Interdependence between the digital (machine) world and human world is total; humans design the machines but cannot exist without them.

Many of the world's greatest challenges are place and time related. For example – poverty and land rights, circular economy, climate change and sea level rise, renewable energy and how we efficiently harness it, and protection against pandemics and the geospatial science of epidemiology. The defense sector has also long recognized the value of geospatial knowledge, often calling it geospatial intelligence.

Be it advanced medicine, automated vehicles or online dating, a combination of sensors, data and analytics support human decisionmaking. They also influence human decisionmaking. Automation is increasingly seeing changes that exclude humans from final decisions. The first driver-less taxi service is now operational and automated drone corridors are being established. But we have not yet reached a state of Nirvana, not even nearly. How often have we heard leaders across the world say that they "don't yet have the data to know" (and by implication cannot decide what to do), in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic? This one question encapsulates the whole purpose of this Paper. Data is not the endpoint. Knowledge, decisions, services, satisfaction are the value chain that data feeds. Whilst we call data 'the new oil', knowledge is perhaps 'the new capital'. Its value is determined by the application of that knowledge, which is derived from the data. Sadly, data producers often do not know that value either because they are far removed from data integration and the applications, models and machines that deliver the knowledge, and value, for the user.