Geospatial is being heralded as the next great savior for St. Louis, the industry that will bring people, jobs, help us fight inequality – the works. But is that the case? And what exactly is Geospatial, anyway?

Geospatial was already a growing sector in St. Louis in 2015, when the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency announced their $1.75 billion new campus would be built in North St. Louis.

That move, however, lead St. Louis Civic, Regional, and Business leaders to create an official push to make St. Louis a national leader and midwestern hub for the Geospatial industry. Andy Dearing is leading that effort – a working group made up of industry and regional leaders called the GeoFutures initiative. They just announced their strategic roadmap in June 2020.

To get there, the roadmap outlines five strategic priority areas:

• Scale up talent and workforce development to meet geospatial industry demand.
• Raise innovation capacity for advanced applications for leading industry and community development drivers.
• Accelerate entrepreneurship and availability of risk capital.
• Support the advancement of community-driven development in the neighborhoods north of Downtown the new NGA West campus will soon call home.
• Brand and position St. Louis as a national thought leader in geospatial technology.

You can find the executive summary of the GeoFutures report here.

You can find more on the Gateway Global American Youth and Business Alliance here.

You can find more on the GeoSLU initiative here.