Geospatial FM

A final round exposing the evidence I collected during my time at Amec Foster Wheeler in Kuwait about human rights, ethics and safety violations. This is in the service of disclosing how safety matters to do with manpower company NBTC Group were handled by Amec Foster Wheeler, superintendent's representative on Kuwait Oil Company projects. Why? In 2024 a fire in an NBTC worker accommodation facili...

Caution - this episode contains some details of suicides that happened when I worked at Amec Foster Wheeler in Kuwait. If you need it, these are helplines you can call for the top 5 most popular countries for this newsletter:USA: 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. UK: 111 for the NHS.Canada: 988 for the Suicide Crisis Helpline. Australia: 1300 22 4636 for Beyond Blue. India: 9820466726 for A...

Here we look at a missed opportunity to avoid the death of 49 people in an NBTC accommodation fire last year in Mangaf, Kuwait. The missed opportunity was in the firing of a worker in 2017 for calling an ambulance in response to an H2S gas poisoning at GC-30 in the North Kuwait Asset. Instead, he could have been listened to for stating that people are punished for speaking up about safety issues....

Caution - this episode contains some details of suicides that happened when I worked at Amec Foster Wheeler in Kuwait. If you need it, these are helplines you can call for the top 5 most popular countries for this newsletter: USA: 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. UK: 111 for the NHS. Canada: 988 for the Suicide Crisis Helpline. Australia: 1300 22 4636 for Beyond Blue. India: 9820466726 for...

Caution - this episode contains some details of suicides that happened when I worked at Amec Foster Wheeler in Kuwait. If you need it, these are helplines you can call for the top 5 most popular countries for this newsletter: USA: 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. UK: 111 for the NHS. Canada: 988 for the Suicide Crisis Helpline. Australia: 1300 22 4636 for Beyond Blue. India: 9820466726 for...

Reflections on doing geospatial in Cambodia. Prompted by Free The Map, a book about change in the way we do cartography. This is in the lead up to an episode with the author, Henk Van Houtum. Dehumanization: An Integrative Review: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6927454_Dehumanization_An_Integrative_Review Eviction and relocation events 1982-2012 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia: https://youtu.be/...

This episode relates to the just concluded  Geo Week  in Denver. I went yesterday after receiving free entry to the exhibition hall by the guest from today’s podcast. Similar to the Iceye episode released during Geospatial Risk Summit 2 weeks ago, this episode is a way to get a feel for the things discussed at Geo Week and who attends. Hayden Howard is Executive Vice President at CompassData, Inc...

Christian Rouffaert is founder and CEO of Teragence . This is a map driven web app showing mobile network signal strength. It enables such modern products as robotic lawn mowers. This is because they rely on mobile data to control and position the robot so it does not munch expensive, pretty flower beds. The conversation also covered the practice of entrepreneurship more broadly. For example, I be...

Leo Wang⁠ ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/lwang1022/ ) is founder and CEO of ⁠Lucius⁠ ( https://lucius.space/ ). This is a turnkey solution for satellite constellation operators or imagery resellers to take orders and distribute data. The conversation covered the following topics: 1:14 Introducing Lucius. 1:51 Content creation. 13:13 Imagery sales and marketplaces commentary. 27:13 Platform to store...

We are privileged to have Anke Sielker (https://www.linkedin.com/in/anke-sielker-89690431) on to explain the business of Iceye and some of their unique offerings. They are a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite constellation operator. They are also a charter partner of the ⁠International Charter: Space and Major Disasters⁠ (https://disasterscharter.org/membership-history). This has been discus...

For the month to 2025-01-27, a summary of: Growth of pureplay Geospatial Index and subindex breakdown. Growth of adjacent Geospatial Index. Growth of Geoawesomeness Top 100. Contribution analysis. Exposure analysis. Valuations. Job highlights by world region by Vikas: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7289542933962219520-PnZT/ . THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive li...

This continues discussion around effects of The International Charter Space and Major Disasters. This was mentioned 2 episodes ago by Andrew Schroeder of Direct Relief . Development Seed , via Kevin Bullock , continues this discussion. Kevin came up on LinkedIn shortly after the #LAfires. He catalogued all open spatial data released for example from satellite imagery providers . He provides extra...

Jed Sundwall ⁠ is Executive Director of ⁠ Radiant Earth⁠ . This organization increases '...shared understanding of our world through community-led initiatives that make data easier to access and use.' This organization is motivated by our incapacity to address global issues such as accumulation of greenhouse gases and deforestation. They have identified poor collaboration and difficulty sharing da...

Andrew Schroeder is Vice President of Research and Analysis at Direct Relief . He talks about the #LAfire situation and Direct Relief's response. He goes on to cover the use of human mobility data for analysis, geospatial AI models for damage detection and health system impact analysis. It was a privilege to encounter an analyst of the world as it turns. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index i...

Priscilla Cole is the organizer of Geospatial Risk Summit . It is booked for the greatest location ever, Hard Rock Hotel in Manhattan. You can join the LinkedIn group for more info prior to the event. I am very pleased to say that one of the speakers , Will Cadell, has already come on the show. Another speaker is Ken Zockoll, CEO of Spatial Risk Systems. As it happens I’ve already had them on the...

AlexWagner⁠ is a datascientist at ⁠SeerAI⁠ . This is a start up thathas produced Geodesic, a spatiotemporal data fusion platform. The discussionwas triggered by a video 12 days ago from popular YouTuber Johnny Harris," ⁠Why Saudi Arabia is Building a$1 Trillion City in the Desert"⁠ .Alex responded on LinkedIn with an ⁠animation of all evidence ofconstruction activity at Neom since 2023⁠ .   This w...

LEGAL DISCLAIMER This episode contains commentary only on the first and fourth amendments of the US constitution. It is not legal advice. The guest is not an attorney. Do not use this episode to make decisions about what is right for you regarding these constitutional amendments. Jordan Regenie is the founder and principal consultant at Peace, Love, Freedom LLC . This is a strategy consultancy for...

Interview with the deputy chair of the board, Valrie Grant. Through Mapping The Conversations, she is the most charismatic and professional podcaster of the geospatial industry . A couple of guests ago we had Nadine Alemeh on the show. She represents Taylor Geospatial Institute, but she is also on the board of the UNGGIM-PSN. I wanted to find out what this is, so I went to Valrie and she was nice...

Atlas is the 11th web mapping system we have profiled. I am very pleased with this episode. The CTO and co-founder Harald was a succinct, eager and engaged interviewee who gave excellent answers to the standard set of business profiling questions. He had a particularly useful message for apprentices or graduates in our industry. I really encourage you to listen to the end and hear what he has to s...

Eldar Rubinov is Positioning and Geodesy Technical Lead at Frontier SI. This is a centre of excellence for spatial information in Melbourne, Australia (https://frontiersi.com.au). We had a great chat about a recent presentation he gave in Malaysia about use of an Australian/New Zealand SBAS for high accuracy positioning in Malaysia. He also tested Gallileo there. Even though both systems are not d...

Nadine Alameh is the best example I can find in the geospatial industry of the value of immigration to the US. We can understand through what she does now and how she got there. Nadine is the inaugural Executive Director of the Taylor Geospatial Institute. Prior to this, she was CEO of the Open Geospatial Consortium. Rounding out the picture of her current service, she is on these committees/board...

EXPRESS BROADCAST: COMMUNITY ORGANISING WITH FRANK ROMO OF ROMOGIS Frank Romo gives us a masterclass in community organising. He just so happens to have geospatial capability also. He provides several fantastic examples of geospatial outputs and acquisition of political power by communities that he has served. Frank is a hero. Frank provides pathways to prosperity for young men. Frank leverages th...

Fathom is a flood modeling company based in Bristol, UK (www.fathom.global). They were recently acquired by reinsurance heavyweight Swiss RE. Hence they are a welcome addition to the list of publicly traded companies profiled on this podcast. Gavin Lewis , Head of Engineering, delivered an inspiring message about this scientific organisation. It is incredibly topical given the two dramatic hurrica...

Elizabeth Christensen of Crunchy Data walks us through how to use open source tooling to avoid paying the Esri tax. It was a great tour of the options and also a nice vibe check of the industry. A headline here is she echoes former guest Stephanie May in endorsing DuckDB. She also wanted to pass on that a great way to find out more is to attend PostGIS Day! More here . On the topic of resources, E...

The co-founder and CEO of Esper , Shoaib Iqbal , talks about the grit and grind required to launch Australia's first earth observation mission, a hyperspectral satellite. He and his co-founder Przemyslaw Lorenczak are on this year's Forbes Australia 30 under 30 list: https://www.forbes.com.au/30-under-30-2024-technology/ . Like many start ups in the space, pardon the pun, they have met with their...