The Critical Role of Spatial Data in Today's Data Ecosystem

Don’t Just Optimize, Transform
The Critical Role of
Spatial Data in Today's
Data Ecosystem

Sara Mak
Brian Pont
VP, Customer
Success
Technical Support
Specialist
Meet our Team

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Agenda
1 Spatial, the Missing Piece
2 Spatial Data in Action
3 Resources & Next Steps
4 Q&A
Agenda

Poll: What’s your understanding
of the use of spatial data in your
organization?

Think about the last time you went
on a trip or vacation.
How many aspects of getting to your
destination were seamlessly
simpliﬁed by technology?

Air Travel: Digital Transformation
Compared to 30Years Ago:
● Visit or call a travel agency for a paper ticket
● Seat selection was not an option or done at counter
● Flight prices were relatively static
● Physical check in at airport and paper boarding pass
● Flight status was by phone call or at airport

What about today?
How many times today were things
seamlessly simpliﬁed by technology?

What if I told you that all of that seamless
technology was made possible by Spatial Data!
Spatial Data is everywhere!*
● Everyone is someplace all the time.
● Everything is someplace all of the time.
● Everything happens somewhere.
● Location, location, location.
*pun intended

The world we live in is
Spatial.
How many ways do you use spatial without even thinking about
it?

Spatial data is used for everything from
saving lives to ﬁnding you a cup of coffee.
It creates experiences that exist only in the
digital world, and improves experiences in
the real world.

Yet, many organizations
don’t use spatial when
making decisions.

Spatial Data is not a component but
the catalyst to take you from
digital optimization to digital transformation.
● With spatial data you see new relationships and gain
location powered insights to make better decisions.
● Without spatial data you miss market opportunities, allocate
resources poorly, and fall behind your competitors.

Leveraging Spatial Data for
Actionable Location Intelligence
Retail & Customer Segmentation
● DO: Track sales and manage inventory.
● DT: Analyze foot traffic, optimize store layout,
provide in store personal experiences.
Healthcare & Epidemiology
● DO: Electronic Health Records (EHR) to digitize
patient records.
● DT: Real-time location to track equipment, staff,
and patients, signiﬁcantly reduce wait times,
improve asset utilization, and enhance patient care.
● DT: Location is key to greater understanding of
outbreaks.
Industries Discovering the Advantage of Spatial

Leveraging Spatial Data for
Actionable Location Intelligence
Food Production & Precision Agriculture
● DO: Track crop yields and manage schedules.
● DT: With precision agriculture - optimize irrigation,
and fertilization based on soil conditions, weather
forecasts, and crop health data, leading to increased
yields and sustainability at lower costs.
Transportation & Optimized Logistics
● DO: Route planning and shipment tracking.
● DT: Real-time route optimization based on
traffic conditions, weather, and other variables,
reducing fuel costs, improving delivery times, and
enhancing service quality.
Industries Discovering the Advantage of Spatial

Common Patterns of Using
Spatial Data
● Geocoding: Turning "123 Main St" into
a point on a map.
● Spatial Join: Finding all customers
living within 10 miles of a store.
● Spatial Selection: Selecting all
houses within a ﬂood zone.
● Data Enrichment: Adding
neighborhood income data to a list of
addresses.
The Basics of Spatial Data

The Rise of Spatial Data
Spatial Data is embraced by more and more companies…

Poll: What’s the biggest hurdle
your organization faces in using
spatial data?

BlueDot: Disease Surveillance
BlueDot Inc. creates products that enable
public health agencies, hospital
authorities, and businesses to track,
contextualize, and anticipate infectious
disease risks. The company was founded
by a physician motivated by his front line
experience with SARS outbreak back in
2003.
The company gained global recognition
when it detected COVID-19, nearly a week
before the World Health Organization.

The Challenge
Goal: Build an early warning system for
infectious disease outbreaks that depended
on an array of different spatial and
non-spatial data sets.
Challenge: Many different spatial data
formats & different datasets needed to be
ingested and blended together to generate
insights, power our products. Spatial data
needed to be continually ingested as they
were updated at the source.

The Solution:
Safe Software’s FME
Leveraged FME’s no-code solution to
automate complex geoprocessing jobs,
integrate data through on premise, and
cloud databases (AWS and Azure).
Easily scale workﬂows when
processing demand grew.
With Spatial Data: Insured new data
integrated aligned with boundary ﬁles,
with 200+ infectious diseases around
the world being monitored daily.

One platform, two technologies
FME Form FME Flow
Build and run data workﬂows Automate data workﬂows
FME Flow Hosted
Safe Software managed instance
fme.safe.com/platform
FME Enterprise Integration Platform
Safe & FME

Their Modern Data Stack in Action
Data
Web scraping, Air travel
itineraries and
schedules, disease
extent maps, raster
imagery, climate data,
government health data,
& more
Integrate &
Transform
FME Flow and AI are
used to ingest, transform,
and analyze data
Delivery
Centralized data in a data
Lake on AWS and
Relational Database
Service (RDS)
Analysis
Disease surveillance
insights and predictive
intelligence made
available through APIs
and custom web
application

Results: Key insights into
disease patterns and their
potential impacts
● Allowed a small data team to curtail data
for products and custom analysis
● Drastically reduced time in data ingestion
and transformation
● Automated repetitive processes, freeing
resources for critical tasks.
● Analytic insights pertaining to the spread
of the virus

The HALO Trust
For over thirty years, The HALO Trust has
been leading efforts to protect and save
lives and restore communities and
livelihoods of those threatened by the
deadly debris of war.

Their Project
Goal
Survey and clear landmines and unexploded
ordnance.
Solution
Use FME to automate and streamline the ﬂow
of open source data across platforms and
deliver interactive web maps to stakeholders.

Their Modern Data Stack
Data
Sourced from social
media and data
aggregators such as:
Twitter, Telegram and
LiveAUMap, plus others.
Integrate &
Transform
Automatically pulling
data every 2 hours via
APIs.
Storage
PostgreSQL database
stores the data and
connects it to dynamic
web map in ArcGIS
Enterprise.
Analysis
Web maps offer
stakeholders with the latest
information about where
threats, contamination, and
munitions are located
inside Ukraine.

Data Spotlight
Live Universal Awareness Map: News aggregation site and API

Results
● Eliminated manual and duplicate work
with automated data workﬂows.
● Able to keep operational databases
up-to-date without human intervention
and error.
● Enable the organization to deliver on its
mission of protecting lives and restoring
communities.
Learn more: http://fme.ly/HALO
“FME is an intuitive, powerful, and time-saving tool to have in our toolbox.
We just set it up, and voila! It’s working.”
- Luan Jaupi, Head of Information Management, The HALO Trust

Fortis BC:
Navigating a Flammable
Frontier
FortisBC stands as a major utility
provider in British Columbia, with a
sprawling service area of 240,000
km², facing an escalating wildﬁre
challenge.

The Escalating Wildfire
Challenge
● Wildfire Trends in BC: Increased
frequency, intensity, longer seasons,
larger burn areas, and extreme fire
behavior, with climate models
predicting worsened conditions.
● Without Spatial Data: Response
efforts are reactive, manual data
gathering is slow, risk assessment is
delayed, and real-time
decision-making is hindered.

Their Modern Data Stack in Action
Data
Integrated live BC
Wildfire Service Map with
Internal Asset Database.
Integrate &
Transform
Automated risk
assessment and
situational awareness
map creation.
Delivery
Real-time notifications
and data availability
across various systems
for diverse user
communities.
Analysis
Enabled Operation
Management to monitor
the current state of
wildfires and make
informed decisions.

Results: A Transformative
Impact
● Transitioned from manual to automated
data processes.
● Drastically reduced time in data
gathering and analysis.
● Automated repetitive processes, freeing
resources for critical tasks.
● Enhanced decision-making, leading to
improved safety and operational
efficiency.
“In an emergency, we don’t want our Operations Managers to spend
time making reports”
- Piet Nooij, Production Process Manager, FortisBC

Key Takeaways:
● Creatively sourcing and
utilizing Data including Open
Data and APIs
● Automating the ﬂow of data
throughout the modern data
stack
● Empowering collaboration by
stakeholders via common
types of output like PDF
● Utilizing spatial data for
decision making and
enrichment

Poll: Which of the following
outcomes are you hoping to
achieve by integrating spatial
data? (Select top 1-2)

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Spatial Data for the
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The Critical Role of Spatial Data in Today's Data Ecosystem

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