I liked the geospatial component of things. I enjoyed solving a problem and then seeing the result. It wasn’t just a Microsoft Excel model or some database table. It was something I could visualize in GIS software. If there had been a path to becoming a more in-depth GIS analyst at this company, I might have stayed on it.

What is a voxel?. It’s a 3D volumetric pixel, a cube. But voxels are nothing new. They’ve been used extensively in two key areas within computing. Computer games render worlds and use voxels instead of polygons. Minecraft is a good example — it’s a voxel rendered world. Gaming companies love voxels for their multi-resolution capability over polygons. Robotics uses voxels for image processing to reduce the size of LIDAR point clouds and to create small dynamic maps — or what we call VOG (Voxel Occupancy Grid) — for robots.

Geospatial experts need to have a wide variety of skills. They have to link up with other systems and understand those other systems, like Tableau. It’s not enough to know your desktop or application. How will they interface with the other systems and integrate into the greater enterprise system?

Satellites are getting better, and the number of constellations is increasing. Still, many people are not using GNSS terminology — they call it GPS, which is the American GNSS.There is Galileo (European), GLONASS (Russian), or BeiDou (Chinese). Back in 2000, there were 40 GNSS satellites. Fast forward to 2021, and we now have over 100.