Bridging the Gap: Academia and Industry in Geospatial Research

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What if the way we map the Earth is reinforcing the very inequalities we aim to solve?

In this episode of The Spatial Stack, I sit down with Dr. Nadine Alameh, one of the most influential voices in geospatial and AI for Earth. With a background spanning NASA, the United Nations, and the Open Geospatial Consortium, Nadine brings a unique systems-level perspective to the urgent question: Who gets to define the map?

We dive into:

How AI models can fail without local context and community input
The tensions between global institutions and grassroots data efforts
The importance of open tools, inclusive standards, and rethinking what “ground truth” really means
What it will take to make Earth intelligence equitable, actionable, and trustworthy

Whether you’re building geospatial systems, training machine learning models, or working on climate and land use policy, this conversation will reshape how you think about data, power, and place.