The sector covered by EO4GEO employs and develops Earth Observation (EO) and Geographical Information (GI) technologies including remote & in-situ sensing, global positioning & navigation, spatial data infrastructures, data assimilation, geospatial analysis & modelling techniques, web cartography, etc., in a strong application-centric manner.

This new emerging EO*GI sector requires cross-cutting technical and managerial skills to handle geospatial technologies, in particular to:

• manage, transform and publish geospatial data
• process, integrate and analyse them, in order to derive new, application and user-oriented information
• present and visualise information products

The EO4GEO Blueprint is tackling present and future skills, knowledge and competences in at least three areas: (1) Data acquisition and sensing (active and passive remote sensing, buoys, weather stations, drones, data logging, positioning systems, human-based sensing, geotagged social media data, mobile phone data, volunteered GI, etc. ). (2) Data assimilation by geospatial technologies, incorporating non-spatial, statistical information (e.g., land ownership, air pollution, population characteristic, …) to produce added-value geospatial information products and services; (3) Application context and wider societal relevance in supporting policy implementation, process monitoring and impact assessment.

The following application domains directly benefit from EO*GI tools and services:

• Urban and spatial planning (smart cities)
• Real estate and building management (including indoor navigation)
• Environmental monitoring (land, ocean, air quality)
• Water and groundwater management
• Tourism and management of cultural heritage
• Management of assets and underground infrastructure
• Forest management, protected sites
• Agriculture (precision farming, food quality and security)
• Climate change (impact, mitigation)
• Hazard and disaster management
• Energy resources and raw materials
• Transport and mobility (multimodal transports)
• Safety and security (border monitoring, population displacement conflict mitigation)
• Public health

With the geospatial lens, there are strong links to more generic emerging digital technologies such as IoT, Digital Twins, data cubes, artificial intelligence, computer vision, machine learning, micro- and on-board sensor technology, immersive visualisation (virtual and augmented reality), etc.
By its nature the use of space geo-information data and derived information services is cross-sectoral with ties to “Digital” and “Space” from a technological perspective but tied as well to many of the other industrial ecosystems from an application point of view. The schema below visually demonstrates this cross-sectoral nature of Earth Observation, Geographical Information and geospatial technologies.

Moreover, this document from EARSC describes the markets user needs from other business sectors  and its relation with EO services.