News Article – Page 3 – Location Data

Geospatial solutions to solve ecological and environmental problems

Geospatial solutions to solve ecological and environmental problems

March 2022

We spoke to Doug McNeil of Eolas Insight about the support received from Location Data Scotland and being part of the Geovation Accelerator Programme.

Eolas Insight provide technical solutions focused on the ecological and environmental sectors in an easy, user friendly way.

They detect and provide counts for animals using satellite and aerial imagery combined with artificial intelligence. They have successfully delivered a project in Scotland tracking red deer and are now working in Mozambique looking at large animals – giraffes and elephants.

As part of the Geovation accelerator programme the team at Eolas Insight has been developing a business and financial case for a truly innovative geospatial portal that will allow environmentalists and ecologists to access the technologies for themselves to carry out the analysis.

In his interview founder of Eolas Insight Doug McNeil said, “The Geovation Accelerator programme allowed us to focus on the portal proof of concept. This was a critical step to format the business case prior to developing the prototype. I really enjoyed the personal approach from the team at Geovation as they didn’t just provide information; they took the time to work out how this information could be embedded into our business.”

Eolas Insight were also supported by Location Data Scotland, who were instrumental in helping them network into other industries and opened doors to potential collaborators in the agricultural sector. Doug said, “Talking, collaborating and networking is key for any organisation working in the geospatial sector to not just open doors but to test your ideas and assess the next steps for your business. It can really make a huge difference.”

From street and forestry mapping to waste transparency, Scotland is a hive of innovative businesses in the location data sector

December 2021

Location Data is being used in all aspects of our lives; from street mapping to advertising. There are some interesting solutions, utilising location data as an enabler of innovation being created in Scotland – the home of innovation.

We recently spoke with three of these businesses to find out what impact their innovative solutions are having on the wider marketplace.

How does Gaist use location data?

Gaist works with local authorities, utilities and telecoms companies, utilising the most advanced location data and technology to better understand the condition of highway infrastructure and assets, enabling detailed lifecycle planning across the whole network to be undertaken.

What makes Gaist innovative?

Gaist collects 360° 4k roadscape imagery encompassing every road, footpath and asset (lighting columns, signage, bollards etc) across the UK. Their technology enables customers to identify where the issues on their network are and manage their highways maintenance activity with a degree of effectiveness never seen before.

Future plans

Through integration of dynamic condition data from vehicles circulating on the road network, Gaist can provide further modelling to highlight the prevalence and impact of poor road surfaces across whole networks. This presents a significant opportunity for local authorities to prioritise repairs and proactive maintenance on active travel routes. John Swift, Gaist Head of Business Development in Scotland, said, “The amount of location data we are collecting is highly significant for the Scottish local authority market and the focus for Gaist is to turn this big data into big value for our clients, enabling them to maximise resources and gain a better understanding of their full network over long periods of time.”

How does Global Surface Intelligence use location data?

GSI uses satellite imagery to produce analysis ready data to support due diligence forest owners, assets managers and real estate agents who need to have accurate and verifiable forestry assets. GSI combines the satellite data with LiDAR and ground survey reference data to produce large scale accurate forest inventories.

What makes Global Surface Intelligence innovative?

By producing analysis ready data GIS can measure, map and monitor forestry, land use and cover. Landowners, investors and service providers can make better informed decisions about their assets to enable management of natural resources significantly contributing to a more sustainable future.

Future plans

There is a major opportunity to leverage the GIS technology and platform to understand and verify forest carbon to…

Discover unrealised carbon offset opportunities
Quantify carbon stock
Carbon credit aggregation
Monitor carbon and conservation protocol compliance

How does Topolytics use location data?

More than 60% of the world’s waste ends its life in a landfill, waste dump or leaks into the environment. The lack of transparency and trust across the waste system hampers resource recovery and value maximisation across the supply chain, that includes waste producers, the recycling industry and government.

Topolytics is a data aggregation and analytics business that is making the world’s waste visible, verifiable and valuable. Its WasteMap platform generates insights for waste producers, recyclers and government, that enable greater materials recovery, drive operational efficiencies, support investment strategies, enhance transparency and reduce carbon emissions through the WasteChain. Topolytics is acknowledged by IDC, Frost & Sullivan, Cleantech Group and SAP as a leading AI and analytics player in the $4.5Bn smart waste management sector.

What makes Topolytics innovative?

Companies are spending a considerable amount of money on managing waste, but have limited visibility and control over this material once it enters the waste and recycling supply chain. These companies are also setting corporate targets on NetZero and are subject to greater scrutiny on environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance. Through a subscription to WasteMap they get a live view on waste types and amounts and can see what happens to waste and by-products. The resulting insights support target setting and generate resource and cost savings as well as reducing carbon impacts.

Recyclers and waste brokers also have complex supply bases and are under growing scrutiny on what they do to waste material. WasteMap is enabling them to clean and manage many complex data sets and drive efficiencies, compliance and reporting.

Future plans

Topolytics has launched WasteMap as a subscription product to waste producers, recyclers and brokers. The company is growing its customer base in the UK and internationally and will be launching new modules in 2022 and beyond.

If your organisation is working with location data in an innovative way, please add your profile to the Location Data Scotland Directory. We welcome organisations from industry, academia, 3rd sector, government agencies and projects. Here you will be able to:

Find Customers
Find Suppliers
Collaborate with new Partners
Find out about Funding Sources and Partners

Developing a decarbonised transport agenda for a sustainable future

November 2021

Decarbonising the transport network is a huge challenge!

We recently partnered with Scottish Space and University of Edinburgh as part of KTN Space and Geospatial Virtual Pavilion at #COP26 and brought together a wealth of speakers from across the space and geospatial communities to explore the future of transport.

Common themes that came through were:

Collaboration
Standardisation and Interoperability
Working together to create future roadmaps
Open data sharing

Dr Hina Khan from Spire Global opened the event and shared her insights into how industry is generating and using lots of satellite data but we need to consider how we use this better to improve our environmental footprint and make our transport networks more robust and greener. To enable this we need better connectivity, especially across rural communities and less developed countries. We also need to make our networks smarter by supplementing them with machine learning and artificial intelligence tools and plugging the gaps in our knowledge and systems. We can significantly improve our infrastructure by tracking geospatial data from satellites to monitor critical infrastructure and support innovation in transport. Satellites – and the data they generate – is growing exponentially. Space data can support decision making but can’t solve all our problems.

The airline industry is a great example of where significant change is happening. Modern airlines are collating lots of geospatial and satellite data to track safety, logistics and passenger experiences to manage their aims to create greener and more economical processes. Consequentially decisions are being made to no longer use larger aircraft such as the A380 and replacing this aircraft with greener and more efficient aircraft.

One of the biggest challenges facing the industry is around standardisation. There is a desire and a defined need for transportation and environmental agencies to work together and create a common set of standards and uniformed processes so we can understand how we create consistency and ultimately become cleaner and greener. This data needs to be made open and accessible to all and used wisely to make the right choices.

Collaboration between the University of Edinburgh and Telespazio has resulted in some fantastic research and solutions being developed for transport networks utilising satellite data to monitor wide areas to enable data led decision making in areas such as tracking potential hazards in infrastructure movements and land-sliding. AIS and data from space is being used extensively across the maritime sector to track shipping behaviour, oil spills and maritime emissions. GIS is being used to model scenarios for transport planning and enable the construction sector to create infrastructure that addresses climate emergency across the full planning lifecycle.

There is a strong focus on reducing our carbon emissions and making us all better citizens. We need to utilise the data that is current and rich to understand where we are currently and predict what we will need in the future across all of society.

So, how we tackle transport poverty? Electric vehicles are not the only answer. We need to offer more choice and variety of transport options that are open and accessible to all. Electric vehicles are only open to people who can afford them. As an industry we need data and social scientists to work together to create public transport and electric options that work for everyone, designed around the concept of ‘mobility as a service’. There is also a massive opportunity for industry to create and support an open accessibility map utilising geospatial data to indicate where there are dropped curbs, disabled toilets, disabled friendly restaurants and shops etc.

If we want to develop a connected transport infrastructure there needs to be open sharing of data, providing options for more low carbon emission options and more access. As an industry, transport, energy and data experts need to come together and find solutions to make our world more sustainable. For Government agencies planning new cities – how do they plan the future of transport? There are big challenges around moving goods around the country and how to deliver this on a carbon neutral basis, adhering to our desire to have things delivered ‘next day’.

To achieve our objective of a decarbonising agenda for the future of transport, there are some key steps we need to take:

Collaboration across departments, organisations and sectors can really make great things happen! There is a massive opportunity to bring communities and innovators together
To work together as a nation to put roadmaps in place to address challenges
Access to more geospatial and GPS data
Create standardisation and strategies for interoperability

If you are working in the space, transport, location data or geospatial sector, why not join our Directory and put your organisation on the map!

The Future of Transport at COP26

November 2021

Geospatial intelligence is critical to solving the climate change challenge.

To influence changes at a global level, we need to understand the impact of climate change at a local level. The availability of geospatial data at scale is unlocking new ways to provide meaningful insights into complex global climate science that can be applied to virtually any sector of the economy.

As COP26 transcends in Glasgow this week Location Data Scotland in partnership with Space Scotland (Scottish Space Leadership Council) are delivering a virtual event at KTN’s Space and Geospatial Virtual Pavilion for COP26 on Wednesday 10^th November exploring The Future of Transport.

This webinar will consider how space and geospatial fits into the wider transport and mobility landscape and how various transport improvements are leading towards net zero targets. Exemplars of how space and geospatial data is being used to create transport efficiencies will be shared followed by a discussion on lessons that can be drawn from these use cases to inform the future of transport.

We will be joined by industry experts including our keynote Dr Hina Khan, Project Coordinator at the highly innovative Spire Global, and John Innes, CTO & VP Technology Innovation, Innovation & Technology Group of global leader, Leonardo.

Agenda

Wednesday 10^th November

12:30-12:35	Introduction	Speakers: Kristina Tamane, University of Edinburgh Ashley Stewart, Location Data Scotland Daniel Smith, Astro Agency
12:35-12:45	Keynote: How space data links with transport	Dr Hina Khan, Project Coordinator, Spire Global
12:45-12:55	What is transport?	Hayden Sutherland, Founder & Chair, Open Transport Initiative
12:55-13:00	Q and A
13:00-13:25	Panel 1: Exemplars of space & geospatial in transport	Chair: Deborah Paton, Group Manager: Connectivity Plan, Glasgow City Council Panel guests: Geraint Cooksley, Head of Geo Information, Telespazio Simon Mudd, Personal Chair in Earth Surface Processes Katie Chesworth, Principal Transport Planner, Transport Unit Sustainability & Climate Change Lead, Mott MacDonald Katherine Elsom, Head of Marketing, UK Intelligence, Connected Intelligence, Airbus Defence and Space
13:25-13:50	Panel 2: Future of Transport	Chair: Ken Gordon, ESA Ambassador Panel guests: Alejandro Gutierrez-Alcoba Research Fellow, University of Edinburgh Tim Embley, Group Research & Innovation Director Costain Dr Michelle Carter, Head of Transport, KTN
13:50-14:00	Closing remarks	John Innes, CTO & VP Technology Innovation, Innovation & Technology Group, Leonardo

Further information about KTN’s Space and Geospatial Virtual Pavilion for COP26 can be found here.

REGISTER

Geospatial Demystified

October 2021

As a term, geospatial is still relatively unknown. Perhaps terms like location data or location intelligence are more helpful? But beyond terminology, describing geospatial provides understanding of its huge potential.

Abigail Page, Head of Innovation and Skills at the Geospatial Commission describes what is meant by the ‘buzz word’ geospatial and where it is having impact in our everyday lives.

Firstly, geospatial data is a representation of the world around us in a digital form. That is the ability to represent those through data which can be captured in many different ways – from ground surveys, to images from space or sensors tracking our journeys. Bringing different sources and information together and being able to visualise it by its location enables us to understand and model it in new ways.

Secondly, being able to apply geospatial technology and data can enable integration and interrogation of information to create an understanding that is valuable for society. Tobler’s first law of geography states that “”everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things.” Understanding location is fundamental to being able to identify relationships and patterns in many types of data.

What inspires me most about geospatial is its ability to be deployed and have impact from local to global levels. For example, at an individual level ensuring my takeaway turns up or reminding me where I parked the car. For neighbourhoods forming the basis of local public services, such as city planning, school catchments or refuse collections. And at a global level addressing the most challenging of global issues, such as the recovery from a global pandemic or achieving net zero emissions.

I’m proud to have been part of developing the UK Geospatial Strategy, which sets out how we can unlock the value of location data, outlining nine key opportunity areas alongside helping to shape the Location Data Scotland programme. Geospatial Commission initiatives, such as the £5 million Transport Location Data Competition, are connecting geospatial innovators with public sector partners to fund new transport solutions and the National Underground Asset Programme will improve the way that national infrastructure is planned, built and managed.

In Scotland there is a vibrant geospatial community but also many opportunities and challenges where geospatial can be applied. Through Location Data Scotland there is a real opportunity to demystify geospatial and reach beyond specialists. It is time to move beyond worrying about terminology, and work to unlock value through innovation and partnerships.

DDK Positioning’s journey from idea to commercialisation

October 2021

Our recent event ‘Where’s the Value in Location Data’ told the journey of DDK Positioning, an Aberdeen based organisation who provide GNSS Precise Point Positioning Services globally to make position more accurate.

Simon Canning, Operations Director at DDK Positioning shared his insights at the event, highlighting how they developed the idea, secured several rounds of funding, built the solution and selected their route to market using Value Added Resellers as that provided them with a global sales team of around 1000 individuals and gave access to an already significant ecosystem of customers.

Simon also provided 3 key lessons learned from their journey so far:

It’s important to strike a balance. Your product doesn’t have to be 100% perfect before it is released, so strike a balance between the minimum viable product and polishing the diamond!
Stay Focused. Don’t get distracted by other opportunities that will take the business focus away from the key products/markets you want to focus on.
Make sure you leave a realistic amount of time for each stage in the process and build this into your development/delivery time

If you missed this event, catch up on Simon’s presentation on YouTube here.

We also had a really engaging networking session as part of the event. Anne Robertson, Head of Services and User Engagement, EDINA, The University of Edinburgh commented,

“Location Data Scotland’s recent event had a dedicated networking session where attendees had the opportunity to meet other individuals at the event in break-out rooms. This was a great opportunity to find out about what others in the sector are doing and to hear about some of the really interesting, innovative products and services utilising and/or generating location data. With the return of physical events still unsure, it is important to have virtual networking events such as these to build communities and help organisations collaborate.”

Where is the Value in Location Data?

September 2021

The Location Intelligence Market Study, January 2019 highlighted the importance of real-time location data for different types of organisations. The report highlighted that 70% of telecommunications companies and 40% of public sector/local authorities consider location intelligence to be critical to their success.

Traditionally, location data enabled organisations to keep track of their materials, equipment and the employees working with that equipment. Now the availability of real-time location data significantly enhances operational efficiencies, improves project planning, ensures compliance where needed, and contributes to worker safety.

The widespread use of mobile applications and enhanced location sharing capabilities on mobile devices has revolutionised the way services are being delivered to end-users across multiple industries.

Companies, such as Google, Qualcomm, Intel, and Apple are making significant investments in location intelligence technologies across smartphones, vehicles, and aircraft. These tools enable them to collect a variety of information to enable better decision making and delivering better products and services. The need to improve cost efficiency and optimise business operations has increased demand for location intelligence tools across various industries, which is anticipated to accelerate market growth.

Location data opens up multiple opportunities, but the real question for organisations looking to utilise location data or commercialise the data they are collecting, is how to monetise it. Scotland’s location data ecosystem is growing, and a number of organisations are already starting to build robust commercially-aligned business models. You can view some of these on our website here.

One company who is doing just that is Aberdeen based DDK Positioning. They have created a robust, resilient and completely independent GNSS Precise Point Positioning (PPP) solution that can be used across a wide range of sectors including offshore survey & construction, marine, agriculture, renewables, automotive, aviation and IoT.

Our next event ‘Where is the Value in Location Data?’ will feature Simon Canning, Operations Director of DDK Positioning who will explain how they have taken their innovative concept and monetised it, working with customers and partners in various sectors.

To hear how Simon monetised their solution, Register Here

Shining the Light on Location Data in PropTech

June 2021

Location Data Scotland is co-delivering an event on 23rd June from 10:00 – 11:30 in partnership with Scottish Development International (SDI), European Space Agency (ESA), Enterprise Europe Network (EEN), CENSIS and Construction Scotland Innovation Centre (CSIC) that will shine a light on technological solutions and funding support designed for the property market that currently rely on Location Data to enhance the built environment.

The UK’s Geospatial Strategy 2020 – 2025 highlighted huge potential for location data in the construction industry to improve planning, build and management within national infrastructure, from informing where our future broadband and 5G networks need to go, to planning new housing developments. Analysis from 2018 suggests that more accessible and better quality location data in infrastructure and construction could be worth over £4 billion per year¹.

Geospatial technologies are a critical component of smart city operations, with precise mapping data being used before, during and after a construction project. Geospatial construction, or ‘geoconstruction’ uses data from a wide range of focal points such as location, population, and environment, to influence the design and construction of a building to save, time, money and reduce waste.

In fact, the construction and property industry in the UK is already testing new ideas as to how to best use these different types of data. For example, The London Borough of Waltham Forest has been exploring how location data could be used to help planners make better informed decisions. Having been awarded a grant, Waltham Forest has been looking into the potential for satellite imagery to help identify various stages of building construction, to help monitor the progress of housing developments. The borough is also testing the effects of earlier allocation of Unique Property Reference Numbers (UPRNs) to a development site, to help build and maintain a complete timeline of development.

LDS is co-delivering an event on 23^rd June from 10:00 – 11:30 in partnership with Scottish Development International (SDI), European Space Agency (ESA), Enterprise Europe Network (EEN), CENSIS and Construction Scotland Innovation Centre (CSIC) that will shine a light on technological solutions and funding support designed for the property market that currently rely on Location Data to enhance the built environment. Register here.

Key industry experts will share their personal and organisational journeys, demonstrating their contribution to Scotland’s wider digital transformation, while highlighting technologies with the potential to disrupt standard practice.

Simeon Oxizidis, IES – at the forefront of the development and application of powerful software simulation tools and consulting services for architects, engineers and others involved in the design, development and management of truly sustainable buildings.

Gordon Mitchell, Key FM – one the longest established facilities management businesses in the UK.

Falk Bleyl, Utopi – a leading data integration and IoT platform for Real Estate – creating smart assets that are sustainable, efficient, and safe; they are creating the future of smart, sustainable buildings.

Simon Tricker, Urban Tide – Smart City Data Experts born from creating the UK’s first Future City and we are making a sustainable world with AI. They were formed in 2014 from the team that bid, planned & delivered Innovate UK’s £24M future cities demonstrator for Glasgow (futurecity.glasgow.gov.uk).

Source: ¹https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/733864/Initial_Analysis_of_the_Potential_Geospatial_Economic_Opportunity.pdf

Location data, the power behind tourism technology

June 2021

At the recent Location Data Scotland event in partnership with TravelTech for Scotland we explored the opportunities that location data opens up for the travel and tourism sector in Scotland.

Whether it is for transport, accommodation and food, visitor attractions, scenic locations or retail therapy, we all require location data to be able to source and visit these locations. Joshua Ryan-Saha at Traveltech for Scotland shared some excellent examples of traveltech and tourism businesses, many accessible in the Traveltech for Scotland Directory using location data to drive their businesses:

Whereverly allows visitors to enjoy local culture, songs and stories using their location

What3words is a much more accurate location data source than Google Maps

Electrek maps every electric vehicle point across Scotland

Flockeo provides a sustainable tourism approach for travellers

Walks and Waterfalls is a start-up business providing the ability to locate over 300 walks, waterfalls and wild swimming places in Scotland

Route making and navigation rely exclusively on location data for walking or bus tours or cycling trips. But to enable it there are some key things we, as a nation, require:

Ubiquitous 4G data
Location based services
Connected services

Scotland is steeped in tourism resources and locations, however as a visitor or resident is it difficult to link them all together. The key element that links them is geography and location.

Bruce Gittings from the University of Edinburgh showed us the Gazetteer for Scotland – an interactive resource that provides a fantastic alternative to a guidebook, with 27,000 entries, 10,000 photographs and 5 million words of text. A dynamic map personalised for individuals it provides a goldmine of information for visitors to identify linked activities within a defined geographical location. It even offers the ability to trace historical connections to ancestors.

Real time location data tracking also plays an important role in travel tech. Huli is an app that creates cycling routes based on your location. Steve Owens from Huli described how real time geographical information is the underlying element of the Huli app which provides cyclists with the ability to create the best cycling route based on their preferences. When asked what the future holds for location data, Steve commented:

“I think the fusion of time with location data will present massive opportunities for travel tech and tourism businesses. This will allow the sector to present just-in-time information that is relevant to the user based on where they are and when they are there.”

Every town and location has a story to tell but as a storyteller how do you tell your stories for destinations and visitors? Shaon Talukder from Geotourist showed their very clever app that provides a personal tour guide for the world’s attractions and landmarks. Based on location, it provides auto-play guided audio tours in multiple languages on your phone. When asked what the future holds for location data, Shaon said:

“Some of the biggest opportunities in location data for travel tech and tourism businesses are from understanding what motivates people to go to places. Our focus at Geotourist, is to understand what stories, in the form of free shareable digital audio tours on our global user-generated content platform, inspire people to travel. At the same time, we are leveraging storytelling together with location guidance, to address big tourism challenges like overtourism where visitors are made aware of nearby alternatives to overcrowded spots.”

Tourism and traveltech businesses need location data to feed their platforms and apps, but the biggest challenge facing this rapidly growing sector is how they work together to find open data sources and share their own data with other like-minded businesses. Initiatives like Location Data Scotland can help. Ashley Stewart from Optimat said:

“This was a great event that highlighted how important location data is for the travel tech sector. There are some amazing businesses already providing some fantastic solutions to destination and tourism challenges and with the help of Location Data Scotland, we hope to open up even more opportunities.”

Be part of Scotland’s Location Data Directory

Location Data Scotland has been engaging with the Scottish community for almost 6-months and we have already met many interesting companies using location data in innovative ways to solve problems, improve services, enhance skills and refine customer experience.

Does your organisation use or supply location data in innovative ways to solve problems, improve services, enhance skills and/or refine customer experience?

Any organisation in Scotland using or suppling location data in innovative ways can add their profile to our Directory and access a range of benefits:

Find Customers
Find Suppliers
Collaborate with new Partners
Find out about Funding Sources and Partners

By adding your organisations details in the Scottish Location Data Directory we can help raise the profile of the exciting opportunities using location data, happening across Scotland, on a global scale. This is a great opportunity for you to make connections and raise your profile.

To start building your FREE profile HERE

Geospatial solutions to solve ecological and environmental problems

From street and forestry mapping to waste transparency, Scotland is a hive of innovative businesses in the location data sector

How does Gaist use location data?

What makes Gaist innovative?

Future plans

How does Global Surface Intelligence use location data?

What makes Global Surface Intelligence innovative?

Future plans

How does Topolytics use location data?

What makes Topolytics innovative?

Future plans

Developing a decarbonised transport agenda for a sustainable future

The Future of Transport at COP26

Agenda

Wednesday 10th November

Geospatial Demystified

DDK Positioning’s journey from idea to commercialisation

Where is the Value in Location Data?

Shining the Light on Location Data in PropTech

Location data, the power behind tourism technology

Be part of Scotland’s Location Data Directory

Wednesday 10^th November