Geospatial data is the cornerstone of any application, service, and product even remotely related to our physical surroundings. From navigation applications and social networks, to tourism and logistics, geospatial data assets are the core foundations, enablers and value multipliers of our physical and digital economy.
Despite the significance of geospatial data for our Data Economy, an assessment of the current market landscape reveals a gap between policy intentions and subsequent industrial uptake. Open data policies have been an immense success, increasing transparency and accountability, while feeding the industry with low-cost geospatial data that were previously unattainable.
However, the early enthusiasm did not materialize into tangible value for the private sector, due to the limitations of open geospatial data in terms of quality, coverage, timeliness, and actual total cost of ownership.
The subsequent rise in demand for high-quality geospatial data assets has not reached proprietary geospatial data owners, which at large continue with their previous clientele and business offerings.
The market of geospatial data owners and consumers on an EU setting remains disjoint and fragmented, with assets difficult to discover, assess, obtain, and integrate in a cross-domain, cross-border, and cross-lingual manner from most prospective consumers of the geospatial value chain. The Digital Single Market for geospatial data is unfortunately not a reality, as one can simply observe by the dominance of non-EU stakeholders in geospatial information provision. This status quo demands an EU-wide intervention targeted on delivering a Digital Single Market for proprietary geospatial data, addressing the heterogeneity, disparity, and fragmentation of geospatial data products in a cross-border and inclusive manner.
Our goal is inspired by, and grounded on, the real-world landscape and industry-led challenges of the fragmented geospatial data value chain in the EU, the most valuable and foundational thematic area of proprietary data, aiming to deliver a critical missing component and enabler for EU’s Data Economy. The output of our work will go beyond the simple provision of an Industrial Data Platform, ensuring its sustainable operation after the end of the project.
OpertusMundi has delivered topio.market a trusted, secure, and highly scalable pan-European industrial geospatial data market, which will act as a single-point for the streamlined and trusted discovery, sharing, trading, remuneration, and use of proprietary geospatial data assets, guaranteeing low-cost and flexibility to accommodate current and emerging needs of Data Economy stakeholders regardless of size, domain, and expertise.
