Jan Tschada

The pursuit of human-level artificial intelligence necessitates a rigorous examination of the spatial dimension of cognition. Artificial general intelligence systems are expected to operate across a vast array of domains with human-like adaptability. However, most existing AI systems remain disconnected from physical reality. This disconnect stems from a lack of structured understanding of geography, topology, and the temporal evolution of the built and natural environment. Therefore, the central hypothesis of this article is that geospatial knowledge, if structured appropriately, forms a foundational component of cognitive reasoning in artificial systems. This hypothesis motivates the development and integration of geospatial knowledge graphs, which represent real-world entities and their spatial relationships in a formal and queryable structure.

Spatial reasoning is indispensable to general intelligence. Human cognition is inherently spatial. It operates not only on abstract concepts but also on concrete relationships among locations, objects, and events situated in time and space. Humans effortlessly recognize the significance of distance, proximity, containment, adjacency, and orientation in problem-solving and decision-making. Consequently, any system aspiring to match human reasoning must be capable of perceiving, encoding, and manipulating spatial relationships. Artificial intelligence without spatial awareness can only operate within constrained digital environments. It cannot reason about infrastructure, environmental change, or urban dynamics without grounding its logic in a geospatial context. Thus, spatial cognition is not a peripheral feature but a core faculty of general intelligence.

We need to address the inadequacy of conventional geospatial data representations for intelligent reasoning. Raster and vector data structures encode geometries and attributes, but they lack semantic richness and relational depth. Geospatial knowledge graphs fill this void by providing formal semantics to spatial entities and their interconnections. These graphs represent entities such as cities, rivers, roads, and administrative units as nodes. Edges in the graph define topological or conceptual relationships. The resulting structure is amenable to logic-based inference, pattern recognition, and multi-hop queries. For example, a knowledge graph can model containment hierarchies such as a neighborhood within a city or track temporal changes such as the construction history of infrastructure. By explicitly encoding semantics and time, geospatial knowledge graphs enable a transition from map-based perception to knowledge-based reasoning.

We examine the emerging role of the Overture Maps Foundation in creating an open, standardized, and high-quality geospatial knowledge base. Founded by leading technology companies, the foundation provides a curated map of the physical world that includes building footprints, road networks, points of interest, and administrative boundaries. Unlike traditional maps, this dataset is versioned, semantically attributed, and designed for machine consumption. This makes it suitable for use in reasoning systems, digital twins, and autonomous agents. By standardizing the structure and schema of spatial entities, Overture facilitates interoperability among geospatial applications. Its role is akin to a spatial operating system upon which intelligent agents can rely for consistent context and reference. In this respect, Overture supports not only geospatial intelligence applications but also broader efforts in the development of grounded artificial intelligence.

We explore the federated integration of Wikidata and OpenStreetMap as a foundational layer for spatially enriched knowledge graphs. Wikidata is a structured knowledge graph containing millions of real-world concepts, many of which are geospatially referenced. OpenStreetMap is a community-driven map platform that encodes detailed geometries of physical features. The linking of these two resources via unique identifiers allows agents to associate spatial geometries with abstract concepts and multilingual labels. This enables semantic search and reasoning across domains such as culture, environment, and infrastructure. An agent can, for instance, identify all UNESCO heritage sites within a floodplain by querying the graph. This fusion of symbolic knowledge and spatial geometry is essential for creating agents that understand the world not merely as shapes and coordinates, but as places with meaning, history, and function.

We propose a layered architecture for integrating geospatial knowledge into AI systems. The foundational layer consists of standardized datasets such as those from Overture, OpenStreetMap, and Wikidata. Above this, semantic reasoning engines interpret the relationships among spatial entities using formal ontologies. The next layer incorporates temporal dynamics, allowing agents to reason about change, trends, and event sequences. A symbolic-numeric fusion layer integrates perceptual data from imagery or sensors with symbolic representations from the knowledge graph. Finally, the agent layer performs decision-making, planning, and adaptation. This architecture enables explainable, adaptive, and transferable spatial reasoning capabilities in AI agents. It ensures that knowledge is not static but evolves with real-world changes, supporting applications ranging from autonomous navigation to environmental monitoring and policy planning.

The final reflection emphasizes that geospatial intelligence is not merely a tool for specific domains such as urban planning or disaster management. Rather, it is a structural necessity for any artificial system that seeks to act coherently in the physical world. Knowledge must be grounded in place, time, and context. Spatial semantics provide the structure through which knowledge can be localized, queried, and applied. Geospatial knowledge graphs, when combined with open data initiatives and formal ontologies, offer a practical path toward such grounding. They transform static maps into dynamic reasoning substrates. As AI evolves toward generality, it must embrace the structured geography of human reasoning. This is not a supplement to intelligence. It is its spatial spine.

The resurgence of neural networks has initiated a fundamental transition in how geospatial intelligence is practiced, applied, and scaled. This transformation stems not from a single innovation, but from the convergence of several foundational advances in computational learning, sensor proliferation, and representational modeling. Historically, geospatial systems relied heavily on symbolic logic, spatial queries, and human-engineered features. These systems were effective in structured environments but inherently brittle when facing dynamic, uncertain, or high-dimensional spatial problems. The introduction of neural networks, particularly convolutional and recurrent architectures, offered a mechanism to overcome the limitations of manual spatial reasoning.

To understand how neural networks reshaped geospatial intelligence, it is important to isolate the domains that were transformed. The domain of feature extraction and pattern recognition has shifted from explicit rule-based models to implicit learning from data. In classical GIS workflows, feature selection and classification relied on spectral thresholds, indices, and predefined logic trees. Neural networks replaced these manual processes by learning hierarchical representations directly from imagery and spatiotemporal signals. This capability enables the detection of complex patterns such as urban morphology, land cover transitions, and anthropogenic structures that were previously inaccessible without extensive domain expertise.

The domain of inference and generalization experienced a significant expansion. Traditional models struggle to extrapolate to unseen regions or sensors due to their rigid dependence on training distributions. Neural networks trained on large and diverse datasets have demonstrated robustness in generalizing across geographic domains and sensor modalities. This has allowed the application of deep models trained on commercial satellite data to extend effectively to publicly available sensors, such as Sentinel and Landsat. As a result, geospatial intelligence can now scale across different ecosystems, topographies, and political boundaries with reduced model degradation.

The temporal dimension of geospatial data is now better integrated into analytical models. Prior to the adoption of deep learning, time-series analysis in geospatial intelligence depended on seasonal composites and handcrafted models like hidden Markov processes or autoregressive techniques. Recurrent neural networks, particularly long short-term memory networks and attention-based transformers, enabled the modeling of spatiotemporal dependencies with higher fidelity. This has improved forecasting for phenomena such as crop yield, vegetation health, wildfire spread, and flood dynamics by integrating memory and attention mechanisms that reflect the evolution of spatial states over time.

The response speed and operational integration of geospatial intelligence systems have been enhanced by deploying neural networks in production environments. Real-time or near-real-time applications such as disaster damage assessment, maritime surveillance, and illegal mining detection now benefit from neural models that can ingest multi-modal sensor data and output actionable insights rapidly. These systems are no longer bound to batch processing and manual interpretation but operate through automated pipelines that deliver situational awareness on demand.

The representational paradigm of spatial reasoning has evolved from logic-based rules to statistical learning. This change introduces new epistemological implications. In symbolic systems, knowledge is explicit and explainable, derived from encoded human reasoning. In neural systems, knowledge is emergent and distributed across learned weights, which makes interpretability a persistent challenge. Efforts such as attention visualization, feature attribution, and latent space projection have been employed to address this opacity, but they remain approximations rather than complete explanations. Nevertheless, the performance gains from these models have led to their wide acceptance, especially in high-stakes contexts where speed and coverage outweigh the demand for full transparency.

The underlying infrastructure and data requirements of geospatial systems have changed. Neural networks demand extensive labeled datasets, high-throughput computing resources, and continuous retraining to maintain relevance. This necessitates a shift in how organizations structure their data pipelines, model governance, and cross-sector collaboration. Initiatives involving open benchmarks and transfer learning have partially mitigated the cost of data collection, yet access remains unequal across global regions. These infrastructural demands are not merely technical constraints but also strategic concerns, influencing how geospatial AI capabilities are distributed geopolitically.

In summary, the return of neural networks did not merely improve existing geospatial processes. It redefined them. Geospatial intelligence is no longer a matter of cartographic representation alone but a dynamic system of perception, inference, and decision-making. Deep learning models have allowed the field to move from mapping the world to modeling it. This shift introduces both opportunity and risk. It demands a reconfiguration of expertise, tools, and ethical frameworks to ensure that the spatial systems we build are not only powerful but also responsible. The new map is not drawn by hand. It is trained.

We examine the hypothesis that Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (GeoAI) is approaching a period of stagnation analogous to historical AI winters. GeoAI integrates artificial intelligence with geospatial science and technology, enabling applications from precision agriculture to climate modeling and security surveillance. Recent signals suggest the field may be nearing a saturation point in practical expectations despite its significant potential. This assessment evaluates the hypothesis through distinct, non-overlapping dimensions: historical parallels, diagnostic indicators, stabilizing counterforces, and strategic implications.

Historical context provides the first dimension for evaluation. The concept of an „AI Winter“ originates from the collapse of the commercial expert systems boom in the late 1980s. Systems like R1/XCON failed to generalize beyond narrow domains, leading to widespread disillusionment, evaporated funding, and corporate failures. The structural vulnerabilities underlying that collapse—hype cycles outstripping real capabilities, brittle tooling failing in diverse conditions, and premature commercial scaling before solving core technical problems—are observable in today’s GeoAI landscape. While the underlying technologies differ, the presence of these shared risk factors warrants serious consideration of the winter hypothesis.

The diagnostic assessment forms the second dimension, evaluating five mutually exclusive indicators. First, data integrity has become the critical bottleneck. While raw data availability is high, progress is throttled by poor quality, inconsistent structure, and weak annotation. Weakly labeled Earth Observation imagery, geographic domain inconsistencies, and inadequate metadata inject significant noise into training. The result is critically low spatial transferability, where models trained in one region frequently fail elsewhere. Second, toolchain maturity remains insufficient. Despite technical advances, operational foundations are fragmented. AI engineers often operate outside established GIS standards, while geospatial professionals lack robust AI-native interfaces. This disconnect creates fragile pipelines that cannot scale across projects or sectors, hindering real-world deployment. Third, economic viability faces scrutiny. Market propositions rely heavily on speculative terms like „planetary intelligence“ or „real-time insight engines,“ while field evaluations often reveal scripted solutions requiring heavy human oversight and delivering marginal operational value. Venture capital is responding by tightening funding, favoring demonstrable ROI over visionary pitches. Fourth, scientific saturation is emerging. Low-hanging research problems like supervised land cover classification are largely solved. Remaining challenges—cross-sensor learning, temporally dynamic object detection, multimodal fusion (LiDAR, SAR, vectors)—are inherently complex, slow, and computationally expensive, indicating a flattening innovation curve. Fifth, ecosystem vitality shows strain. Conferences increasingly recycle concepts, and software releases prioritize interface polish over core algorithmic breakthroughs, signaling consolidation typical before technological plateaus.

Counterforces constitute the third dimension, offering stabilizing mechanisms against a full collapse. Strategic resilience stems from GeoAI’s dual-use imperatives. Its role in national defense, intelligence, and climate resilience involves existential stakes. Agencies like the NGA, NASA, and EU Copernicus operate on long-term horizons and cannot abandon these mission-critical capabilities due to temporary setbacks, providing sustained foundational funding. Technical evolution is enhancing robustness. Vision Transformers and contrastive pre-training enable better geographical generalization than older CNNs. Self-supervised learning reduces dependency on costly manual annotation by leveraging unlabeled data. Foundational models promise to replace narrow, brittle architectures with more scalable, adaptable solutions. Strategic convergence is expanding relevance. GeoAI is integrating into broader AI ecosystems through multi-modal learning, combining spatial data with text, temporal sequences, and diverse sensors. This transforms it from a niche subdiscipline into an essential component of applied intelligence systems like supply chain optimization or disaster response platforms, embedding it deeper into critical infrastructure.

The synthesis leads to a clear conclusion: The hypothesis of an impending GeoAI Winter finds partial support in diagnostic indicators but is ultimately countered by stabilizing forces. A full-scale collapse akin to the 1980s is improbable. Instead, the field is entering a necessary consolidation phase—a recalibration. This period demands deliberate strategic choices. GeoAI stands at a pivotal junction: repeat the 1980s cycle of overpromising and underdelivering, or embrace strategic maturity. Success in the coming decade hinges not on spectacular benchmark performance but on integrating intelligence into spatially aware systems that operate reliably under pressure, at scale, in the real world. This requires prioritizing operational robustness over speculative benchmarks, building sustainable tooling over fragmented prototypes, and delivering measurable value over hyperbolic promises. The observed chill is not an endpoint but a catalyst for building foundations worthy of GeoAI’s transformative potential.

Building the brain of Geospatial Artificial Intelligence requires more than data and computation. It requires a knowledge representation structure that can reason, adapt, and explain. Traditional GeoAI systems often emphasize statistical accuracy or spatial resolution but fail to encode the semantic understanding necessary for generalization, interpretation, and dynamic decision-making. This gap is filled by geospatial knowledge graphs, which serve as the semantic infrastructure enabling intelligent behavior in spatial systems.

One necessary distinction is between raw data and knowledge. Raw spatial data consists of coordinates, labels, and observed values, which are often siloed in shapefiles, geodatabases, raster tiles, or tabular datasets. Knowledge, on the other hand, consists of structured relationships, classifications, and context that allow a system to understand what entities are, how they relate, and why they matter. A knowledge graph transforms these disconnected data points into a structured network of meaning, linking entities such as cities, rivers, and land parcels to broader concepts such as administrative hierarchies, land use policies, and historical changes.

Another essential component is the ability to separate domain knowledge from reasoning mechanisms. In GeoAI, domain knowledge encompasses topological relationships, spatial hierarchies, regulatory constraints, and natural process models. Reasoning mechanisms include spatial query engines, rule-based inference, temporal logic, and machine learning. By decoupling these two, a knowledge graph allows reusable reasoning over different domains, dynamic updates to context, and transparent explanation of outcomes. This is especially critical in high-stakes applications such as urban planning, environmental monitoring, and disaster response.

Semantic enrichment using external sources is also vital. Wikidata is a valuable source of structured triples that describe real-world entities and their interrelations. These triples include administrative roles, spatial containment, instance classifications, and geographic attributes. A city, for example, is not merely a name with coordinates but is an administrative capital, part of a country, connected to a population figure, and associated with historical events. These statements can be integrated into a geospatial knowledge graph using semantic alignment, class mapping, and spatial referencing, thereby enabling reasoning engines to work with context-rich entities instead of featureless coordinates.

The integration of OpenStreetMap data further strengthens the semantic layer. OSM provides not only geometries but also functional annotations through tags. Tags such as amenity equals school or landuse equals industrial encode the intended use, regulatory category, or social function of a space. These tags can be normalized and mapped to ontology classes in the knowledge graph. This mapping allows further inference such as identifying underserved areas, zoning violations, or infrastructure gaps. Moreover, the geometries from OSM can be converted to GeoSPARQL-compatible formats, supporting spatial queries over explicitly defined relationships.

A layered architecture supports the construction and use of the knowledge graph. The first layer ingests raw data from heterogeneous sources and standardizes it. The second layer models semantic relationships using an ontology that reflects spatial domain concepts. The third layer applies reasoning through inference engines or query languages, allowing for dynamic question answering and decision support. This layered design supports modularity, scalability, and maintainability, ensuring that each component can evolve independently while contributing to the overall intelligence of the system.

In conclusion, building the brain of GeoAI requires more than statistical learning or geographic data integration. It requires an explicit, structured, and semantically rich knowledge graph that transforms spatial data into actionable understanding. By separating knowledge from reasoning, enriching semantics through linked data, and integrating crowdsourced geometries with ontology-driven classes, geospatial knowledge graphs lay the foundation for intelligent, explainable, and adaptive geospatial systems.

Facing reality in geospatial AI begins with recognizing that progress in artificial intelligence has not always followed a smooth or predictable path. In the 1960s, early AI researchers believed they were close to solving complex problems like language translation and general reasoning. Their optimism faded when these systems failed outside carefully controlled environments. The gap between theoretical success and practical failure was known as a dose of reality. Today, geospatial AI stands at a similar crossroads, where technical achievements must be tested against the complexity and messiness of the real world.

Many current models in geospatial AI are impressive in narrow settings. They classify land use, detect roads, or track environmental change with high accuracy—when the data is clean, the setting is familiar, and the system operates within its training parameters. But these models often falter when moved to unfamiliar regions or conditions. A land cover model trained on satellite imagery from temperate Europe may misclassify vegetation in arid Africa. This problem arises because spatial models are often built assuming that environments are uniform and that one solution fits all. In reality, geographic diversity is vast and unpredictable. What works in one place may not work in another. A system that performs well in ideal scenarios cannot be trusted without understanding how it reacts to variation and uncertainty.

Adding to this challenge is the nature of the data itself. Geospatial datasets are often messy. Satellite images may be obscured by clouds, misaligned, or missing metadata. Sensor readings may be outdated or incomplete. Location-based inputs may lack resolution or consistency. These imperfections are not the exception but the norm. Yet many systems assume the input data is always accurate and ready to use. This assumption leads to brittle performance. A model might incorrectly detect a flooded region where there is only a shadow, or it may miss critical infrastructure simply because the satellite pass occurred during poor lighting conditions. Robust systems must be designed with data imperfection in mind. They must be able to process incomplete information, assess uncertainty, and indicate when they are unsure.

Even when models are conceptually correct and the data is sound, another barrier emerges: the cost of computation. Certain geospatial problems are not only complex in space but also in time. Monitoring thousands of square kilometers continuously or forecasting land use changes at high resolution demands vast computing resources. Some models, while mathematically elegant, are simply too slow or memory-intensive to be practical. For example, a change detection model that compares every pixel over a year’s worth of satellite images may produce excellent results but take days to run on a typical system. This is not useful when decisions must be made quickly, as in disaster response or military operations. Efficient solutions require rethinking the structure of algorithms. Instead of analyzing everything at once, systems can be designed to focus on areas of interest, operate at multiple scales, or simplify calculations without losing essential detail.

Perhaps the most overlooked challenge is the need for systems to adjust to change. Many geospatial AI models are designed as static tools. Once trained, they continue to apply the same rules regardless of changing inputs or shifting ground truths. But the world is not static. Rivers change course, new roads appear, weather patterns fluctuate, and human activity introduces new elements. A model that cannot adapt will gradually become outdated or misleading. Worse, it may continue to produce results with high confidence, giving users a false sense of reliability. The ability to learn from feedback, recalibrate, or alert users when inputs fall outside the model’s experience is essential for long-term usefulness. Geospatial AI must not only analyze data but also learn from new patterns and correct itself when wrong.

These realities point to a fundamental shift in how geospatial AI should be developed and deployed. It is not enough to build models that work well in isolated conditions. Systems must be tested across diverse scenarios, tolerate imperfect inputs, operate efficiently, and evolve over time. The early failures of symbolic AI remind us that technical success in idealized environments is not a guarantee of real-world effectiveness. By internalizing this lesson, the geospatial community can avoid repeating old mistakes and instead build tools that are truly useful, adaptable, and aligned with the complexity of the world they aim to model.

Treating language as a model of cognition provides a foundational shift in the development of intelligent geospatial systems. The prevailing assumption that language is merely a tool for data input or command issuance overlooks its deeper cognitive structure. Human language is not only a symbolic system but also a representation of thought, inference, and abstraction. This insight, stemming from generative linguistics, allows us to rethink how geospatial intelligence systems interpret, reason, and learn from spatial descriptions.

The historical departure from behaviorist interpretations of language, which emphasized observable inputs and outputs, toward cognitive models introduced by Chomsky redefined the theoretical landscape. Chomsky’s critique of Skinner’s behaviorism was not merely philosophical; it revealed that linguistic competence includes the ability to generate and understand novel utterances, an ability rooted in internal cognitive representations. Applied to geospatial intelligence, this means that systems should not only process known spatial entities but also reason about hypothetical and previously unseen spatial scenarios.

Understanding natural language descriptions of space involves more than parsing grammar or detecting keywords. It requires contextual grounding. For instance, when a user describes a location as being near the old railway station, a cognitively aware system must reference temporal knowledge, changes in the urban fabric, and subjective proximity. This transcends traditional geospatial querying and moves toward cognitive mapping, where places are understood relationally and historically rather than as static coordinates.

Cognitive models of language inherently imply that knowledge is structured. This leads us to the domain of knowledge representation. In geospatial systems, such representation must encode not only physical attributes of places but also their cultural, functional, and dynamic aspects. A location may simultaneously be a transit hub, a crime hotspot, and a cultural landmark. These roles are not mutually exclusive and cannot be inferred from geometry alone. Only through language-driven modeling can such multi-faceted identities be captured and reasoned with effectively.

This approach also reinforces the necessity of narrative reasoning. Human users often describe spatial events as sequences of actions or changes. For example, a flood warning might involve the rising of water levels, road closures, and evacuation procedures. A system that understands language as cognition would track these sequences as evolving situations rather than disconnected reports. This enables predictive spatial reasoning and scenario planning, which are central to proactive geospatial intelligence.

To operationalize language as cognition in geospatial systems, we must adopt interdisciplinary methods. This includes incorporating formal syntax and semantics from linguistics, knowledge engineering from artificial intelligence, and spatial reasoning from geographic information science. Each discipline contributes essential elements: formal models from linguistics allow parsing of structure, ontologies from AI provide domain-specific concepts, and spatial models define topological and metric relationships.

The final outcome of this integration is the ability to create geospatial systems that can learn, infer, and explain. Such systems not only answer queries like where is the nearest hospital but also respond to questions such as what areas might become inaccessible if the bridge collapses or how has this neighborhood evolved since the metro was extended. These are not data retrieval tasks but cognitive tasks that require contextual, temporal, and relational reasoning.

In conclusion, treating language as a model of cognition transforms the paradigm of geospatial intelligence. It elevates systems from being passive repositories of spatial data to becoming active partners in reasoning about the world. This shift is not optional for next-generation intelligence platforms. It is essential for ensuring that these systems align with the way humans think, speak, and act in space.