The significance of open geospatial data has been acknowledged on an EU and national level through several grassroots initiatives and efforts.

As a whole, the project’s impact will be to accelerate the establishment of a data economy in the EU for open geospatial data, and the materialization of its tangible benefits: innovative and lower cost products, value added services and applications, new business models based on data-intensive applications and intelligent data analysis. The project addresses the specific needs of the data economy stakeholders in relation to open geospatial data reuse.

Private sector

The private sector and specifically SMEs, web-entrepreneurs and self-employed professionals, will have access to high value open geospatial data and reusable, cost effective software components and services, readily available for integration in value added applications. This can lead to significant efficiency gains, reduced implementation time, lower product/services costs, and overall higher quality services.

These benefits are almost instantly attained because they translate to nullifying procurement/production/curation costs for necessary data. Further, simpler tools, software components and services that hide the complexities of geospatial data management and lower the technical entry barrier (similar to Google Maps), can lead to greater adoption of open geospatial data in commercial applications. This can empower creative individuals, support rapid experimentation, drive innovation and deliver new products.

Beyond supporting current companies, open geospatial data can lead to new commercial activities and services, focused on large scale, data-intensive innovation. This is an area where EU excellence is expected to dominate the world economy in the following decade, and is fully supported by the project.

Public sector

For the public sector on an EU, national, and regional level, the application of efficient geospatial data publishing methods and tools can lead to economical, efficiency, and policy benefits. Easier discovery and reuse of open geospatial data can result to increased administrative efficiency, de facto technical and semantic interoperability, increased quality of information, and overall reduced costs.

By openly releasing geospatial data, the public sector strengthens its democratic composure, gaining transparency and accountability. Better policy planning and decision making is also strengthened through inclusive citizen participation, and evidence-based policy/administration.