The COVID-19 pandemic has made one thing clear: along with food, shelter and water, hyperconnectivity is now considered the latest basic human need that society today would struggle to exist without.

The priorities and agendas of governments planning for smart cities in a post-pandemic world are evolving, with budgets being modified and redirected to better meet the needs of citizens in highly urbanized environments.

In the not too distant future, the Asia-Pacific region will host the majority of the world's largest cities, and to run efficiently and sustainably, these cities must be designed smarter and with hyperconnectivity at their core.

The first level urbanization likely to follow the pandemic will see a new way of thinking, a new way of securing resources, mobility, high precision data, and a culture of high productivity – dependent on the city and its citizens' needs.

Hyperconnectivity is in our future, affecting all industries, with its effects most prominent in the automotive industry. From the way cars are made and marketed to the way they are driven and maintained, every part of the automotive industry now requires and generates more data in response to higher consumer expectations, especially related to convenience and safety.

At the heart of this hyperconnected revolution in mobility is location data.

Read more: HERE's urban mobility expert shares her vision for 2021.

In this new digital era, new trends have risen, and the automotive and mobility landscape continues to evolve. Connectivity and convergence are turning cars into digital platforms. From ridesharing to personal mobility, from manual to self-driving, and from street maps to an all-encompassing index of reality, location-enabled mobility services will play a critical part in setting us toward an autonomous world, simplifying our day-to-day needs.

Location technology connects people, places, and things together. It lends context to the user experience journey, through answering questions such as where a location is, how can users arrive there efficiently, what they might encounter along the way and when they will arrive. These historical patterns and analytics help build clear perspective, ensuring that location technology is a key enabler in an evolving automotive industry.

Read more: Sydney – the world's first truly multimodal city.

From providing a next-generation digital experience in the cockpit, to providing a marketplace to control payments, to providing a dedicated electric and automated driving platform as the data control points and enabling an eCommerce experience throughout the entire lifecycle of the vehicle, location technology is set to define the automotive industry. Mobility systems and autonomous driving will be the next great innovation of our time, and location technologies will be the key driver moving this forward.

Get in the driver's seat to understand new trends, challenges and opportunities for location-enabled services in an era of hyperconnectivity.