation with the most appropriate skills for a future in geospatial?
We already have an exceptionally map literate population in the UK as a result of having Ordnance Survey on the GCSE curriculum for geography. This is a great asset but is less applicable for the data science end of geo data use for which people have traditionally needed specialist software products. Happily companies such as BGS are supporting apprenticeships and continue to fund extensive UK research which will keep the skills pipeline strong.
But as well as sophisticated creators of tools using geo data we also need a capable buying population who understand the power and potential of geo data and I mean taking it beyond shaded blocks of London boroughs to something of the sophistication of the Turing busyness model which looked at how high streets were affected by the lockdown. We need more stories of data doing good (and less horror algorithms) and that is why I am so proud to be part of this week for techUK.
Laura Foster
Laura is techUK’s Head of Programme for Technology and Innovation.
Rory Daniels
Rory joined techUK in June 2023 after three years in the Civil Service on its Fast Stream leadership development programme.
Elis Thomas
Elis joined techUK in December 2023 as a Programme Manager for Tech and Innovation, focusing on AI, Semiconductors and Digital ID.
