PROGRAM

The 2023 theme Alchemy speaks to the ongoing growth of geospatial data and the myriad systems that collect, create, and generate spatial data every day. With the exponential growth of data geospatial is uniquely positioned to create value from this firehose and to help answer the critical business and social questions that arise. Speakers will address topics on spatial finance, environmental management, augmented reality, and the impacts and challenges of geospatial in a world affected by climate change.

4:00 PM – 7:00 PM

Hotel Check-in

Once you arrive in Banff, you’ll be able to check into your hotel room at the Rimrock Resort Hotel from 4:00 PM.

7:00 PM – 9:00 PM

Welcome Drinks

7:30 AM – 8:30 AM

Breakfast

Join your peers for breakfast and networking.

10:30 AM – 11:30 AM

Panel – A Million Points of Data? No Problem! How Visualization is Revolutionizing Geospatial

How do you effectively display a million points of data? A billion? With an ever increasing amount of geospatial data the limitation becomes our ability to perceive and understand the information. Can we use machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms to automate the visualization process and enable users to quickly generate insights and identify patterns? During this panel, we’ll explore how companies are using visualization tools to find alchemy and provide value for their projects.

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM

Lunch & Networking

Join attendees for lunch and networking.

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM

Panel – The Power of Collaboration: Understanding Modern Open Source

Geospatial data in many parts of the world has historically been expensive or not available, but this has changed in the last several years. Open data supports global collaboration by allowing some of the most progressive minds in tech to work together and craft solutions – the potential benefits for every industry are massive. During this panel, we’ll discover what modern open source looks like from panelists who live it every day.

2:00 PM – 2:30 PM

Debate – AI vs Humans: Who’s Better for Geospatial?

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in geospatial technology has been a topic of debate among experts in the industry. Some argue that AI can revolutionize the way we analyze and interpret spatial data, leading to more accurate and efficient decision-making. Others, however, express concerns over the potential negative impacts of AI on privacy, security, and human labor. During this debate, we’ll encourage critical thinking and foster an open exchange of ideas and perspectives in a fun and open forum.

2:30 PM – 3:00 PM

Coffee Break

Join your peers for coffee and networking.

3:00 PM – 3:30 PM

Powering a Connected World: Big Data and the Smart Grid

The transition from the legacy energy grid to smart grid isn’t simply a technology shift; a successful transition has the potential to redefine power generation and consumption far into the future with broad implications for energy security, decarbonization strategies, and community resilience. At the core of this transition is the data generation capacity of smart grid technologies. Advancements in ICT have pushed open the door for enormous amounts of data to be acquired, analyzed, and applied to improve the reliability, efficiency, and security through the convergence of computing and operations for the smart grid. Yet with the benefits of these data also come inherent challenges. Comprehensive data strategies are still significantly lagging behind constantly evolving technology, particularly in an era of greater customer participation and distributed energy resources. This discussion will look at the evolving role of geospatial in the digital transformation of the energy system, shifting from traditional one-way energy flows and siloed data to dynamic learning frameworks enabled by interoperable, sharable data.

3:30 PM – 4:15 PM

Keynote: A Desirable EO Solution is an Ethereal Siren in a Rough Sea  

A platform for probing changes on Earth seemed like a great idea to many companies in 2015. Cheap cloud computing, open source deep learning, and increasing remotely sensed data converged to have people thinking ‘we could query the Earth for useful information that surely someone will pay for!’ (I myself was the author of several such patents during this time at a cheeky DC startup). Maxar, Planet, Descartes Labs, Orbital Insight, and SpaceKnow were among early commercial companies deploying Earth interrogating platforms. But building the platform to entice a use case did not help validate the hypothesis that remote sensing data may have a billon-dollar evaluation. People don’t want your platform. They also don’t want the data you are serving on your platform.

ICEYE operates 21+ small satellites. We recognized several years ago that selling pixels only grows a company so far. We went through the growing pains of throwing SAR at many seemingly viable applications, but came to the conclusion (like many) that finding [all the cars] [all the buildings] [all the deforested regions] [all the dark vessels] wasn’t the multiplier product that people needed. We decided to focus on a single vertical and sink so deep in that Mariana Trench of a domain that we would make the solution that people actually wanted. Through ICEYE’s mission to create a foundation of trust for decision making, we must first succeed in understanding the decisions of one user. Only after market dominance (measured through recurring revenue) can we allow ourselves to think of the next user. Our mission, glistening like an ethereal siren on a rough sea, is arguably only accessible if we first prove deep value (and knowledge and application) through a clear solution offering that leverages the strength of the constellation and the engineering that made it happen.

In this talk, I will share our SAR + Remote Sensing + Product development jaunt so far at ICEYE.

6:30 PM – 9:30 PM

NORTH51 Social Summit at the Bison Restaurant

7:30 AM – 8:30 AM

Breakfast

Join your peers for breakfast and networking.

8:30 AM – 9:30 AM

Panel – Riding the Big Data Wave: How Geospatial Companies Are Creating Value

With the exponential growth of data, geospatial is uniquely positioned to create value from this firehose. There is undoubtedly an enormous amount of data being produced every second, but how are geospatial companies able to extract value from the tremendous amounts of data available? During this panel, speakers will share their experiences.

9:30 AM – 10:00 AM

Talk – Geospatial Data in Insurance – From Lloyds to Landsat 9

In this presentation, Todd will illustrate how geospatial data is in the DNA of the multitrillion dollar insurance industry.  From the inception of modern insurance at Edward Lloyd’s coffeeshop – through the development of Catastrophic Modeling and the leveraging of Big Data, Cloud Scale Compute, and AI to analyze risk, and understand the impact of disasters and climate change.

10:00 AM – 10:30 AM

Coffee Break

10:30 AM – 11:00 AM

Spatial Finance: Intersection of Sustainability and GIS 

In this panel, Bob will discuss how companies have a unique opportunity to shape spatial finance with the use of new technologies. Focusing on GIS, remote sensing, AI and blockchain/DLT, this talk will highlight new methods that can support or challenge organizations’ sustainability goals.

11:00 AM – 11:45 AM

Keynote – What can geospatial technology do for nature?

‘Everything comes from somewhere’ – what we eat, what we wear, the rare minerals in our smartphones. Humans are entirely dependent on nature. My talk is the story of how a conservationist with an increasing frustration learning about impacts on the environment from sectors such as mining, oil and gas too late, discovers the power of integrating environmental, observational and satellite imagery and asset-level data , to provide conservation intelligence. I will talk about how our team applied this intelligence to successful campaigning, and how resulting actionable data and analysis has powerful application for the finance sector ranging from project finance, insurance to potentially increasing the sustainability of sovereign bond finance. With nature and biodiversity quickly rising up the agenda, especially post the Convention of Biological Diversity COP15 in Montreal, the opportunities for leveraging geospatial technology to provide actionable insights that are real-time and independent are huge. This is particularly the case if integrated with rapidly developing in-situ data technologies, including e-DNA and acoustic sensors. I will also discuss the barriers which range from remaining asset-level data gaps, institutional resistance to licencing and talk about some initiatives to overcome these.