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The Geospatial Industry continues its upwards projectory.
The following information has been gleaned from a Literature review recently completed by Dr Joel Roache, Faculty of Education, La Trobe University. Thanks to Professor Margaret Robertson for permission to use some of this work for this posting.
Such work full of statistics and quotes from authorities and academics is always useful fodder for our arguments to include spatial technology in the school curriculum.
“The business of looking down is
looking up” (Gewin,
2004).
Geospatial technology has been defined as a rapidly
growing and changing field. The term geospatial technology (GST) refers to
geographical information systems (GIS), global positioning systems (GPS),
remote sensing (RS), and emerging technologies that assist the user in the
collection, analysis, and interpretation of spatial data.
It has been argued that geospatial
technologies are to spatial sciences what the microscope was to biology or the
telescope to astronomy, they represent a fundamental change in the way we use,
imagine and understand spatial information (Phoenix, 2004).
"GIS has transformed the way we
describe and study the earth. We strive to understand the surface of the earth
as the living environment of human populations and the forces of change that
alter the earth’s environments. The environment affects our health and
well-being and we, through our activities, reshape the environment. Geographic
Information Systems are computer-based systems for integrating and analysing
spatial data, and therefore provide a digital lens for exploring the dynamic connections
between people, their health and well-being, and changing physical and social
environments." (Cromley & McLafferty, 2002, quoted in Kidman
& Palmer, 2006, p.290)
Some stats to convince
"In 2004, the U.S. Department of Labor (DoL) identified geotechnology as amongst the three most critical developing technological fields, alongside nanotechnology and biotechnology, with continually growing and diversifying career opportunities." (Gewin, 2004).
Global sales of geospatial software
alone grew 10.3% in 2010 to a level in excess of USD$4.4bn, with an additional
8.3% estimated for 2011 – the USA accounts for almost half this growth, with a
compound growth rate of 11% for the period 2002-2010, followed by the
Asia-Pacific region on 8.7% and Europe on 7.9% - sustained by a growing
worldwide need for geographically correlated information which is estimated to
continue growing at a rate of just under 10% until at least 2014 (Spatialsource
1, 2011; Lawrence, 2011). Satellite remote
sensing, another form of geospatial technology, is estimated to have a global
market worth USD$16bn by 2019, with an additional 100 satellites ear-marked for
launching to help meet this demand, particularly for government and military
agencies, but also for private-public partnerships and private business (Spatialsource
2, 2011).
The worldwide market for geospatial technologies rose from an
estimated USD$5bn-$30bn between 2002 and 2005 (split 2:1 between RS and GIS) (Gaudet
et al., 2003). The market for geospatial
technology in India has been valued at AUD$213m in
2008–09, with an projected growth to AUD$610m by 2013, and is believed to have
surpassed AUD$15bn in China in 2011 – with over 300 000 people working in over
10,000 companies and institutes engaged in the industry, produced by an
estimated 200 of the country’s universities that offer GIS-related majors (Lawrence,
2011).
In Australia, the joint Commonwealth and States’ run company PSMA published revenues
of AUD$6.5m in their most recent accounts, which combined with the financial
results of the four major States, indicates a revenue base of under AUD$20m per
year in Australia, well below the potential for this sector, and a by-product
of a lack of training and resourcing in geospatial technologies (Lawrence,
2011). This skills shortage will need to
be addressed if Australia is to realise the full potential of geospatial
information and technology as we move further into the 21st century.
The breadth of the geospatial industry around the globe
Over 140,000
organisations use GIS worldwide, mostly governmental
agencies, with environmental, civil government, defense and security, and
transportation as the most active.
Moreover, and crucially, there are already signs that this rapid industry
expansion is unable to be met. NASA, for
example, has had over 26% of its most highly trained geotechnology staff retire
in the last decade, whilst the U.S. National Imagery and Mapping Agency sought
to expand its GIS workforce by over 7000 in the three years between 2004 and
2007 (Gewin,
2004). The
American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing estimated annual growth
rates in the geospatial industry of between 9-14%, with predicted revenues in
the U.S. alone topping USD$6bn by the end of 2012, whilst employment trends in
industries hiring surveyors and mapping technicians were projected to increase
by 23% in the U.S. in the ten years to 2012, and in the same period job
openings in cartography and photogrammetry were to increase by 15% (Trautmann,
MaKinster & Edelstein, 2007). In fact the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
reported that the ‘architecture and engineering occupations group’, which
includes surveyors, cartographers, photogrammetrists and surveying technicians,
all key geospatial occupational categories, is an occupational group projected
to have the fastest occupational growth rates in the decade leading up to 2012 (United
States Department of
Labor, 2005).
So, what more can one say, the geospatial is important in today's world!
