May 2025 Summaries

The landscape of geospatial data is shifting, with native support for spatial data types now available in Apache Iceberg and Parquet, marking a major turning point. This shift enables spatial data to be stored once, accessed from anywhere, and optimized without vendor lock-in, leading to lower storage and compute costs, better governance, and faster insights. CARTO has played a key role in this shift, contributing to the development of GeoParquet and Iceberg's geospatial capabilities and helping major engines like BigQuery and Snowflake adopt these standards. The momentum is accelerating, with Google and Databricks also working towards supporting native geospatial types on Iceberg, and CARTO continuing to standardize new formats such as raster, mobility, and 3D data.

At CARTO, a new feature has been unveiled that connects Workflows and Builder, enabling users to create interactive maps directly from a Workflow, streamlining data pipeline between analysis and visualization. This integration allows for the generation of "live maps" that are always powered by the most up-to-date data in workflows, reducing manual effort and ensuring consistency. The Create Builder Map component supports three flexible modes, allowing users to update an existing map, regenerate a new one from scratch, or create a copy with different styling. This feature is ideal for analysts who want quick visualizations, developers building internal tools, or teams needing standardized, repeatable map outputs, as maps are always powered by analysis and updated automatically when changes occur in the Workflow's data sources. The integration enables automation of map creation and updating, ensuring decision-makers always see the most up-to-date geospatial picture, and is particularly useful for teams that rely on dashboards to monitor evolving metrics.

With the introduction of User Comments in CARTO Builder, teams can collaborate directly on maps to align on priorities and make decisions faster. This feature enables seamless collaboration across departments, regions, or time zones, allowing all stakeholders to contribute structured input tied to specific geographic locations. The cloud-native functionality ensures real-time collaboration from anywhere in the world, without compatibility or version control issues. User Comments facilitate collaborative spatial analysis, review and validation, scenario planning, stakeholder engagement, and field-to-office collaboration, streamlining decision-making processes for enterprise mapping projects.

The MBI CONIAS Self-Explaining Political Risk Data is now available through the CARTO Data Observatory, providing a new standard for political risk assessment. This dataset combines spatial granularity, historical context, and forward-looking trend analysis to equip users with faster, more informed decision-making in volatile environments. It contextualizes conflict events, capturing why they are happening, how intense they are, and where they might go next, and provides regional comparability through standardized methodology. The data includes a layered view of political conflict, tailored for in-depth risk analysis, with modules on conflict presence, trend forecasting, and conflict insights. Key metrics include conflict intensity, frequency, impact types, and temporal trends across 12-month windows, and is available at a global scale with sub-national resolution and quarterly updates.