MAPPING THE FUTURE

Dr Parag Khanna, founder and CEO of AlphaGeo reveals why navigating geopolitical, climate and infrastructure shifts is a blueprint for a more resilient and complex future.

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Step into Dr Parag Khanna's living room and one's eye is immediately drawn not to a painting or photograph, but to a five-metre-wide map of the world's infrastructure flow that sprawls across the wall.

Streaked with pink, orange, and white lines that intersect, tangle, and fan out across continents, the map visualises transportation links, energy pipelines, telecommunications and shipping routes.

The gargantuan map is produced based on geo-referenced data points analysed by AlphaGeo, an Al-powered geospatial intelligence platform founded by Khanna, who is also its CEO. Taking pride of place in the living room of his five-storey semidetached home in Joo Chiat, the map commands attention much like a work of art.

Khanna says: "The relationship between this map and forecasting is that the areas that have more lines intersecting are where rapid urbanisation and market growth take place. Businesses will want to be where there are more intersections." The cartographic theme continues; his home office is decked out in maps depicting global climate change patterns, migration flows, and population changes. He recalls staking his claim early. "I told my wife that whatever we do with this house, I want the living room's wall to be reserved for this map," says Khanna with a laugh, who is married to AI entrepreneur Ayesha Khanna.

This place-centric instinct underpins AlphaGeo's approach to forecasting the future of today's complex world, shaped by the convergence of geopolitics, economics, technology, and climate change.

Forecasting, in Khanna's view, begins with the fundamental question: "Where are you talking about?" The 48-year-old strongly believes that geography is central to understanding and deciphering today's world, swirling in ongoing wars, trade tensions, climate pressures, and technological disruptions.