A new international collaboration will unlock the power of geospatial data to benefit people and planet by providing a platform for knowledge exchange and capacity building.

The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) – the Secretariat of the UN Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management’s (UN-GGIM) – and EuroGeographics, the international not-for-profit membership association for the European National Mapping, Cadastral and Land Registry Authorities, will work together to address key global challenges, specifically capacity development for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Signing the letter of collaboration between the two organisations, Stefan Schweinfest, Director, UNSD says: “We share a common goal of using the power of geospatial data to benefit society. The collaboration with EuroGeographics’ enables UN-GGIM to benefit from its extensive experience in maintaining knowledge exchange and capacity-building networks.”

“This will be an important contribution to UN-GGIM’s leadership in ensuring that geospatial information and resources are coordinated, maintained, accessible and able to be leveraged by Member States and society to find sustainable solutions for social, economic and environmental development.”

Colin Bray, President, EuroGeographics says: “EuroGeographics and its members place tremendous value on collaborating to find solutions to common challenges and to build capacity. This willingness to share experiences and best practice is central to the success of our knowledge exchange activities.”

“This collaboration recognises our extensive experience and expertise in facilitating knowledge exchange, and we are delighted to extend our extensive programme, including case studies, meetings, webinars and workshops, to the broader UN-GGIM community through this agreement.”

“Official digital mapping plays an important role in helping to address the key global and regional issues that affect society and the planet, such as poverty, climate change, sustainable development, a digital economy, migration, security and health.”

“As the national authorities for official geospatial reference data in Europe, high quality and reliability is the calling card of our members. In an ever-changing world, our members play an important and often critical role in helping to address global and regional issues that do not stop at borders and require collaboration and cooperation to ensure an effective global response.”

The collaboration will focus on common objectives, including:

• Sharing case studies demonstrating the power of geospatial information in addressing societal needs and challenges;
• Collaborating to develop knowledge exchange activities, including virtually, that promote and build capacity on items and topics that fall within the broad programme of UN-GGIM and the scope of EuroGeographics;
• Providing access to existing knowledge exchange libraries and knowledge bases to the wider global community; and
• Advocating, communicating and promoting the value and power of geospatial information for sustainable development and evidence-based decision making.

The collaboration agreement was signed during the recent twelfth session of UN-GGIM in New York, whereEuroGeographics confirmed its continuing commitment to helping to strengthen the global geospatial infrastructure.

EuroGeographics is an international not-for-profit organisation (AISBL/ IVZW under Belgian Law. BCE registration: 833 607 112) and the membership association for the European National Mapping, Cadastral and Land Registry Authorities.