“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].

In order to make an initial assessment of the state, EuroSDR initialized in April 2025 a small project[5] on Ethics in the production and use of geospatial data, 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).

A first step was completed with an online survey run from June to September 2025.

Now EuroSDR invites the NMCAs, researchers and professors, the industry to present, discuss and share their experiences of Geo-Ethics during a dedicated lunch-to-lunch workshop on 9 and 10 March 2026 hosted by KU Leuven and supported by FIG Commission Professional Education. Issues and topics that will be covered during this workshop are:

• 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