Why Europe needs its own geospatial softwares – and why Open Source is part of the answer

Imagine you're a city planner in a small German municipality. You’re preparing a mobility concept, analysing walking accessibility around schools, or exploring demographic trends. Everything you do relies on digital tools — tools that quietly shape the decisions affecting thousands of people.

Now imagine that the core of these tools — the algorithms, the data pipelines, the cloud infrastructure — sits inside a black box owned and governed far outside Europe. The interface may be translated into German. The sales team may be based in Munich or Vienna. But the real power — the code, the standards, the long-term control — lives elsewhere.

This isn’t just a technical issue. It’s a matter of trust, transparency, and digital sovereignty.

Why European geospatial software matters now

Across Europe, the conversation about digital sovereignty has shifted from theory to urgent reality. In November 2025, a high-level EU summit on digital sovereignty was held in Berlin. The motivation is clear: Europe is heavily dependent on foreign technology. An estimated 80% of all digital technologies used in the EU are imported, the vast majority from the US and China. According to DW, only 4 of the world’s 50 largest tech companies are European — a figure that underscores the imbalance.

In the geospatial sector, the dependency is even more pronounced. The US dominates both geospatial software and geospatial AI. Even public institutions in Germany and across Europe rely almost entirely on proprietary tools such as ArcGIS. In the event of political tensions or commercial restrictions, this could quickly become a serious operational risk, highlighting the need for resilient, locally controlled solutions.

Much of Europe’s dependence on foreign geospatial software didn’t happen by accident, it was the result of convenience. Tools were fast, well-funded, and easy to adopt. Planners and municipalities optimized for speed and functionality, not realizing that over time this convenience would become lock-in. We moved from choosing platforms to relying on them, and entire planning workflows now depend on systems governed far outside Europe.

European institutions need tools that align with European legal frameworks, values, and long-term public-sector interests — not just global market logic. That is the context in which European geospatial platforms like GOAT are built:

They follow EU data-protection standards by design.
They support local planning processes and administrative realities, not only global enterprise use cases.
They evolve within European research ecosystems, funding structures, and public-sector requirements.

In other words: they speak the same language as the people who use them.

Why openness matters for Europe’s geospatial future

The challenge is not only that Europe depends heavily on external technologies — it’s that most of these technologies are proprietary, and closed. Proprietary software is not only a technical model, it also concentrates decision-making control in the hands of a few providers. Whoever controls the code controls the standards, the workflows, and eventually the decisions built on top of them. In geospatial software, this dependence is especially visible. US-based platforms like ArcGIS have shaped planning workflows for decades, creating quiet dependencies that accumulate over time.

Vendor lock-in is one of them. When data, workflows, and integrations are bound to a closed ecosystem, switching becomes expensive and risky. Over time, the tool becomes the rule, not because it is the best solution, but because leaving it feels impossible.

Transparency is another concern. Many planning processes rely on black-box algorithms, invisible data pipelines, and update cycles beyond public control. For institutions responsible for democratic decision-making, this opacity is a real vulnerability. If a map informs a mobility concept or a housing strategy, planners should be able to understand how it was produced.

Pricing adds further pressure. Proprietary geospatial tools are already expensive, and when a single company dominates the market, licence costs can rise unpredictably. For many small and mid-sized municipalities, these prices are becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. This creates a paradox: public institutions invest public money into tools they cannot fully understand, influence, or preserve, effectively renting their core digital infrastructure instead of owning it. If Europe wants reliable and future-proof digital foundations for planning, its geospatial tools must be transparent, interoperable, and free from single-provider dependency.

Open-source geospatial tools offer a fundamentally different model. Openness ensures full transparency: every method, every calculation, every decision in the code can be inspected. It guarantees interoperability, because open standards allow geodata and analyses to move freely between tools. It provides long-term stability, since the software is not tied to the business model of a single company. And it ensures that public value stays public: when research or public funding contributes to an open-source project, the benefits return to society rather than being locked inside a private monopoly.

Where GOAT fits into this shift

GOAT is part of this shift. It represents a European approach to geospatial technology — transparent, open, and aligned with digital sovereignty. We are expanding our platform with a clear intention: to provide a European, open, future-proof alternative to closed WebGIS ecosystems like ArcGIS Online. That means full transparency toward our users: every method, every calculation, and every data flow in GOAT is openly documented and inspectable. Development is driven by European municipalities, researchers, and planners. No black boxes. No lock-in. Resilience is built in: even if a vendor or provider changes strategy, the tools and data remain under local control. A commitment to openness not just as a technical choice, but as a public value.

Because the maps that shape Europe’s cities should be built on foundations Europe can trust, understand, and control.

A final thought

Europe is investing heavily in digital sovereignty — but real sovereignty doesn’t happen through policy alone. It happens through the tools we choose every day.

If planners choose European, open, transparent platforms, they strengthen not only their own workflows but the digital backbone of public planning across the continent.

The future of geospatial technology in Europe will be shaped by the choices we make now.