Geospatial Technologies- Africa into The Future

  WHAT IS GEO-AI? The twenty first century has been characterized by rapid technological changes that are a build-up to the insights of scholars and scientists of the past century. The geospatial world is not an exception with the rapid demand for location-based solutions fueling the paradigm shift. In particular, Geo-AI is a technological trend to watch out after taking the industry by storm with the internet being a catalyst to its recent steady growth. Before sinking any further into the subject, what actually is Geo-AI? Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (Geo-AI), can simply be stated as a concept of automation whose intent is to facilitate fast decision-making and pattern recognition of geographic data through subsets like deep learning which entails the use of neural networks just as the human brain. The data is trained before being executed using a deep learning model. Despite the introduction of the term AI in the mid 1950’s by Stanford University’s professor John McCarthy,

  INTRODUCTION The steady trend in urbanization worldwide, standing currently at 54% as well as increased utilitarian need for cars by city dwellers has characterized most urban areas by traffic snarl-ups and related inefficiencies. Public transport in the Kenya’s primate city of Nairobi has not been an exception of vehicular congestion especially over the past two decades, which definitely has proven to be a menace. Could it be because there are no reciprocal infrastructural developments to the demands or the efforts towards the regulation of traffic have not been effective? This timely discussion with regards to the establishment of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system towards developing Nairobi as a smart city (which is long overdue) will provide insights into how geospatial technologies are part and parcel to its successful implementation. HOW DO WE EFFECT THE BRT SYSTEM? The BRT system has been proven to be an attractive alternative for mass transit, a problem which does not affect Nair