Dr. Tanya Harrison

The year is 2030. People and technology live in harmony. Trust is embedded into data. Interactions are cognitive. And government services are seamless, customer-centric and intuitive.

It is less than eight years away, but expectations for 2030 are already sky high. Across many spheres — technological, social, political, economic and others — transformation is underway and huge goals are being set. So what will the world look like in 2030? And what can public sector organizations be doing to help ensure they can meet these expectations?

We spoke with leaders and disruptors from around the world, across the public and private sector to explore answers to these questions.

Explore the predictions summary below and download the full report to see what leaders and disruptors from around the world are predicting on the future of digital government.

Read more: Voices on 2030: Digitalizing Government by KPMG

marblemedia and Robert C. Cooper’s Mezo Entertainment are co-developing the new live-action sci-fi adventure series Generation Mars, based on the books by Douglas D. Meredith.

The series centers on 12-year-old Cas, the first human born on Mars. “Doug wrote an edge-of-your-seat thriller of a novel, and we can’t wait to build out this story for TV audiences of all ages with Rob Cooper and the contribution of an impressive panel of experts,” said A.J. Trauth, VP of kids/family development at marblemedia.

Cooper (Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Stargate) will showrun. Dr. Tanya Harrison, who has a Ph.D. in geology with a specialization in planetary science and exploration, will serve as a consultant to ensure scientific credibility of the story world.

Read more: MarbleMedia & Mezo Entertainment Team for Generation Mars by Jamie Stalcup

Award-winning writer and producer Robert C. Cooper (Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Stargate) joins as Showrunner  

 Power line-up of esteemed Mars experts are attached to consult, including space exploration non-profit, Explore Mars; NASA Mars mission operations specialist, Dr. Tanya Harrison; and twenty-one-year-old astronaut-in-training and STEM-influencer phenom, Alyssa Carson. 

Los Angeles/Toronto/ Vancouver – (May 26, 2022) – marblemedia and Mezo Entertainment announced today they are in development on a live-action sci-fi adventure series, Generation Mars (10×60’). Helmed by creator Robert C. Cooper (Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Stargate) the series is based on the popular books of the same name by Douglas D. Meredith.  

Generation Mars chronicles humanity’s perilous extraterrestrial endeavour from the unique point of view of an extraordinary family. It’s an optimistic heart-pounding thrill ride based on hard science that will inspire adventure-seekers of all ages. 

Read more: marblemedia and Mezo Entertainment Find Life on Mars with Sci-Fi Adventure Series, Generation Mars (press release)

Mars was once wet enough to cover its entire surface with an ocean of water hundreds to thousands of feet deep, holding about half as much water as the Atlantic Ocean. However, the most recent epoch of Martian history, known as the Amazonian — the past 3 billion years of the Red Planet— is often considered cold and dry.

Now, in a new study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, China’s first rover on Mars finds evidence of water there potentially within the past 700 million years.

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“Liquid water may have been around underground much more recently in Mars’ history than previously thought,” planetary scientist Tanya Harrison, the director of Strategic Science Initiatives at Planet Labs, did not participate in this research, tells Inverse. “That’s exciting from an astrobiological standpoint because on Earth, anywhere there’s liquid water, there’s generally something that has managed to survive there. So, it gives the potential for a small habitable environment on Mars in the geologically recent past.”

Read more: China Finds Recent Water Flows on Mars, with Big Implications for Alien Life by Charles Q. Choi

When Iceye co-founders Rafal Modrzewski and Pekka Laurila began looking for promising markets for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data, they focused exclusively on the Arctic.

It was a natural fit for the Finland-based SAR constellation operator founded in 2014. Eight years later, the Arctic remains a key market for Iceye due in part to its lack of terrestrial infrastructure.

“The only way to monitor it is through satellites,” Modrzewski said.

As Arctic sea ice dips to new lows, economic activity in the region is picking up. Meanwhile, soil under the Arctic tundra is thawing while some vegetation above is flourishing. To track the changes, companies and academic researchers often turn to satellite-based data products.

Spire Global, for example, is developing datasets to help people make decisions about what to do as the Arctic region evolves over time, said Kevin Petty, Spire vice president of weather and Earth intelligence.

With a fleet of more than 110 satellites, Spire tracks the movement of ships and airplanes through the region in addition to gathering atmospheric temperature, pressure and moisture data by noting how signals from GPS and other Global Navigation Satellite Systems change as they pass through the atmosphere.

By observing how the same signals reflect off Earth’s surface, Spire also can provide customers with data on soil moisture levels and sea ice.

Planet is shedding light on the Arctic with more than 200 satellites in polar orbit acquiring electro-optical imagery.

German researchers developed a deep learning model for PlanetScope, Planet’s daily global Earth imagery, to identify areas where the Arctic permafrost is thawing and releasing methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The research, led by Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research and the University of Potsdam Institute of Geosciences, maps small landslides that occur when permafrost thaws rapidly.

“This is a type of application that we’re starting to see pick up quite a bit because we have so much coverage both spatially and temporally across the Arctic,” said Tanya Harrison, Planet scientific strategy director.

For instance, Sarah Cooley, a University of Oregon assistant professor, applies machine learning to Planet imagery to track changes in hundreds of thousands of Arctic lakes in areas where the permafrost stores carbon.

“Her results are suggesting that the combined action of all of these small lakes is actually going to be quite a substantial greenhouse gas source moving forward,” Harrison said. “That research is only possible with a dataset like this, because she’s looking at subseasonal scale over a massive area of the Arctic.”

Read more: Eyes on the Arctic: Satellites reveal changing conditions at northern latitudes by Debra Werner