Our GANS Social Spotlight continues, showcasing the people shaping Nova Scotia’s geomatics community.

Interested in being featured? Visit: https://lnkd.in/e8enpW84

This week’s spotlight features Tiffany Chisholm, Senior GIS Analyst with WSP Canada.

Q: How do you use geomatics within your career?
At WSP, geomatics is about far more than maps. It is about transforming location-based information into insight that helps people make better decisions for communities and the environment.

I use geomatics to connect everything, everywhere, always across disciplines, creating a shared understanding of the complex relationships between the built and natural environments and helping deliver solutions that are more connected, resilient, and Future Ready®.

Q: What software do you use the most?
My work is primarily focused within the Esri and Autodesk technology ecosystems, which are becoming increasingly connected as GIS and BIM converge.

WSP’s long-standing relationship as an Esri Platinum Partner provides a strong foundation for applying GIS technologies to complex challenges, while Autodesk technologies are central to engineering design across the built environment.

I work with technologies including desktop and web GIS, and ArcGIS GeoBIM, alongside Autodesk solutions such as Civil 3D, Revit, and Forma. Together, these ecosystems help integrate geographic context with engineering and design information.

For me, that integration is very exciting because it is helping lay the foundation for digital twins.

Q: What do you see changing in geomatics over the next decade?
I believe the next decade will see geomatics evolve from a discipline focused on understanding the world to one that helps predict, simulate, and optimize it.

Digital twins will be central to that transformation. As GIS, BIM, reality capture, sensor networks, AI, asset information, and real-time data continue to integrate, we will move beyond static maps and models toward dynamic digital representations of infrastructure and the environments in which they operate.

This changes the questions we can answer. Rather than simply asking where an asset is located, we can understand its condition, performance, risk, and potentially its future behaviour. We can model scenarios, anticipate challenges, and support more informed decisions throughout the infrastructure lifecycle.

For WSP, this represents a significant opportunity. Our work sits at the intersection of the built and natural environments, and geomatics can become the digital thread connecting them. Digital twins can support projects from planning and design through construction, operations, maintenance, resilience, and renewal, creating value throughout the entire lifecycle.

The future of geomatics will not simply be about producing better maps. It will be about creating a living digital understanding of our world, helping us move from mapping what exists to anticipating what comes next.