The 3 Topics You HAVE to focus on to be successful in GIS and Geoscience… and 15 ideas to get you started!

I love geographic information systems! The creativity in map design, the science of spatial analysis, and the cross-industry power are amazing.

I also love Geoscience. Geoscience makes the world go. We find minerals for your phone, computers and batteries.  We find cheap energy to power the world.

I am going to give you little insight into something you may not have considered.

Technology changes fast, and people change slowly.

Your education may be great… but there is something called Moore’s Law which will start erasing your education by the minutes.

Moore’s law says that computing power will double every two years (roughly speaking).

Consider the “Human Law”… it took 100,000 thousand years for us to think the digital watch is a pretty neat idea.

It took you 2-4 years to get your degree.

This means, that keeping up is going to be a challenge… BUT NOT IMPOSSIBLE!

And knowing that you have to keep up, and how to keep up is half the battle.

I talk about how to keep up in my post on “Learning how to learn, and Learning how to teach”.

I am also going to give you a couple more insights here.

You see when I first started doing geographic information systems in the geoscience, I was amazed.

…amazed at just how backward GIS in geoscience was.

Still use paper for field maps. Limited field connectivity. No data analytics.

Things were changing while I was still doing field ops, but it made me realize there are three areas that every GIS and Geoscience person needs to focus on.

Some of these you might say “I knew that” to.

But are you really doing them? Are you REALLY doing them with your data?

Web Connectivity

If your data is stuck on a land computer… you are doing EVERYTHING wrong.

The internet is not a novelty. It is here to stay.

You can refuse to order your books from Amazon, but you can’t refuse to connect your geoscience / GIS to the internet.

You need to always think about how you can put your data online to ensure you stay competitive.

Mobile Technology

Mobile technology follows us into the toilet… if you are not harnessing this opportunity for GIS or Geoscience, you are already behind.

Perhaps a few years ago you could complain that mobile tech was not that useful.

This is not the case. There are apps for everything.

Luckily more companies are doing what ESRI is doing and letting you harness their apps for your mobile operations.

All you have to do is use your imagination (I have given you some ideas below)

Cloud Technology

Cloud tech is the super child of mobile and web connectivity… the future is all in the Cloud.

There could well be a future where we no longer have home computers, only terminals and online cloud computers.

You could light up a supercomputer for 10 minutes to process your GIS data, and spin it down to go back to a normal computer for everyday use.

Cloud storage is no longer a novelty, it is a necessity.

I remember a time when losing a hard drive to a random crash was scary. Dead drive means lost data.

Just think how useful Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive area. The future is Cloud… get there sooner.

Stumped about ideas for GIS and Geoscience… here is a quick ideas I came up with ON THE FLY (I will show you how this is done in a future blog post).

Some of these might already be created… I don’t know, but I do know you can come up with your own.

1. Cloud computing for seismic processing (already started!)
2. Mobile technology for field safety
3. Web connectivity for office/field communication
4. Cloud computing for automated core log analysis
5. Mobile technology for geological mapping
6. Web connectivity for operation monitoring
7. Cloud computing for automatic survey design
8. Mobile real-time operation updates
9. Web connectivity for up-to-the-minute operational analytics
10. Cloud computing for massive seismic data storage (already started!)
11. Mobile equipment analytics
12. Web connectivity for client interactions
13. Cloud computing to save on computer purchase
14. Mobile permit documentation
15. Web… to connect all of this

Have fun, you now have a ton of ideas to go out and make happen.