Asian Surveying & Mapping
Breaking News
Iraq’s First Fully Solar-Powered Village in Kulak Is Now Operational
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – May 20, 2025 — The...
Australia’s Gilmour Space Technologies ready to launch maiden Eris Test flight the nation’s first orbital launch in over 50 years
Gilmour Space Technologies is the leading launch services company...
Korea’s space agency seeks revision of plan to modify next-gen rockets into reusable system
South Korea's aerospace agency said on Thursday that it...
UAE Space Agency Signs Agreement With Technology Innovation Institute to Execute the Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt’s Lander Project
In the presence of His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin...
Private Japanese lunar lander enters orbit around moon ahead of a June touchdown
A private lunar lander from Japan is now circling the moon, with...
Indian astronaut to travel soon to ISS as part of ISRO-NASA Mission
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said by 2040, an Indian’s...
China issues regulatory framework to support direct-to-device satellite services
HELSINKI — China has released comprehensive regulations for direct-to-device...
Astranis clinches $115 million Taiwan deal despite satellite setback
TAMPA, Fla. — Astranis has signed a $115 million...
UAE and Egypt Strengthen Space Collaboration with New MoU
In a milestone development for Arab space collaboration, the...
Seoul launches 4th spy satellite to boost North Korea surveillance
South Korea’s military now operates an increasingly integrated cluster...

November 8th, 2021
Four Companies Offering Location and Geospatial Data Named IDC Innovators

International Data Corporation (IDC) published an IDC Innovators report profiling four companies offering data solutions that address the growing needs of organizations to curate, interpret, and utilize information with a location and/or geospatial component. The four companies are: NextNav, RS Metrics, SafeGraph, and StreetLight Data.

The collection of location data is not new – satellites, sensors and other IoT devices, mobile phones, connected vehicles, and more have been providing a flood of location-enabled data over the past decade. Until recently, location has not been central to most organizations’ data analytics and business intelligence efforts. As the amount of data gathered and analyzed has grown in recent years, it has become increasingly clear that location adds another critical dimension for analysis. To help organizations get the most from its location and/or geospatial data, new tools and standards are being developed to conduct these analyses.

“It used to be that ‘location, location, location’ was the central consideration for real estate. It is now increasingly core to applications and analytics,” said Lynne Schneider, research director, Location and Geospatial Intelligence at IDC. “This is not an entirely new market, but as the use of location-enabled data moves more mainstream, we are seeing a rapid increase in the need for location and geospatial data. The innovators are finding new sources, providing new value-added metrics, and creating the underlying common language of location that unlock the power of location data use cases. There are really exciting developments in this space.”

The report, IDC Innovators: Location and Geospatial Data, 2021 (IDC #US47643221), features four companies offering data solutions that address the growing needs of organizations to curate, interpret, and utilize information with a location and/or geospatial component. The four companies are:

  • NextNav offers a resilient positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) solution derived from terrestrial positioning (rather than satellites) that incorporates a vertical (z-axis) dimension for greater precision.
  • RS Metrics uses satellite data to provide objective, asset-level ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) and other metrics across many hard-to-quantify environmental and physical areas.
  • SafeGraph is striving to create an industry standard for place identification while providing data for global points of interest, building footprints with spatial hierarchy, and aggregated and anonymized mobility data.
  • StreetLight Data licenses transportation data from a variety of originators and offers a value-added data product to help users analyze behavior in any area of the United States and Canada.