What is Location Intelligence? GIS? What's the Difference?

When someone asks me to define Location Intelligence, I give this definition: 

Location Intelligence is the information derived from the management, analysis and visualization of location-based data. As a corollary, I offer this additional statement: By combining location-based data with other attributes of the data, patterns and proximity relationships emerge that would otherwise remain unrecognized and business insights missed. In short, it answers the “where” questions. 

 Why use the term “location Intelligence?” In 2004, Directions Magazine held the first Location Intelligence Conference in May at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. I chaired that event and the intent was to gather two different sets of technology sectorsworking on business challenges: geographic information system (GIS) solution providers of both software and data with purveyors of business intelligence (BI) software. Companies attending included Peoplesoft, Oracle, Information Builders, Esri, Alteryx (at that time, SRC), MapInfo (now owned by Precisely), and others.

The title of the conference is important as many business users of enterprise software were not familiar with the applications of GIS though they believed that location-data was useful. Companies like McDonalds and industries such as insurance and real estate were already major users. BI vendors, however, were skeptical. The term “GIS” did not have any inherent meaning to them. Hence, a term that conveyed a more specific theme, Location Intelligence, was adopted. The word “location” was certainly familiar and “intelligence” was already known among the BI users. Together, there was common understanding of what the combined term connoted.

Why use the term “location Intelligence?” In 2004, Directions Magazine held the first Location Intelligence Conference in May at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. I chaired that event and the intent was to gather two different sets of technology sectors working on business challenges: geographic information system (GIS) solution providers of both software and data with purveyors of business intelligence (BI) software. Companies attending included Peoplesoft, Oracle, Information Builders, Esri, Alteryx (at that time, SRC), MapInfo (now owned by Precisely), and others.

The title of the conference is important as many business users of enterprise software were not familiar with the applications of GIS though they believed that location-data was useful. Companies like McDonalds and industries such as insurance and real estate were already major users. BI vendors, however, were skeptical. The term “GIS” did not have any inherent meaning to them. Hence, a term that conveyed a more specific theme, Location Intelligence, was adopted. The word “location” was certainly familiar, and “intelligence” was already known among the BI users. Together, there was common understanding of what the combined term connoted. 

What is GIS? To the point, it’s just software. Yet, it has implied a much broader understanding that reflects a technology sector that includes location-based data and services. But a geographic information system is simply the software that integrates location-based data for the purposes of management, analysis and visualization. As you see, GIS software underpins the definition of location intelligence as the solution that helps derive “information.” To imply anything more only confuses the marketplace for solutions. 

If you break the word into its individual meaning, “geo” reflecting “Earth” and “spatial” reflecting an understanding of “space” and therefore, space on Earth [Note that “spatial” can refer to and is often used in other sciences like biology such as “the body’s spatial extents.”]. As the Earth is an irregular mass of rock, water and other features sitting on layers of more rock and an iron-nickel core, the ability to understand geospatial phenomena must utilize coordinate systems and projections to correctly analyze and visualize Earth’s attributes on paper maps as well as digital mapping software. In this regard, GIS software is unique in the ability to understand the geospatial primitives of points, lines and areas. 

Market research companies can define the growth of GIS software by looking at the revenue from each company. Likewise, for those specifically selling location-based data and the services needed to integrate myriad formats of data and software. A problem arises because most geospatial companies are small and privately held, and the market research firms often have to rely on numbers reported by them which sometimes will not conform to GAAP standards. So, in answer to the question of “how big is geospatial” I find the answer to be nearly impossible to grasp. You’ll see many attempts to set a number…don’t believe everything you read. 

 Today, the use of the “location intelligence” more closely defines the broader marketplace for location-based services and data. Even companies like Esri that more or less popularized the term “GIS” have started using “location intelligence” more. Others prefer the term because it differentiates their products and services from those selling only GIS software. 

In addition, location-based data have become as important as or more so than software as the volume of data with a location tag proliferates. Mobile movement data in particular, such as footfall and vehicular traffic, are used extensively in many applications from insurance and retail to public transit and safety.

Another example is from the Earth Observation and the remote sensing sector. Companies such as Planet Labs and Maxar have positioned themselves more as “data companies” than those selling only digital imagery. As a result, each is productizing features extracted from imagery through the use of machine learning algorithms. The expectation then is to see a rapid explosion of data products as ML models are refined that can quickly identify more features that will find their way into spatial interaction models.

Location Intelligence embraces a broader audience of uses and applications. The term more clearly defines a result than an industry or software product. If you are a business user of location-based data, you are looking to find the “answer” to the “where” questions. And, while GIS is the tool, location intelligence is the result.