Since the inception of Geospatial Information System (GIS) in the late 1960s, there has been a considerable shift in customer expectations and capabilities. In the last ten years, GIS has evolved from being used primarily as a navigation system for long road trips to being used in every aspect of our travel journey. Digital maps and the inexorable rise of the smartphone have radically changed how we locate, navigate, and plan our journeys. Today we cannot imagine our journey without the support of a map aggregator such as Google Maps, TomTom, Apple Maps and several others.

Since the introduction of the digital map, mapping geographic spaces has moved well beyond its traditional planimetric pancake perspective that flattens a curved earth onto a sheet of paper. GIS technology has evolved further allowing us to view landmarks, streets, and locations through satellite images and a 3D view.聽

How GIS find application across industries

GIS has evolved beyond the traditional usage of mapping capabilities. These platforms help gain a better understanding of spatial patterns while reducing costs, enabling accurate decision making and improving overall performance. GIS is used across diverse industries, ranging from education, military and defense, agriculture, forestry, and real estate. Location intelligence, logistics and spy satellites are used in military and defense GIS. The utilization of GIS has also increased in the agriculture sector for precision farming, soil mapping and analyzing crop productivity. It has been incredibly helpful in mapping and forecasting current and future fluctuations in precipitation, temperature and crop output.

With the advancements in the technology, key players are integrating artificial intelligence (AI) with GIS to improve the efficiency of route mapping. As end users, we have the ability to find information related to landmarks, points of interest (POI),聽street views of the location, and real time updates of traffic congestion for our journey through widely used map aggregators like Google maps.

Although navigation systems have revolutionized our perspective on traveling, there are several challenges that hamper user experiences:

• Inconsistencies in real time data of the route
• Authenticity of information curated by users
• Image mapping to locations
• Inconsistencies in location tagging

Some of the largest consumers of GIS systems are retail, insurance, telecom, government, ride-hailing, food delivery, micro mobility and logistics companies whose business models are highly dependent on maps. Many ride hailing companies utilize Open Street Maps (OSMs) as a base layer and build on top of them to create their version of the map.聽

The future of GIS in everyday life

Navigation systems potentially will evolve, given our increasing dependence on maps to assist us in our daily lives. Companies that are well known to be disruptors of innovation like ride hailing and food-delivery companies are expected to be huge contributors to the growth of this industry. With many countries relaxing restrictions and managing healthcare risks of COVID-19, these companies are on the path to make a 鈥楿鈥�-turn recovery with demand generation increasing and people returning to their normal schedules.

The application of GIS can be extended to create accurate models for agriculture, crime prevention, weather prediction, last mile delivery, and for logistics companies, cargo operations, and transportation companies in the fields of micro-mobility and food delivery.聽聽

Thinking outside the box

Tech companies today have built capabilities to support聽companies with their requirement for effectively mapping out service requirements and customizing as per their needs. The framework depicted in Figure 1 describes the approach taken by companies to manage end-to-end movement in service enhancementright from product evaluation to analytics and product maintenance.

End-to-end lifecycle聽of GIS

Shared services have become imperative to support companies to make their map ecosystems and platforms more robust. Tech companies provide skilled personnel and implement quality excellence metrics as a supporting layer via the following capabilities:

1. Map navigation 鈥� Enhancing maps through base mapping, map accuracy improvement, lane guidance, pedestrian navigation, 2&4 navigation, and maintenance
2. Quality as a Service 鈥� Developing queues for analysts to ensure image stitching, uploading, blurring, benchmarking, and providing analytics
3. Heat mapping - Helping analyze existing routes, collecting data, and informing riders about the changes in the routes, which strengthen its demand
4. Estimated time of arrival (ETA) and actual time of arrival (ATA) optimization
5. Indoor mapping
6. Pick up and access points
7. POI mapping

Research analysts have identified some Key trends in GIS such聽as:

• Adoption of GIS in disaster management applications including flood, forest fire management, carbon management, and climate change monitoring
• Governments are heavily investing in GIS to prevent and contain emergency incidents proactively like聽tsunamis, wildfires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, epidemics, and oil spills
• Rising investments and increasing demand for GIS solutions in the transportation sector
• The United Nations (UN) released its聽geospatial strategy for 2021鈥�2022, 鈥淒elivering as One鈥� by bringing geospatial data to innovate and to act for a better world.鈥� The vision is to build synergy in activities and investments in geospatial information management by using geospatial data.

Considering the advancement in technologies business leaders are able to:

• Make informed decisions about the next store/ outlet they wish to open
• Optimize real estate traffic based on heat mapping of target demographic customers
• Optimize delivery routes of logistics and delivery services for a more efficient service

Emerging technologies like machine learning and IoT will enable companies to add more data points, making GIS better than before. This will also pave the way for further opportunities for automation.聽

Abhishek Dhanuka

Abhishek Dhanuka, Presales Consultant - Travel, Transportation, Logistics, Hospitality & Public Sector, Digital Operations & Platforms

Abhishek has 2.5 years of work experience in the customer strategy and BPO presales domain. He has worked with clients and created solutions ranging from the following industries - logistics, airlines, ride-hailing, food-delivery and hospitality.

Neha Lohit

Neha Lohit, Manager - Travel, Transportation, Logistics, Hospitality & Public Sector, Digital Operations & Platforms

Neha has over 10 years of overall experience in BPO presales domain, workforce management and HR. Over this period, Neha has been extensively involved in Transportation and Logistics pre-sales efforts, addressing industry challenges and crafting customized solutions for the rapidly changing business landscape.