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  • 🤖 Automation is unlocking đź’° capital and đź’¸ profits within mining.

🤖 Automation is unlocking 💰 capital and 💸 profits within mining.

Mineral markets are getting interesting, and mining tech even funkier.

 David here - in the next 5 min you’ll get:

💡What’s New: Automation is unlocking capital and profits within mining.

🤔 Opinion: Digital maps 🗺️ shaping our world views 🌍

🛠️ Tools & Data: Opensource tools for mapping and geology.

🎓 Developer Spotlight: Influential developers building earth systems.

💡What’s new

🤔 Opinion

There’s an ongoing dilemma of government influence over social media that has me thinking. The things we see on a daily basis alter our perception and therefore the decisions we make. That brings me to modern digital mapping. We rely on digital maps to know what’s going on around us, and for many of our daily decisions–where to go, which route to take, how our world and demographics are changing.

When I pause to consider that these little decisions form a significant portion of my life, it makes me wonder how I am influenced. How might a change in ranking algorithms on GMaps, for example, affect my spending habits, potentially sink a business, or highlight some social issue? Do we take time to think about how changes in these tools could affect our life / investment outcomes?

I have started to keep tabs on mapping tech.

The industry is not static. There’s a lot of ongoing work in algorithms (search, data extraction, data processing, data movement, map presentation, artificial intelligence) and displays (flat screen, 3D mapping, VR). Some trends I am following include:

  • data layering and interactivity of new sensor data (satellites, etc),

  • selling of news and business narratives using “evidence”,

  • digital twinning for VR simulations and gaming, and

  • real-time data acquisition and display (especially with drones).

Investors and business owners should keep some things in mind.

As self-driving matures, traffic won’t play as significant a role in our daily routing decisions. Maps will move aggressively towards consumer-selling platforms. Products and experiences may become the primary concern of geographical search. In the context of commodity businesses like mining, development efforts will still focus on tracking and reporting assets, but also on predicting and visualizing future physical states (super interesting).

I also think we’re vulnerable to algorithmic manipulation. I ask myself: Does reliance on a mapping AI leave me to the whims of whomever figures out a way to manipulate them? I think the future will still reward those who have a comprehensive geographical framework and the ability to bring their own preferences and data to their desired platform.

🛠️ Tools and Data

Opensource tools and data to help you make decisions.

Geospatial analysis and interactive mapping in a Jupyter environment.

Easily handle satellite (and related) pixel data.

Automated computer vision for labeling

A list of github software featuring geology workflows for use in your AI coding explorations.

Univ of TN GIS Data Library: https://libguides.utk.

A rich set of data provided by the Univ. of TN at Knoxville with links to other great resources.

🎓 Developer Spotlight

Developers and influencers leading change in mapping and earth systems.

If your company uses map tiling services, you should know about Ian and his company, Stadia Maps, a ridiculously lower-cost alternative to GMaps tiling.

Besides being a prolific developer, Ian is an e-residency ambassador for Estonia. He has been on the cutting edge of mapping and finance for years.

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Thanks for reading! Want me to look into a particular topic? Email your suggestions and I will dig.