The Center for Data Innovation recently spoke with Stefano Grassi, CEO of Gilytics, a Switzerland-based company providing a geospatial planning platform for infrastructure projects. Grassi explained how Gilytics uses spatial data, optimization algorithms, and 3D visualizations to help organizations plan and evaluate routes and sites for energy infrastructure projects.
David Kertai: What problem is Gilytics solving?
Stefano Grassi: Today’s clean energy transition requires a massive expansion of transmission lines, substations, renewable energy facilities, and storage, yet planning processes have not kept pace. In Europe, more than 1,700 gigawatts of renewable capacity is waiting for grid connection, roughly three times the amount needed to meet 2030 climate targets. In North America, transmission projects can take many years, and in some cases more than a decade, to move from initial planning to commissioning. Much of that delay begins during the early feasibility and permitting stages, when teams must manually assemble geographic data and develop recommendations that regulators, landowners, and communities may struggle to evaluate.
Gilytics addresses this challenge by making infrastructure planning more standardized and transparent. Our Pathfinder platform helps organizations evaluate potential locations and routes using a consistent methodology, making it easier to compare alternatives and explain planning decisions to regulators and other stakeholders.
Kertai: How does your platform help organizations plan infrastructure projects?
Grassi: Pathfinder is a cloud-based spatial planning platform designed for linear and point infrastructure, including transmission lines, underground cables, substations, pipelines, wind and solar plants, battery storage, and data centers. It replaces the fragmented combination of geographic information system (GIS) tools, spreadsheets, and manual sketches that many planning teams still use.
Project teams can bring environmental, technical, regulatory, and social constraints into a single workspace, assign weights to those factors, and generate potential routes or sites. Pathfinder also includes a maintained GIS data foundation that Gilytics continually updates, reducing the time teams spend assembling geographic information.
Users can generate and compare scenarios in 2D and 3D, evaluate trade-offs, and share results with regulators, landowners, and communities through a browser-based interface that does not require specialized GIS expertise. Pathfinder also integrates with widely used GIS systems, such as Esri ArcGIS Pro, allowing planners to use its algorithms within a familiar environment.
Kertai: How does Pathfinder turn geospatial data into potential routes and sites?
Grassi: Pathfinder uses a method called Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, which evaluates options by weighing multiple factors against one another, combined with least-cost path algorithms that identify routes with the lowest overall impact or cost. The platform can analyze hundreds of spatial data layers, including terrain, land use, hydrology, and settlement patterns.
Pathfinder assigns each layer a configurable weight that reflects how strongly it should influence route or site selection. Those weights can change based on the project’s location, technology, and regulatory requirements. For example, a Canadian transmission project may account for Canadian planning laws and Indigenous consultation requirements, while a Swiss project may incorporate federal and cantonal rules.
The platform combines these inputs into a heat map showing areas with greater or fewer constraints. It then generates optimized corridors or ranked site alternatives and provides indicators such as route length, estimated cost, and engineering considerations. Users can trace each recommendation back to the data and weights that produced it rather than relying on a black-box output.
Kertai: How does Gilytics help stakeholders compare infrastructure alternatives?
Grassi: Infrastructure planning often requires balancing competing priorities. A shorter route may pass closer to homes, while a cheaper route may cross sensitive habitat. An underground cable can reduce visual impacts but significantly increase construction costs. Pathfinder allows planners to evaluate these trade-offs systematically rather than relying on narrative comparisons.
Planners can create multiple scenarios by changing factors, such as the relative importance of different constraints or whether infrastructure runs above or below ground. Pathfinder then evaluates each scenario using the same indicators, making the alternatives directly comparable.
The platform can also incorporate constraints that conventional GIS workflows may not capture easily. For instance, in collaboration with Canadian environmental planning partners, we have developed methods that use grid-based datasets to incorporate community priorities while protecting sensitive information. These capabilities allow teams to show regulators, landowners, and communities how alternatives perform and why they selected a particular option.
Kertai: How do you ensure that Pathfinder’s recommendations are accurate and reliable?
Grassi: Pathfinder includes a maintained, multi-country geospatial database covering environmental designations, land use, protected areas, infrastructure, and jurisdiction-specific constraints. Customers can also add their own datasets. Where authoritative national or provincial data exists, Gilytics integrates it directly, including through Pathfinder’s integration with ArcGIS Pro. Where such data is unavailable, the company works with local partners to keep regional information current.
The routing methodology is transparent and reproducible. Given the same inputs and weights, Pathfinder produces the same results, which supports regulatory review. The platform also records each constraint layer, weighting decision, and scenario revision in an audit trail. In the United States, Pathfinder follows the structure of a methodology developed by the Electric Power Research Institute for identifying optimal infrastructure corridors and routes.
Researchers and industry experts have also reviewed the methodology at multiple conferences, including CIGRE, an international forum for power-systems research and collaboration. Gilytics also spun out of ETH Zurich after seven years of research and development with grid operators and permitting authorities.
