Geospatial technology, markets, and practice
I've spent all of my professional life working in geospatial technology. During that time, I've watched the industry move from specialized workstations and expensive proprietary software to web services, the cloud, and open-source software. I've also watched geospatial capabilities become embedded in nearly every corner of the modern economy. Yet, despite all of that, geospatial … Continue reading The Indispensable Backwater
If you're reading this blog, you probably know I use self-hosted WordPress and have for many years. I have used the narrative cartography ("story map") format quite a bit recently, and my go-to has been this open-source project: https://github.com/opengeos/maplibre-gl-storymapsIt has been both elegant and easy to use and I highly recommend it. My only frustration … Continue reading Narrative Maps in WordPress
In my recent work, including withe Clairvoyint, I've been using Overspan lately to access OpenStreetMap data with AI. It operates a full-planet Overpass service with an MCP interface, which gives me a convenient way to work with OSM without maintaining that infrastructure myself. Its paid plans put explicit limits around requests and query resources. That … Continue reading Revisiting Open Data and AI
If you visit the Clairvoyint website, it says that we turn expert analytical methodology into reusable agents that can perform analysis and produce reports, briefs, and assessments while preserving the evidence behind their findings. That's a reasonably concise description of the product. But what does it actually mean? The answer goes back a couple of … Continue reading What We’re Building at Clairvoyint
On August 10, 1846, Congress established the Smithsonian Institution with a simple mission: “the increase and diffusion of knowledge,” and gave it “perpetual succession.” One hundred eighty years later, the Smithsonian is still here, though almost everything about how it carries out that mission has changed. (siarchives.si.edu) The people who established the Smithsonian couldn't have … Continue reading Geospatial Infrastructure Should Outlive Its Technology