Project on Geo-Ethics

Concept note – 23 April 2025

“Having access to the right data and at the right time is crucial to good decision-making. (…) good data underpins good decisions.” claims the United Nations Integrated Geospatial Information Framework (UN-IGIF)[1]. By good data, IGIF means notably “data accuracy” and “authoritative data”, and first thoughts go to data quality and up-to-date data base. The tragic NATO Chinese embassy bombing in May 1999 in Belgrade is a famous example of update failure: “the target was checked against a "no-strike" database of locations such as hospitals, churches, and embassies, but this raised no alarm as the embassy was listed at its old address.”[2]

On the opposite side, too more detailed and accurate data could rise privacy issues, directly or after a re-identification treatment (research works demonstrated for instance that knowing/processing date of birth, location (Public Use Microdata Area -PUMA- code), marital status, and gender uniquely identify was sufficient in the USA to identify 80% of people[3]). In Chile during COVID-19 pandemic, “some television reports and social networks at the beginning of the pandemic, in Chile, for example, showed information on the spatial distribution of new cases. This drew attention to the issue of privacy of personal data and ethics in the use of such information”[4].

The rises, in one hand of machine learning and AI use in geodata acquisition and processing, and availability in the other hand of more and more geodata (notably thanks to/because open data, IoT etc.) have boosted this last years the awareness of ethics concerns. Industry have adopted Ethics charts or principles[5], organised panel discussions[6], Keynotes during user conference[7], etc. Initiatives came also from learned societies such as American Geographical Society with its EthicalGEO initiative and Locus Charter, an international set of principles and guidance for the ethical use of location data[8]. Although the concept emerged in Americas, Ordnance Survey Great Britain joined it quickly, becoming the first (and only?) national mapping and cadastral agency (NMCA) in Europe to engage and go public[9].

In a recent workshop on Data Ecosystems and Spatial Data Infrastructure (December 2023, Copenhagen, Denmark)[10], it was underlined that “data governance should become more inclusive, from FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) to CARE (Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, Ethics) principles”, testifying of the emergence of ethics.

At the same time, French National Council for Geolocated Information (CNIG) set up a workgroup dealing with ethics of the use of geolocated data and information[11]. Its first deliverable, published in April 2025, is a draft guide to good practices for processing geolocated data, opened to comments.

So, was Geo-Ethics just a hype in 2019, and has been swiped by security and sovereignty concerns with the raise of threats of any kind and crisis? Or, US U-turn on data in general will spark renewed interest on Data-Ethic, included Geo-Ethics (see for example the controversy on geonaming of Gulf of Mexico/America)?

In order to make an initial assessment, EuroSDR is initiating a small project on Geo-Ethics, aiming to assess the level of awareness and practice of Geo-Ethics in Education, data production and data reuse. The project’s objective is also, as a first milestone of a potential new research action, to be able in the future to identify trends (in a barometer survey approach with a first round in 2025). The project will be based on two key moments: first, a double survey (one questionnaire fit for Education and another one fit for professionals), and, second, a workshop which will bring together the NMCAs, researchers and professors, the industry to present, discuss and share their experiences of Geo-Ethics. Issues and topics that will be covered during this workshop are:

·         Is Geo-Ethics in its trigger phase or a 2020’s hype swiped away by security and sovereignty concerns, with the raise of threats of any kind and crisis?

·         State of the art / level of awareness of Geo-Ethics from Education

·         State of the art / level of awareness of Geo-Ethics from the data producer’s perspective (NMCAs, industrials etc)

·         State of the art / level of awareness of Geo-Ethics from the data reusers perspective

·         Best practices and lessons learned

·         ….

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