With World Standards Day on 14 October approaching, it is worth recognising the contribution of ISO/TC 211 Geographic Information/Geomatics, the international committee responsible for developing the standards that underpin the global geospatial ecosystem.

Many people interact with maps, navigation systems and location-enabled services every day without realising that international standards make this interoperability possible. For more than 30 years, ISO/TC 211 has provided the foundation for consistent geospatial data through standards covering metadata, data quality, reference systems, application schemas, web services and interoperability.

One of its most significant contributions has been in metadata, enabling organisations to describe geospatial data consistently so that it can be discovered, understood, trusted and reused. These standards remain fundamental to Spatial Data Infrastructures, national data-sharing initiatives and the FAIR principles.

ISO/TC 211 has also played a major role in land administration, supporting the standardisation of land, property and rights information. This helps governments, businesses and citizens manage land resources more effectively and transparently.

Looking forward, the committee is increasingly focused on some of society’s biggest challenges. Geospatial information is essential for understanding and responding to climate change, while standards for data quality, provenance, semantics and interoperability are becoming increasingly important in preparing trusted geospatial data for artificial intelligence applications.