Why is Location Important?

The benefits of location information

Location information is fundamental to providing a consistent, evidence-base for enhancing decision-making for private and public sector organisations. It also assists policy development, facilitating monitoring over time as well as enabling cost reduction to operational environments.

Location information is transforming the way decisions are made; sometimes overtly by underpinning consumer apps on mobile devices or in a professional setting by underpinning decisions of governments and industry.

Accurate, reliable, up to date location information now underpins some of the biggest issues facing the globe and governments, as well as some of the largest industries in the world.  It is relied upon to assist decision-making by the construction industry, the property market, the utility industry, the insurance and risk industry, many government operations, environmental issues, the financial industry, the defence and security industry, waste management, emergency planning, the logistics industry, large events, the United Nations Sustainable Development agenda and many other areas of everyone’s daily life.

The use of location data is globally recognised as being a key facilitator for reducing the running costs of both private sector and public sector organisations and there are some impressive statistics now published to support this finding[1].  In regional, national and local governments it provides considerable assistance to the streamlining of government services by improving the analysis and conflation of their own data sources capitalising on the fact that over 95% of all data collected has a ‘location’ attached to the data. This provides them with a better understanding of their own environment whilst helping them identify and address some of their major priorities. Enhancing productivity, reducing costs and enabling GDP growth in the process are some of the most obvious benefits.

The changing landscape of geospatial information

Today location data comes in many forms as there are many new data collection devices being used very effectively.  These include data collected from drones, constellations of small and large satellites, high altitude platform stations (HAPS) and even human beings, effectively acting as ‘passive location beacons’.  The increasing use of automatic correction of the Global Positioning System (GPS) from 10m to 2cm accuracy is developing many new economically important applications. The conflation of multiple data sources from ground, air, high altitude and social media together with data already owned by an organisation is changing the decision-making landscape for many organisations and giving them many insights into their own operations that have never been identified previously.

Of course, it could be said that location information is just another data source within a ‘Big Data’ environment. The ‘where’ question is so very vital to all Big Data to give data validity and to ensure the information from the analysis relates to real people based in real places.  As ‘everything happens somewhere’, location information is in fact increasingly seen as the ‘vital glue’ to all Big Data environments whether in government or in the private sector.

Taking a strategic planning approach to an investment in location data

When planning, assessing and implementing investments using location data it has been seen that the public and private sector alike benefit from a strategic approach that is evidence-based, consistent, repeatable, measurable, and allows comparison with other entities whether they be nations, regions or private organisations.

Around the world, both private and public sector organisations are using the concept of strategy maturity modelling to assess the maturity of their existing location data landscape, to enable prioritisation as to where investment needs to be focused to be most successful. This work becomes an important element of the Data Strategy for the organisation.

 [1] http://www.alphabeta.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/GeoSpatial-Report_Sept-2017.pdf