We speak with Luca Budello, Geospatial Lead for Innovate UK KTN, about his upcoming talk at GEO Business 2022.
He provides key insights into the Meeting Net Zero with the Power of Place report and suggests how location data can improve the world we live in…
Tell us more about what Innovate UK KTN offers…
Innovate UK KTN exists to connect innovators with new partners and new opportunities beyond their existing thinking – accelerating ambitious ideas into real-world solutions.
Together with Innovate UK and Innovate UK EDGE, we are building an inclusive, vibrant, and successful innovation ecosystem, making the UK a global innovation hub.
Our role is to empower businesses to work together, supporting the best ideas and helping innovators access market intelligence, funding, and opportunities to grow the economy and achieve positive change.
What was the catalyst behind creating the Meeting Net Zero with the Power of Place report? – And can you share some of the key findings?
Back in November 2021, Innovate UK KTN – in collaboration with more than 30 partners – put together the Space and Geospatial Virtual Pavilion for COP26. The pavilion hosted 26 events and more than 250 speakers over 11 days to demonstrate the key role geospatial data, and enabling technologies, play in solving some of the most pressing challenges we face in society.
Meeting Net Zero with the Power of Place builds on the discussions that took place during the Virtual Pavilion and highlights the key areas of interaction between the geospatial ecosystem and the fight against climate change.
The paper explores why shifting our siloed approach on sector-based solutions towards a holistic system approach is key to understanding feedback across systems. We also introduce the role of innovation in building a resilient, value-based economic system and delve into why we need to do this by working together.
In support of this effort, the chapters will explore the challenges and opportunities within a set of critical sectors, including transport, built environment, nature, finance and energy.
Through this, we wish to support decision-makers, industry, and civil society understand that geospatial intelligence is key business intelligence that can help them build a more resilient and prosperous tomorrow.
How can location data help improve the world we all live in?
To understand the challenges at the global level, we need to understand how climate change, pandemics, poverty, and access to basic services, for example, affect communities at the local level.
I like to describe location data as the link between the objects we use every day, our cars, the road we drive in, our homes; the people we interact with, our friends, our community, our family; the systems we so heavily rely upon, transport system, energy system, financial system; and the environment that helps us live a healthy life.
And location data is the data type that helps make sense of disparate datasets from which intelligence can be extracted, trade-offs can be assessed, and decisions can be made by comparing simulated outcomes against one another.
What do you want visitors to take away from your session at the show?
I’d like the audience to appreciate that the challenges we are facing in solving problems are not always technical. We have the technology, and with additional investment in R&D we can continue to develop amazing and innovative new technologies.
The challenges that we are facing, I believe, are human in nature. We need to get better at collaborating to focus our efforts to find solutions to common challenges.
We need to look at the challenges from a system perspective, to consider trade-offs between systems and the cascading effects of decisions on those systems, and the people that will be affected.
We need to start thinking about innovation as a tool to build system value rather than shareholder value.
I think the community of geospatial innovators is well placed to understand the pulse of the planet and to work with others to find solutions but we need to get better at articulating the geospatial narrative.