Léa Bodossian

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Demonstrating the Power of Geospatial

BY LÉA BODOSSIAN

Secretary-General & Executive Director, EuroGeographics necessary statistics, and implementing them efficiently.

Addressing key challenges When it comes to Open Maps for Europe, the challenge is that not all datasets are open at the same level within Europe. So, we had to issue licensing agreements and pay to ensure that the data was available with uniformity. It’s a financial challenge and we had to review our agreements with many of our partners. This is an issue that brings into question the issue of long-term sustainability. We know about the power of ‘where’ and are confident that the data we are providing is going to be beneficial to the entire society.

I was trained as a geographer and I feel that geographers have things to say that are extremely interesting and useful for the world. However, they are not good at saying those things, so we should be demonstrating the power of geospatial data in a way that everybody can understand. As far as policymaking is concerned, the biggest challenge is to make people realize that every time a policy is developed or implemented, there is going to be an element of ‘geo’ in it.

Visualization and emerging tech An important part of information sharing is to ensure that the language is common and easy, so that it can be understood both by policymakers and the public. This is where visualization comes in, and it has tremendous power. Someone has rightly said that ‘one good image is better than explaining 100 times.’ Thus, visualization is a very significant tool to make data understandable by all.

With members creating and processing more and more data, EuroGeographics aims to support them by providing ways to share experiences of using technologies that enable visualization of this information. There are still maps of course but there also many new ways of presenting geospatial data to gain insight and value — from Digital Twins to Metaverses — all of which require a different mindset.

We are committed to supporting our members with the tools and knowledge to maximize their understanding so that society as a whole can benefit from exciting new ways of visualizing their data.

EuroGeographics is the not-for-profit association for European National Mapping, Cadastral and Land Registry Authorities. Its members cover the whole of geographical Europe — from Iceland to Russia and from Norway to Azerbaijan. It’s a coalition of official national sources of geospatial information that is willing to exchange best practices and knowledge.

We have recently launched a gateway called Open Maps for Europe, through which we are making available three of our key datasets that are pan-European and are made of official authoritative data from our member organizations. This is an important project that delivers trusted data and will conclude at the end of 2022. It’s co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility of the European Union. We are doing this because our members believe in the power of ‘where’. Data is essential to support public policies in terms of designing them, accessing the

The biggest challenge in policymaking is to make people realize that every time a policy is developed or implemented, there is going to be an element of ‘geo’ in it.