Sweltering heat waves, massive cyclones, hurricanes, floods, wildfires and other such natural disasters have become more intense in the recent past. Despite the continuing debate, several scientific studies claim that climate change is one of the major reasons behind this phenomenon.

The year 2020 is an exceptional year in contemporary times. Industries around the world, that would have otherwise disapproved of remote working, have embraced it in its entirety courtesy to a global pandemic.

Weather-related blackouts due to fallen trees have become a norm in the United States. Customers across the country have faced this ordeal on a regular basis and so have power restoration workers. Weather-related power outages due to vegetation risks and hazards have been a constant challenge for power utilities. Power utilities have worked relentlessly to ensure vegetation-related outages can be avoided, but it’s never been an easy task to achieve. 

Technology-led business model innovation has been the secret sauce to success for most modern-age digital startups. Core industries, on the other hand, are taking the slow and steady approach, adopting technology in a piecemeal manner, while keeping their core business model or processes unchanged.

A new report released by the International Energy Agency (IEA) has revealed that the global energy market is experiencing its biggest shock in 70 years. There has been a steady decline in the demand for energy as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the analysis of 100 days of data, the IEA projects that global energy use in 2020 will fall by 6% - seven times the decline after the 2008 global financial crisis. 

The industries of the world are in the midst of a technology-driven transformation. As technology runs on data, collecting and integrating data continues to be a complicated and technical task, especially with respect to geospatial technology. The exponential growth of geospatial technologies in recent years has made available new instruments and capabilities for gathering and managing spatial data. 

The AI boom is well and truly underway and it could hold the key to unlocking a better future for several core industries. In a world that is getting more and more data-driven, artificial intelligence (AI) will be an important tool that will allow utility companies to make sense of the data flood. According to Seagate, worldwide data will grow 61% to 175 zettabytes by 2025. These are numbers that the human mind is not capable of processing at the same speed as AI.

The exponential growth of geospatial technologies in the last couple of decades has made available new instruments and capabilities for gathering and managing spatial data. The evolution of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the Global Positioning System (GPS), and remote sensing satellite imagery technologies have enabled the collection and analysis of field data like never before.

If California were a sovereign nation, it would rank as the world's sixth-largest economy. This is mostly down to the fact that it is home to hundreds of technology start-ups and multi-national companies that are leading technology innovators and digital disruptors.

There’s one big question that core industries with geographically distributed assets are constantly asking - How do we prevent vegetation encroachment incidents without a constant dependence on manual checking and reporting?