The Changing Landscape of Geospatial Information Markets

We live in an increasingly global, connected and digital world. In less than a decade or so, fast developments in digital technologies, such as the Cloud, Internet, wireless network, and most importantly mobile telephony, have dramatically changed the way we work, live and play. Rapid advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) foster a new world of cross-disciplinary data-intensive research characterised by openness, transparency, access to large volume of complex data, availability of community open tools, unprecedented level of computing power, and new collaboration among researchers and new actors such as citizen scientists. Identifying and understanding the key drivers of change in the data economy and EO sector (including technological, human, cultural and legal factors) is essential to providing context on which to build an EO strategy for the twenty-first century. The emergence of cloud computing is already transforming the way we access and exploit data. This has led to a paradigm shift in the way to distribute and process data, and in creating platforms that drive innovation and growth in user applications.