GEOSPATIAL INSIGHT LTD.
CASE STUDY
ProfTech interview with entrepreneur and Geospatial Insight Ltd. Managing Director, Dave Fox.
This month SuperTech sits down with serial ProfTech entrepreneur and geospatial expert Dave Fox to discuss how advances in space-age technology and the 2008 global recession had a deep impact on Coleshill-based Geospatial Insight Ltd.
Dave Fox graduated from Durham University with a BA in Geography in 1984. He soon found that there was a clear demand for geospatial analysis - the collection and interpretation of geographic data around a specific site - joining NRSC Ltd in1991 and becoming CEO of Infoterra Ltd. in 1998. With the advent of the financial crisis in 2008, Dave witnessed a steep decline in contracts from Government agencies, who had up until then been the main users of geospatial information. Fortunately, this also coincided with major advancements in technology, which would in turn help to unlock new markets as Dave explains:
Advancing technology
For the vast majority of my more than 30 years in geospatial analysis, there has only been a handful of satellites orbiting the earth able to produce usable data. By 2010 it was clear that all that was about to change. Organisations like Elon Musk’s Space X were investing hundreds-of-millions-of dollars in space technology, satellites were reducing in size from roughly that of a single-decker bus to the size of a shoebox and the cost of launch dramatically decreased. It was clear to both me and my Geospatial Insight Ltd co-founders that there was set to be an explosion in the number of satellites orbiting Earth and, as a result, the amount of usable data. The challenge, however, was how could this data be transformed into actionable information and who would be set to gain the most benefit from it?
Opening up new markets
With both the value and number of geospatial Government contracts reducing because of the global financial crisis, myself and business partners Paul Fearn, Adrian Watson and Dan Schurr spotted a small but growing demand for actionable geospatial data in the property insurance market, in part driven by the mass devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which caused $125 billion worth of damage and led to criticism of insurance companies over their speed of response. Within this context, myself, Dan, Adrian and Paul set up Geospatial Insight Ltd in 2012, with the specific purpose of meeting the growing needs of the property insurance and emerging finance sectors.
Starting again - the perfect storm
Advancements in space technology coincided, closer to Earth, with drones becoming a routine source of information for businesses and the cost of data storage and processing dropping as a result of cloud computing. This led to what many like-minded tech entrepreneurs would consider the perfect storm of a largely untapped and growing market, advancements in technology and a decreasing cost base.
Key learnings AI & deep learning
One of the major changes we hadn’t predicted in 2012 but have since embraced wholeheartedly, and is now a central part of our business, is the ability of AI and deep learning to help unlock new markets.
Initially, we were limited in what could be achieved through automated analytics. Existing technology could identify different crops, which when combined with weather data could accurately determine which crops were under stress or likely to come under stress and forecast yields - essential information for finance companies looking to speculate on commodity price movements on various stock exchanges. However, such automated analysis wasn’t possible for the manmade or built environment, which was still reliant on human interpretation. Spotting the opportunity to bring this to other areas of the same markets we invested heavily in AI and deep learning technologies to enable us to derive actionable intelligence from images and pull-out real meaning on the nature and condition of manmade assets, particularly property.
FinTech
One of our earliest successes, and one which is still active today, relates to crude oil trading. For the past five years, we’ve flown drones four times a week at a place called Cushing in Oklahoma, which essentially acts as a clearinghouse for US crude oil. More than 6.5 billion barrels of oil are stored at Cushing every day. Variations in the storage volumes there impact the price of the main US crude oil product, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) on various commodity exchanges - our equivalent of Brent Crude Oil. By providing regular updates of how storage volumes are changing, we can give our clients a data feed that helps inform their decision making on likely changes in pricing. Clients range from hedge funds to companies who sell gas (petrol), with the product supporting their decisions about when to buy and sell oil, at what price and where to trade it.
Avoiding technology for technology’s sake
Having created the advanced technology and the necessary networks needed to source the vast amounts of data necessary for our clients’ decision-making processes, we encountered one of the most common obstacles that tech founders face. Namely, the ability for those same clients to effectively harness, visualise and act upon the complex sets of data we were able to provide for them.
Superstorm Sandy
This became apparent with one of our earliest contracts, 2012’s Superstorm Sandy, which inflicted close to $70 billion worth of damage across eight countries, including large parts of the United States Eastern Seaboard. We were contracted by Guy Carpenter, the world’s leading reinsurance broker, to map the scale, extent and scope of the damage caused by the storm and provide details on the degree to which different buildings and areas had been affected. Having amassed, analysed the data, and delivered the analytics, it soon became apparent that clients couldn’t do as much with it as they would have liked as they didn’t have the technology needed to visualise, access, and share it. Having identified the client’s next pain point we invested heavily in creating our own Visual Intelligence Platform (VIP), which would allow them to do exactly that, reducing operational expenditure and increasing the speed of decision-making.
Current and future applications of geospatial technology
Property insurance remains one of our main sectors, within which we can help both determine future risk and also significantly speed up the process of assessing and determining damage to allow for prompt payments. Not only does this help to significantly reduce operational costs, but also improves the reputation of our clients who can offer a fantastically responsive and easy to access service - an invaluable metric in the highly competitive world of insurance. One of the most exciting and current applications of the technology developed initially for the insurance industry, however, is how we are harnessing it to help governments and businesses around the world understand the impacts of, and take action to, mitigate the global climate crisis. Through our global drone network, access to a virtual constellation of more than 600 satellites and integration of other data sets from sources such as social media we can provide essential information to track, mitigate, and develop cost-benefit analyses for reducing greenhouse gas emissions for organisations around the world, be that an entire country scale or for a single site business.
Mitigating flood risks with Flood Re
One of the earliest applications for this type of technology in relation to climate change has been our work on the UK’s national flood response, defence, and mitigation. Working with Flood RE: a joint initiative between the UK Government and insurers, we’re able to offer flood warning, response and mitigation support 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Through a combination of satellite data, social media, our UK-wide network of drones and information from a range of sources including the Environment Agency, we’re able to provide a live feed of the UK’s flood situation.
It's not well known, but every single UK river gauge is on Twitter, providing regular updates every 15 minutes, something which we are able to track and effectively integrate with many different data sources through our VIP platform. In the event of any given area approaching crisis levels, we can add in social media analytics to bring in live updates from people and organisations posting about the situation in real-time. In the event of a flood happening, we can then deploy our UK-wide drone network to any given area, from which we can produce a map showing how far the flood has extended and how deep the flood water is in any given area. The data can then be combined with satellite information and other sources to provide a rating for each affected property, inclusive of the likely flood depth and damage. Through automation and AI, all of this critical information is provided within a maximum of 72 hours of the event, with the first elements of usable data available the same day. Taking this further the findings can be modelled and fully analysed within our system to help to optimise responses to similar occurrences in the future.
Why the West Midlands
As a business, we are extremely fortunate in having no direct competitors. While there are start-ups on the West Coast of America, in France and in London that are able to offer some of what we do, the proprietary technology we have developed and continued investment in AI and deep learning mean that we are able to offer a comprehensive solution that is to all intents and purposes unique. The reason Geospatial Insight Ltd. has remained in the Midlands is in part due to the fact that we are backed by Birmingham-based venture capitalist firm Midven and part of the stipulations of funding is that we base ourselves within the West Midlands, which is fortunately close to home for me and my fellow founders. This has given us access to a set of, what are to my mind, near unique advantages, namely:
Access to world-leading research and talent
To date, we have collaborated with researchers and post-doctorates at a number of the wider region’s 20 world-leading universities, including Aston, Cranfield, Loughborough, Nottingham and Leicester.Global reach
Roughly 75-80% of our business comes from outside the UK. Being in Coleshill we’re extremely close to Birmingham International Airport allowing us to easily access anywhere in the world and to reach the global business and finance hub of London within 1 hour and 30 minutes – set to be reduced further with the introduction of HS2.Talent acquisition and retention
While, like many other businesses post-Covid, we are now increasingly recruiting from right around the UK, being in the West Midlands has given us access to an extremely talented and large pool of post-doctorate geographers and AI-focused programmers, something that was particularly essential to us in the initial stages of the businessFrom a retention basis, we remain extremely close to all parts of the UK allowing employees with young children to work in close proximity to family and friends. Whilst those early on in their career can benefit from all of the major attractions of the UK’s second city as well as access to incredible countryside all within a one-hour commute.
The importance of SuperTech and similar clusters in the development of localised economies and tech-based businesses
I first came across SuperTech when I met with executive lead, Hilary Smyth-Allen. There is a clear and present need for an organisation like SuperTech that is willing to take a cross-sector approach to support the ever-growing number of established and start-up businesses, like our own, that are helping to harness rapid advancements in technology to transform whole business sectors.
I’ve seen both in space technology and finance the effect that a cluster like SuperTech can have. You only have to look at the Harwell campus just south of Oxford to see what can be achieved by bringing like-minded and complementary businesses together. The Satellite Applications Catapult, which is based there, has helped transform what was once a muddy field into a bustling centre for space technology.
As someone who has spent the majority of the last 30 years seeking a market for our own advanced technology, I can see a real benefit to bringing like-minded tech entrepreneurs and major business and professional services leaders together.
From a Geospatial Insight perspective, we’re now looking for more investors who can help us really break into new markets such as renewable energy and climate crisis mitigation, and I feel SuperTech could be a real help with this.
Equally, having reviewed the SuperTech website and attended events, I can see real parallels with tech businesses like Nimbus Maps ®, CrowdProperty and Ethical Equity in PropTech and FinTech and ourselves, with the likelihood being that we could collaborate, or share learnings in the near future.
Ultimately, technology is transforming all elements of our lives and every sector at much more rapid pace than ever before. Supporting the growth of this and ensuring all businesses have access to the latest thinking and developments across all sectors, has to be a good thing and where better to do this than here in the Midlands, the home of the first great industrial revolution?
Dave Fox is the CEO and founder of Coleshill-based Geospatial Insight Ltd.