
In our annual Leaders Forum, we ask the experts to look ahead into 2025. Today we talk geospatial data intelligence with Allison Patrick.
Allison Patrick is the acting Assistant Secretary, Foundation Geospatial Branch, in the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation and has over 20 years’ experience working in Defence, with the last three years leading AGO-Bendigo’s specialist teams producing geospatial data for the Australian Defence Force and National Intelligence Community.
What opportunities and challenges do you see in 2025?
The unprecedented volume of geospatial data presents a significant challenge to the sector. As geospatial tools and data become more accessible and user friendly, and customers want outcomes quicker, it will be a challenge for the sector to implement and adhere to data standards, maintain data quality, and ensure that geospatial outputs are fit for purpose and assured. An increasing reliance on automation to deal with this unprecedented volume of data, potentially at the expense of data assurance, accuracy and quality, further compounds this challenge.
Another challenge is one of workforce. It takes time and trained professionals to make quality, assured and accurate data. Regrettably, the industry is currently suffering from a lack of trained geospatial professionals. This is particularly noticeable in the fields of geomatics and geodesy, on which our industry depends.
What is your attitude to emerging tech such as AI?
Emerging technologies, such as AI, will be critical to process and analyse massive volumes of data. It will streamline time- and resource-intensive tasks, and in this way act as a complementary tool: distilling the noise, improving efficiency, and enabling professionals to derive more complex insights and analysis, or increased focus on more strategic applications.
The challenge will be how we ensure that data quality and standards are maintained and assured. The value of the geospatial sector is providing an information advantage to decision makers, which means providing trusted and assured data. If data collection, processing and analytics becomes too much of a black box solution, there is a risk to data accuracy, quality and assurance. At best this results in a diminishing value of geospatial data for decision making, with at worst (such as in Defence), potentially catastrophic consequences.
To mitigate this the industry will have to grapple with how we train and educate geospatial professionals to keep pace with advancements in AI, while also emphasising the responsible, ethical and considered use of it.
Can and should the geospatial sector work more co-operatively?
Competition supports innovation and creativity, accelerating the adaptation and consumption of new technologies and products. At the same time, there is value in fostering co-operation and collaboration. Co-operation reduces duplication of effort, which, in a sector with a workforce risk, is a significant consideration. Furthermore, collaborative commercial licencing provides opportunities for supporting increased data sharing across the industry, reducing costs in data procurement but also reducing capability costs.
What excites you about this sector and your role in it?
I am excited about the evolution that I have witnessed in the geospatial sector over the course of my career. In particular, I am thrilled to see geospatial data and technologies valued by decision makers across government. In Defence, the fundamental importance of geospatial data is being recognised as a critical decision-making tool to provide the information advantage, and as an enabler of advanced capabilities. Defence and the whole-of-Australian Government are recognising the significant value of geospatial data and technologies and demanding trusted, assured and authoritative data like never before.
What are your organisation’s plans for 2025?
Our priority in 2025 is to increase our authoritative data holdings to close the gap between Defence and whole-of-government requirements and our production capacity. To achieve this, I will be strengthening partnerships with industry, academia, traditional and non-traditional partners. I aim to evolve our tradecraft by leveraging new technologies and industry best-practise approaches; and to achieve efficiencies and expanded offerings through modernised methodologies and implementing automation and emerging capabilities where possible.
Finally, my focus will be on recruiting to expand our workforce across geographic locations, whilst supporting, retaining and uplifting our existing workforce.