The Importance of AI-Mapping New Opportunities for Business Success

Here is a simple answer that explains why AI is the focus of so much discussion: With this technology, business teams can also set the limits for what is possible.

Consider a luxury seafood company based in Nova Scotia that has significantly increased its catch through AI-driven analysis of geographic and marine species. Or the world’s largest telecommunications company, which can determine where its communication towers and other facilities are vulnerable to severe storms and floods brought on by climate change. Similarly, a leading US shipping company is using AI to predict when its cargo planes will need new parts – squeezing greater efficiency out of its supply chains. .

AI alone is revolutionary but its combination with a powerful mapping and data management tool, geographic information system (GIS) technology – creating what is known as GeoAI – multiplies its effect. This powerful combination not only opens new doors but also provides comprehensive tools for businesses to improve their strategies and operations. GeoAI provides a deep, real-time understanding of business opportunities, environmental impacts, and operational risks, empowering companies to continuously improve.

AI searches vast libraries of data to find useful information. GIS organizes that information and makes it visible and ready for analysis in real-time maps and dashboards. This enables organizations to be more specific in answering simple but critical questions such as:

Where exactly are the opportunities, incentives, and risks?

Where and where are our best customers and where might they be in the future? Where are the key resources and how can we work in those areas with minimal environmental impact?

Where are properties at risk from rising seas, extreme heat or other climate hazards?

With GeoAI, responses are calculated at speeds and scales that were unimaginable just a few years ago. One director described GeoAI as “almost the holy grail for the maintenance process.”

Solutions Designed for Unique Executive Suite Challenges

Three powerful forces emerge from the convergence of AI and GIS:

• Automate tasks and quickly iterate on them at scale to improve business processes across the business while gaining operational, inventory and supply chain level awareness.
• Look at past trends to make predictions and gain insights for decisions based on scenarios or predetermined goals.
• Discover hidden patterns in large amounts of data to see relationships between consumer demographics, economies and regions.

Their use applies to different industries.

A retailer considering where to locate stores or other properties can learn about available commercial properties, local customer preferences, and existing service providers.

A business owner can describe energy use patterns in buildings and identify opportunities to lower costs and improve efficiency.

A transportation expert can estimate how far people are likely to travel for certain goods and services.

An insurance company can predict flood or wildfire damage—at the neighborhood level.

A manufacturer or logistics group can optimize supply chains using various factors such as weather forecasts, fleet and rail inventory estimates, or the number of drivers making left turns on their routes.

Additionally, GeoAI equips managers across the organization with a problem-solving tool that leverages the power of geography, or space:

• Top executives can access real-time analytics for many decisions based on where, when, and why. GeoAI is a valuable business tool in everything from planning how to drive growth to evaluating the effects of strategic changes and marketing trends.
• Chief operating officers can improve operational awareness across the business with maps, dashboards, and remote monitoring tools for monitoring assets and resources. They can measure how events in one place affect the supply chain. Using GeoAI for forecasting, they can prioritize maintenance of assets and infrastructure, avoiding costly delays and shutdowns.
• Risk managers can map resources and assets to create strategies to reduce exposure to climate change before it affects balance sheets. They can effectively reduce environmental impact. Predictive analytics to understand consumer behavior across regions can guide spending and investment decisions.
• Chief information officers can build technology solutions that improve the way their organization works, improve service delivery and governance. In all businesses, business groups find environmental conditions in their analysis of financial and customer relationship data. Off-site monitoring and data collection is more efficient and cost-effective with GeoAI tools for automation.

Predicting What’s Next

In the ever-changing world of business, it’s harder than ever to know what’s next. But with GeoAI, managers get the data-driven insights and predictive capabilities they need.

Across the business, managers can leverage GeoAI to better identify challenges and opportunities, deepen analytics, and deliver comprehensive strategies.

They can redefine what is possible.

See how organizations work solving spatial problems with GeoAI. And check the benefits of AI with spatial intelligence from GIS.