@GISuser tweeted some readings on GIS this week. In the readings an article with the promising title: “$3.7 Billion Reasons Why GIS Technology is The Future” is posted at SpaceDaily.com. The post refers to a quote from Dr. Stephen McElroy, GIS program chair at American Sentinel University saying that “2012 is the year of GIS”. The article has some nice statements about the GIS market and the job outlook for Geo informaticians, and the necessity to train people now to fill all the job positions. And yes I agree with this quote and the reasons Stephen McElroy comes to this! GIS (or as I prefer Geo Informatics) is “pervasive technology”.
Location is everywhere
The last decade we have seen a clear market shift where hand drawing the assets of many companies has been rapidly replaced by geo-locations in the companies’ databases. Maintenance of these systems has become a core business for IT firms. So not only within the companies that collect and keep up the data we can see a growing market potential, also in the surrounding areas there is a rapidly growing market. SpaceDaily.com mentions the Pike Research report that sums up the market to $3.7 billion in 2017. Don’t we all want our share in that?
In the article governments are mentioned as one of the main users of Geo Technology. The use and presentations of Geo Information shows a clear shift here too. The request for up-to-date information by the citizens has forced many organizations, with governments in the front row, to shift towards publicly available geo data.
Media and technology
Mobile devices, telling you every single moment where you are, and what happens at this specific location drive the geo awareness of people. And we cannot do anything else other than act. The technology will drive us faster and faster, the growth in the number of geo apps shows this clearly.
Envisioningtech.com earlier this week published their wonderful infograph “Envisioning emerging technology, for 2012 and beyond”, there is references to technologies depending on Geo informatics in there, but no direct mentioning of the field of Geo Informatics. Geo has grown fast, and we are in a steep climb, everyone knows geo from daily use, but as a field it still needs a lot of marketing. Stephen McElroy is right when he talks about the need for education (and students) saying: “industries are looking for people who understand GIS technology”.
There is a clear and fast growing dot on the geo-horizon and it is still 2012!
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