All over the world, organizations are increasingly considering the adoption of open source software and open data. In the geospatial domain, this is no different, and the last few decades have seen significant advances in this regard. We review the current state of open source geospatial software, focusing on the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) software ecosystem and its communities, as well as three kinds of open geospatial data (collaboratively contributed, authoritative and scientific). The current state confirms that openness has changed the way in which geospatial data are collected, processed, analyzed, and visualized. A perspective on future developments, informed by responses from professionals in key organizations in the global geospatial community, suggests that open source geospatial software and open geospatial data are likely to have an even more profound impact in the future.

Geographic information metadata provides a detailed description of geographic information resources. Well before digital data emerged, metadata were shown in the margins of paper maps to inform the reader of the name of the map, the scale, the orientation of the magnetic North, the projection used, the coordinate systems, the legend, and so on. Metadata were used to communicate practical information for the proper use of maps. When geographic information entered the digital era with geographic information systems, metadata was also collected digitally to describe datasets and the dataset collections for various purposes. Initially, metadata were collected and saved in digital files by data producers for their own specific needs. The sharing of geographic datasets that required producers to provide metadata with the dataset to guide proper use of the dataset—map scale, data sources, extent, datum, coordinate reference system, etc. Because of issues with sharing and no common understanding of metadata requirements, the need for metadata standardization was recognized by the geographic information community worldwide. The ISO technical committee 211 was created in 1994 with the scope of standardization in the field of digital geographic information to support interoperability. In the early years of the committee, standardization of metadata was initiated for different purposes, which culminated in the ISO 19115:2003 standard. Now, there are many ISO Geographic information standards that covers the various aspect of geographic information metadata. This paper traces an illustration of the development and evolution of the requirements and international standardization activities of geographic information metadata standards, profiles and resources, and how these attest to facilitating the discovery, evaluation, and appropriate use of geographic information in various contexts.

With the increasing use of geographical information and technology in a variety of knowledge domains and disciplines, the need to discover and access suitable geospatial data is imperative. Most spatial data infrastructures (SDI) provide geoportals as entry points to the SDI through which geospatial data are disseminated and shared. Geoportals are often known in geoinformation communities only, and they present technological challenges for indexing by web search engines. To overcome these challenges, we identified and categorized search terms typically employed by users when looking for geospatial resources on the Web. Guided by these terms, we published metadata about geospatial sources “directly” on the Web and performed empirical tests with search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. Two sets of HTML pages were prepared and registered with Google and Bing respectively. The metadata in one set was marked up with Dublin Core, the other with Schema.org. Analysis of the results shows that Google was more effective than Bing in retrieving the pages. Pages marked up with Schema.org were more effectively retrieved than those marked up with Dublin Core. The statistical results were significant in most of the tests performed. This research confirms that pages marked up with Schema.org and Dublin Core are a novel alternative for improving the visibility and facilitating the discovery of geospatial resources on the Web.