I first came across Airmap as I was learning about them acting as the middle man for DJI drone updates via the Department of Interior. After this story, I added them to my database of companies that I track on. Then as I was monitoring my feeds I saw they were now working with IBM to get weather information for use by drone manufacturers, operators, and those impacted by drone activity.
Airmap positions themselves as "airspace Intelligence", offering low-altitude airspace management solution for unmanned aircraft. When you consider the drone as just one of many devices being connected to the Internet, the role intelligence providers like Airmap will play when it comes to system to system integrations, and web or mobile application development in each space--the company seems to be well-positioned for success in the drone industry.
Airmap is working hard to define the physical space, the constants, as well as some of the most ephemeral layers of our physical world like weather, forest fires, and events that are increasingly impacting our online reality via the web and our mobile phones. Airmap is aggregating valuable data, like the updates they get from the Department of Interior (open data) to the partner data like they will be ingesting like the weather data from IBM.
Airmap provides access to their flight conditions and other airspace data from Airspace via API(s), and has established some pretty significant manufacturer relationships, as well as open and partner data sources--providing the beginnings of a pretty interesting Internet of things business blueprint for what I'd consider to be a sort of API broker. When you consider the influence some of these API brokers have in the governance of airspace around nuclear power plants or even the Olympics, and govern an assortment of Internet-connected devices--the API opportunity appears to be pretty interesting.
