Benefits of an integrated view

Benefits of the Integration of Space and Spatial

Australia’s space industry, although small, has well recognised world class expertise in certain areas from which we can build. By contrast, Australia’s spatial community is much more dominant by world standards but still exhibits strong growth potential. Operating in tandem, these competitive advantages serve as strong basis from which both industries can grow.

Space and spatial are making an increasingly critical contribution to digital transformation. Global spending on the digital transformation is expected to reach $2.3 trillion by 2023, a five year compound annual growth rate of 17.1% for the period 2019 – 2023. The space industry has been estimated to be worth US$350 billion in 2019 with potential to grow to over $US1.1 trillion by 2040. The Australian space sector was estimated to be around $3.9 billion in size in 2019 and forecast to grow at 7.1% pa over the five years to 2024.

The total direct economic benefits from the use and application of earth observation from space data alone was found to be worth A$496 million to the Australian economy in 2015, and predicted to reach A$1,694 million by 2025. In 2016, geospatial services were conservatively estimated to generate US$400 billion per year globally. However, the total economic contribution was predicted to be several times higher, through approximately US$550 billion derived from consumer benefits; the creation of approximately 4 million direct and 8 million indirect jobs; and improvements of revenues and costs of sectors that contribute 75% of global GDP.
The global markets for big data from satellites alone is growing rapidly (see Figure 1 below).