Geospatial technology is one of the fastest emerging career options in today’s world. Geospatial technologies involves a combination of technologies like GPS, GIS, remote sensing, etc which are used to collect, maps and manipulate information to describe the location and attributes of objects. Students going for this career field help organizations and Companies improve their data integration thereby improving their strategic decision making process.
It has been estimated that geospatial technologies will have annual market revenue of $757 billion by 2017 thereby making it one of the most sought after career in the world. The market is however still to see a sizable force of workers with knowledge in this field. The US faces a shortfall of around 14,000 personnel in this sector per annum.
There are different available careers in geospatial technology and new opportunities are rapidly developing. Analysts, cartographers, surveyors, planners, aerial photographers and mapping technicians are some specialized careers that a student can hope to pursue while studying Geospatial technologies.
So what are the uses of this Technology? Well GPS (Global Positioning System) is used to guide an airplane in runway. The technology uses data received from the satellite for this. Similarly weather forecasters use the technology for remote sensing and arriving at weather forecasts for future days. Mapping tools are used by the Mobile companies based on geographic Information Systems (GIS) to provide their customers with map and directions. All these technologies are a constituent part of the Geospatial technology. As a student of this field, you will be required to collect and manipulate information to describe the location and attributes of objects.
Necessary Skills and Abilities for careers in Geospatial Technologies:
- Complex problem solving skills
- Computer/technology understanding and systems analysis
- Deductive and inductive reasoning
- Problem sensitivity (identify and tend to existing and possible future problems)
- Knowledge of: geography, engineering, computers, electronics, mathematics, administration and management, and customer service.
As has been mentioned earlier, this is an emerging career field. A country like India that has 58.6% of its landmass vulnerable to earthquake and over 40 million hectares of land vulnerable to floods annually, the role that this technology will play in the future is tremendous. Universities like the Sambalpur university of Orissa has already started offering courses on Geospatial technology.
