Charting the preventative economy - Raconteur

In the 21st century the world still faces many geographical challenges including climate change, disease outbreaks, natural disasters and a growing scarcity of vital resources such as water, food and land. Overcoming these problems is dependent on our ability to chart these issues and analyse them spatially. This comes at a time when we're increasingly able to produce millions of data points from connected devices – the internet of things (IoT) – such as mobiles, drones, satellites, vehicles and social media, combined with more affordable, powerful cloud computing and machine-learning. Technologists realise the potential for smart mapping has never been greater. "If you think about it, there isn't an area that isn't touched by location, from responses to hurricanes and typhoons, wars, international health scares or utility outages," explains Stuart Bonthrone, managing director of Esri UK, a world leader in mapping and spatial analytics software.