Choosing the Right Geospatial Solutions for Your Data Platform

Pick the wrong geospatial setup, and you’ll find out the hard way that the GIS platform your team trusted for years can’t keep up once GPS data starts arriving by the million, or the scalable data platform someone built can’t tell a valid polygon from a corrupted one because nobody with spatial expertise was in […]

Geospatial Software Overview: Which Tools Fit a Modern Data Platform?

Every day, location data quietly makes or breaks a decision: a delivery route runs 20 minutes longer than scheduled, a new store opens in the wrong zip code, a flood risk gets flagged three weeks after the fact because someone had to manually cross-reference three spreadsheets and a shapefile. Geospatial analysis always mattered; what’s changing […]

Eyes to the Sky: LiDAR Point Cloud in Databricks for Urban Canopy Insights

Editor’s note: This post was originally published June 20th, 2025.  What is the Sky View Factor and why does it matter in our cities? I’m back with another sunny, summer-inspired geospatial adventure!Ever wonder how much sky you can actually see when you’re standing on a busy city street or under a cluster of city trees? […]

Building a Geospatial Time Machine

Editor’s note: This post was originally published June 12th, 2025.  What is environmental change detection? Think of it as a time machine for planet Earth. No flux capacitor, no DeLorean, and no Marty McFly needed!😉 Just some cool tech that lets us peek into how our world changes over time. Detecting and understanding environmental changes […]

Geospatial Location-Allocation in Databricks: A Scalable GIS Approach

Editor’s note: This post was originally published June 6th, 2025.  What is a location-allocation problem in GIS? Summer’s almost here, so let’s start with a sunny example. Imagine you’re tasked with finding the top 1,000 most profitable locations across the UK to park an ice cream cart. It’s not just about sweet treats, it’s a […]

Mastering Location Data: Geospatial Magic Meets Databricks Power

Mastering Location Data: Geospatial Magic Meets Databricks Power Ever used Google Maps to find your way around? That’s geospatial data in action! It’s information tied to a place on Earth-like where your favorite ice-cream shop is, where roads go, where cities are expanding, and how places change over time, just to name a few. GIS, […]