Current open data systems lag behind in their promised value creation and sustainability. The objective of the current study is twofold: 1) to investigate whether existing open data systems meet the requirements of open data ecosystems, and 2) to develop a research agenda that discusses the gaps between current open data systems on the one hand and participatory, value-creating, sustainable open data ecosystems on the other hand. The literature reveals that the main characteristics of value-creating, sustainable open data ecosystems are user-drivenness, inclusiveness, circularity, and skill-based. Our comparative case study of five open data systems in various application domains and countries highlighted that none of these systems are real open data ecosystems: they often do not balance open data supply and demand, exclude specific user groups and domains, are linear, and lack skill-training. We elaborate on a research agenda that discusses how research should address the challenge of making open data ecosystems more value-generating and sustainable.

Geospatial information infrastructures (GIIs) provide the technological, semantic, organizational and legal structure that allow for the discovery, sharing, and use of geospatial information (GI). In this chapter, we introduce the overall concept and surrounding notions such as geographic information systems (GIS) and spatial data infrastructures (SDI). We outline the history of GIIs in terms of the organizational and technological developments as well as the current state-of-art, and reflect on some of the central challenges and possible future trajectories. We focus on the tension between increased needs for standardization and the ever-accelerating technological changes. We conclude that GIIs evolved as a strong underpinning contribution to implementation of the Digital Earth vision. In the future, these infrastructures are challenged to become flexible and robust enough to absorb and embrace technological transformations and the accompanying societal and organizational implications. With this contribution, we present the reader a comprehensive overview of the field and a solid basis for reflections about future developments.

A body of knowledge (BoK) is an inventory of knowledge or concepts of a domain that serves as a reference vocabulary for various purposes, such as the development of curricula, the preparation of job descriptions, and the description of occupational profiles. To fulfill its purpose, a BoK needs to be up‐to‐date and ideally widely accepted by academia as well as the private and public sectors. This article presents the initiative taken in the Earth observation and geographic information (EO*GI) domain to provide a current, comprehensive education‐ and business‐oriented EO*GI BoK called EO4GEO BoK. In particular, an approach to strengthen the business‐oriented perspective in the EO4GEO BoK is presented. This approach is based on the analysis of professional tasks and the mapping of these tasks to concepts and skills contained in the BoK. A critical reflection of the proposed approach that is based on the experiences gained during a workshop complements this article.