https://video.osgeo.org/videos/watch/4e614ee0-4bfd-480b-8ae2-73714159782e In this session from FOSS4G NA 2025, Jason Gilman of Element 84 presents When LLMs Meet GIS: Building Reliable Geospatial AI Systems. Jason explores the practical integration of Large Language Models into geospatial workflows, moving beyond the hype to focus on building software that is reliable, cost-effective, and meet real-world user needs. The presentation introduces two open-source libraries: E84-GDAL-AI-Common, which provides core utilities for LLM interaction and structured data extraction, and Natural Language Geometry (NLG), a library that translates human-readable spatial descriptions—like "within 10 miles of the coast"—into precise GIS polygons. Jason also discusses the trade-offs between autonomous "agents" and deterministic "workflows," the importance of tracing and evaluation suites, and how Element 84 built their own geocoding database to overcome the relevancy and polygon-retrieval limitations of traditional tools. Highlights: 🛰️ The Reliability Gap: Why rushing to add AI to geospatial tools can compromise software quality, security, and energy efficiency 🔄 Natural Language Geometry (NLG): How to convert vague spatial phrases into a structured tree of operations and final GIS polygons 🧩 Beyond Point Geocoding: The shift from center-point results to full polygon retrieval for complex areas like the Gulf of Mexico ⚙️ Why Build a New AI Library? Moving away from the complexity of LangChain toward the strong typing and simplicity of E84-GDAL-AI-Common 🌐 Agents vs. Workflows: When to use autonomous AI agents for unpredictable human queries and when to use prescriptive pipelines for efficiency 🏢 Evaluations & Tracing: Using graph edit distance and tools like LangFuse to measure LLM performance and identify token bottlenecks 🏗️ Custom Geocoding Databases: Leveraging Who’s On First and Natural Earth data to provide context-aware results for ambiguous place names For more content like this check out www.projectgeospatial.com #Geospatial #FOSS4G #LLM #AI #GIS #NaturalLanguageProcessing #Geocoding #OpenSource #SoftwareEngineering #DataScience #Element84 #MachineLearning #ProjectGeospatial #LangChain #Pydantic Sun, 05 Jul 2026 22:21:33 GMT https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html PeerTube - https://video.osgeo.org https://video.osgeo.org/lazy-static/avatars/de841c88-3a57-45ac-9eff-a00237356bfc.png https://video.osgeo.org/videos/watch/4e614ee0-4bfd-480b-8ae2-73714159782e All rights reserved, unless otherwise specified in the terms specified at https://video.osgeo.org/about and potential licenses granted by each content's rightholder.