Part(1): Location Intelligence- Is it a Revolution, Evolution or Disruption?

GIS Evolution

“Well, the rollout of new technology always affects how wizards do business.” – Diane Duane, Author

-The curious case of GIS & Location Intelligence:

Recently, I came across the above quote while researching for my blog and could not resist relating it to my current topic of discussion. Business Intelligence and AI is changing the way we perceive the world. With the initiation of the first applied course on Location Intelligence in 2012,businesses have changed their approach for hunting opportunities. Technology is changing at a fast pace and it is surely having a domino effect globally in various domains of the industry, GIS being no such exception.

The driving shift in GIS technology…

According to Carto, formerly known as CartoDB, Location Intelligence (LI) is the natural evolution of GIS. Based on their research, new streams of data, a wider range of users and innovative methods of analysis are driving this shift from GIS to LI.

To understand this shift, let’s take a look at the historical evolution of GIS and LI.

We observe a glaring transference from traditional GIS to location analytics. Though GIS has a major role in reporting historic location information, LI enables businesses to optimize their strategies based on location. Despite the fact that GIS established the methods for analysing and visualizing geographic information, it is still largely limited to specialists with extensive training and certification on proprietary software applications. However, LI is creating a new wave of spatial analysis with methods and techniques that focus on solving business problems by embracing open source tools and dynamic data streams. This completely changes the paradigm for GIS technology.