Moving beyond ‘shiny object’ experimentation with GeoAI

Following on from her previous role as CEO of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), Nadine Alameh has founded LunateAI. This strategic advisory service exists to help all kinds of industry organizations navigate the rapidly evolving AI landscape amidst the surging volumes of geospatial and Earth observation data. In this exclusive interview, she discusses how AI is not just accelerating geospatial – it’s fundamentally redefining how spatial information is generated, interpreted and consumed. She also highlights the importance of interoperability and trusted clean data to ensure that AI generates not just fast, but also trustworthy and actionable answers and decisions.

Please tell us more about LunateAI, for those who may not yet be familiar with your company.

I founded LunateAI to bring together my global experience and deep understanding of emerging innovations across geospatial, Earth observation (EO) and artificial intelligence (AI), and to address a clear gap in the market. As AI accelerates and the volume of geospatial and EO data continues to surge, organizations are struggling to keep pace, cut through the noise and make informed decisions about what truly matters. LunateAI exists to be that trusted, experienced advisor. We help enterprises and governments translate rapidly evolving technologies into clear strategies, meaningful partnerships and practical implementation plans. At our core, we bridge the gap between real-world user needs and a growing portfolio of geospatial data, products, platforms and providers.

In a nutshell, if you’re a public or private organization feeling overwhelmed by the AI landscape and looking to effectively integrate it into your geospatial and EO workflows, we can help. And if you’re a company, especially a startup, building innovative solutions at the intersection of geospatial and AI, we can support you in positioning, refining and bringing your offering to market.

Ideally, how should the three domains of geospatial, Earth observation and AI interact to create real value?

I believe that we have reached a tipping point where every major decision – whether in infrastructure, climate adaptation, investment, real estate, farming or banking – has the potential of beginning with a ‘live conversation’ with the Earth. We are finally moving from simply looking at geospatial data; we are now asking it questions. Without going into the technical details, what we are seeing is that AI (Large Language Models, Embeddings and Generative AI) is enabling full leverage of data beyond data siloes and pipelines. The emergence of unified representations, like Google’s AlphaEarth, and the democratization of open-source foundational models by organizations like Clay are nothing short of revolutionary. They, amongst many other innovations like TESSERA, IBM Terramind and Meta’s DINOv2, are allowing us to move from passive observation to active prediction.

In practice, this creates a three-way value chain. EO ‘sees’ the data (e.g. detecting a flood), AI provides the foresight (path prediction based on real-time, multimodal and archived data) and this all feeds into geospatial analysis which provides the context (identifying vulnerable infrastructure) in support of decision-making. In climate finance, this same value chain turns a patch of forest, for example, into a digital twin – integrating biomass density with land ownership records to create verifiable source of truth for a green bond audit. With AI, we aren’t just making maps anymore; we’re building the decision-support engine for the planet!

How would you assess organizations’ current level of awareness of combining geospatial data with AI? And why are advisory services so important when it comes to helping them harness the power of that combination?

I must start by expressing my frustration at the fact that here we are, in 2026, and geospatial value is still not universally understood. Too often, it’s treated as a niche specialist function rather than a foundational decision-support capability. This siloed framing is the biggest barrier to adoption; it limits implementation to isolated projects and prevents geospatial AI (GeoAI) from being embedded into the core operational DNA of organizations. While AI and GeoAI are lowering technical barriers, we still need to address the structural and cultural ones. I see many organizations having the data, tools and access to external experts, but they lack the leadership mandate, the return on investment (ROI) communication tools and the governance to move beyond ‘shiny object’ experimentation.

This is exactly why strategic advisory services are critical. It isn’t just about the technology; it’s a combination of awareness, of grounding and of translation. It’s about the journey to a practical roadmap that starts with the customer’s actual problems rather than the hyped technology choices. As a matter of fact, advisory services are often less about the technology choices and more about building a sustained capability that drives real-world outcomes. What we end up doing is helping organizations bypass the individual or department-level experimentation, confusion and duplication, while identifying the right pilot projects and metrics to normalize geospatial data and AI as a strategic asset.

In your previous role as CEO of OGC, you worked to make geospatial information truly findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) for the benefit of society. How does that experience influence your approach at LunateAI?

Indeed, OGC has spent years ensuring geospatial information follows FAIR principles. In my current role, those principles have moved from standards to a Level 0 requirement for AI-ready infrastructures. If we want to truly ‘talk to the Earth’ and solve problems at scale, the data plumbing is really Level 0. I’m happy with the progress of the community on that front. It’s exciting to see continued work on cloud-native geospatial formats (STAC, cloud-optimized GeoTIFF, GeoParquet, Zarr, PMTiles and cloud-optimized point clouds) which are critical to helping us move away from slow file-based workflows to high-performance, integrated cloud workflows that incorporate geospatial and non-geospatial data. I’m also excited by the latest ‘buzz’ around discrete global grid systems (DGGS) as they will enable us to align and query disparate data sources without complex reprojections. The latest OGC AI DDGS pilot is a sneak preview of a future of AI chatbots for all sorts of applications, like disaster management. Last but not least, I am heartened by the emphasis on data quality, as it’s critical to build trustworthy AI-driven interoperable infrastructures.

Today, I apply this by assessing customers’ AI-readiness through a multi-layer lens: data readiness (ensuring we have authoritative, clean sources), infrastructure readiness (cloud readiness or migration), and standards compliance (implementing the modern cloud-native formats). Ultimately, interoperability and trusted clean data are the bedrocks of reliable AI as we move towards integrating more diverse data sources – often in real time – across multiple modalities, timelines and formats. AI requires a reliable data layer to ensure that the answers and decisions generated aren’t just fast, but are also trustworthy and actionable.

You have said that one of your favourite aspects of working in the geospatial industry is seeing trends emerge in different parts of the world. What makes this global perspective so compelling to you?

What I find most compelling about a global perspective in the geospatial industry is the privilege to observe how different ecosystems evolve – and how the partnership between public and private sectors shapes that evolution. For example, during a recent engagement in the UK as part of the GeoAI Festival initiative, we explored how to better connect geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI) innovation and startups with public-sector needs, while navigating critical considerations like trust, governance, procurement, policy and workforce readiness. In this case, I feel lucky to be involved in a dialogue on how the UK can build on its long-time investment in high-quality, high-integrity government data to deliver a trusted foundation model for the nation.

At the same time, my engagement in the Gulf region inspires me because of their bold, strategic investments in geospatial – whether through large-scale infrastructure, space and AI initiatives in Saudi Arabia, or digital twin efforts in Qatar. These efforts reflect a deep recognition of geospatial as foundational to national transformation. And of course, wherever you look these days, you can’t escape the growing global emphasis on sovereignty – particularly around cloud and AI – and how that shapes policy and technology decisions. On that front, I’m learning a lot from being part of the Canadian dialogue on geospatial and AI sovereignty.

The bottom line is that this global lens matters because it helps us avoid reinventing the wheel. It allows us to channel our energy and resources into solving locally relevant challenges, rather than repeatedly building generic solutions. Geospatial, after all, is about our shared planet – and that interconnectedness makes a global perspective not just valuable, but essential.

You’ve described LunateAI as “the future of geospatial”. What does that future look like in practical terms?

The future I see is a true paradigm shift. AI is not just accelerating geospatial – it’s fundamentally redefining how spatial information is generated, interpreted and consumed. We’re already experiencing the innovations from applying generative AI to geospatial and EO data. Now imagine what happens as this evolve further. Imagine moving away from monolithic platforms towards ecosystems of intelligent agents – millions of them – working on coordination. They can task satellites and drones, discover and procure data, access historical archives, run algorithms, clean and process information, create maps and applications, and continuously learn. Imagine these agents working alongside us in real time, supporting analysis, simulating scenarios, answering questions, collaborating on decisions and closing the gap between data and actions.

The future is a shift from a world of dashboards and maps to one of dynamic, live decision-making. It’s less about reporting and more about continuously informing what’s next. It’s about local decision support as well as planetary intelligence. And within that, we are already seeing the push towards spatial intelligence and world models where AI understands and navigates the 3D physical world. In all of this, our role as geospatial professionals is to ensure that this intelligence is built on foundations that are rigorous, resilient and trustworthy.

Is there anything else you would like to share with our readership of geospatial professionals across the globe?

First, AI is here to stay and it’s not just one moment. It’s a journey and we are all still in the formative stages of this journey when it comes to geospatial. As we move forward, we need to stay grounded: start with the problems, not the shiny tech. The real value will always be in solving meaningful challenges – that’s one thing all geospatial people have in common! Think big – we can now do things that we weren’t able to do before, and we can do them faster. But let’s also think ethically and responsibly. The systems we are building will shape how decisions are made at every level, and that comes with real accountability.

We also need to continue investing in people. We all need to experiment with AI (in geospatial and outside). And this applies not only to the tech geeks. It also applies to leaders and equipping them to ask the right questions, to understand what’s possible, and to lead through this transformation with clarity and confidence. At the same time, as a community, we still have work to do in clearly communicating the value of geospatial in ways that resonate beyond just our field.

We often say we’re at an inflection point, but I believe we are at a leadership point. This is our moment to lead: collaboratively, credibly and in service of the public good. To the entrepreneurs – keep innovating. We’re here to help connect your innovations to larger missions. To organizations – experiment, collaborate, partner, invest. Let’s define the next generation of best practices together. We’re all on this journey together, collectively shaping what comes next. And I’m excited to play my part as I continue to shape and grow LunateAI.

About Nadine Alameh
Nadine Alameh is a widely recognized leader and visionary in the geospatial industry, with a track record of building and scaling organizations across both the private and nonprofit sectors. In July 2025 she founded LunetaAI, focused on AI-powered geospatial strategy and transformation. Before that, she served as the inaugural executive director of the Taylor Geospatial Institute from 2023 to 2025, and prior to that as CEO and president of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC).