The world is constantly growing. Babies are being born faster than people are dying and the population is consistently climbing. In fact, in the next four decades the world’s population will nearly DOUBLE. This means that for the people who collect data on things like demographics and population, their job is about to get even more complex. Thankfully, new advances in demographic reporting tools can help. And demographic reporting tools are going to be very necessary, according to research company Gartner, who reports that in the next few decades there will be 4.4 million data jobs available but that two thirds of them will go unfilled. Between 2012 and 2022, a span of just ten years, a steady growth of jobs requiring location intelligence in anticipated.
So location intelligence solutions are clearly going to be very needed. What is location intelligence? Location intelligence, also referred to as spatial intelligence, is, according to Wikipedia, the the process of deriving meaningful insight from geospatial data relationships to solve a particular problem. Location intelligence can inform business where they would be most profitable, it can tell us where hospitals are most needed, as well as schools, etc. When surveyed, over half of respondents across all industries said that they used location intelligence and thought having accurate data was important.
What demographic reporting tools are already in use and proving to be successful? For one, GPS. At any point in time there are at least 24 GPS satellites circling the earth, gathering and dispersing data. Each of these GPS satellites can travel completely around the earth in a span of twelve hours, travelling at roughly 7,000 miles per hour. A GPS receiver is amazingly accurate at determining the time to a billionth of a second, and can therefore provide accurate information.
RFID tags, which are used to track movements and capture data on objects in the world, also show promise. 12 million of them were sold in 2011 alone. This number is expected to increase to the billions by 2021.
Demographic reporting tools are going to become more and more necessary as our population expands at rates like we’ve never seen before. We’ll need new and precise technologies and consistent data if we are to keep up.