Overview
Testbed Europe is an emerging Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) initiative exploring how Europe’s geospatial ecosystem can evolve to meet rapidly changing technical, policy, and operational demands. Building on OGC’s proven testbed model, it provides a neutral, standards-based environment where public authorities, industry, and stakeholders can jointly explore new approaches before they become operational commitments. The initiative is being shaped collaboratively with National Mapping Agencies (NMAs), European institutions, industry, and security stakeholders, including NATO.
The Challenge
Europe’s authoritative geospatial infrastructures face mounting pressures: requirements for timeliness and cross-border consistency are increasing; defense and dual-use needs are intersecting more strongly with civil systems; cloud computing, APIs, and AI are transforming data production and access; and NMAs face capacity constraints while maintaining quality, governance, and public trust. Testbed Europe addresses these challenges pragmatically and collectively, offering a safe environment to test new technologies while managing risk and maintaining sovereignty.
What Makes Testbed Europe Different?
Testbed Europe is not a procurement program or policy instrument. It is exploratory, focused on learning through experimentation rather than prescribing outcomes. It is policy-aware, aligned with EU frameworks including INSPIRE, the Data Governance Act, and the EU AI Act. It is neutral, convened by OGC using open standards and transparent processes that reduce vendor lock-in and keep NMAs in control. It is incremental, testing ideas at a manageable scale, and it respects sovereignty, strengthening national authorities rather than bypassing them.
Eight Thematic Focus Areas
Current discussions span eight interconnected areas, which may be addressed individually or in combination:
- Automated Pan-European Map Production: Exploring how increased automation and modern architectures can support faster, more consistent cross-border map production while preserving authoritative quality.
- Hybrid Cloud Architectures: Examining patterns that combine on-premise control with cloud scalability, in line with sovereignty, security, and regulatory requirements.
- Evolving Defense Requirements and Dual-Use Integration: Addressing the growing overlap between civil and defense use cases, including multi-sensor integration and time-sensitive data flows.
- Transition from Legacy Web Services to Modern APIs: Supporting an evolutionary shift toward API-centric access while maintaining compatibility with existing OGC services.
- Sustainable Access Models for Authoritative Data: Exploring approaches inspired by the Wikimedia Enterprise model to balance open access with high-performance industrial use and long-term sustainability.
- Advanced Interoperability and Semantic Consistency: Applying OGC’s interoperability methodology to address semantic consistency across domains and systems.
- Artificial Intelligence and AI-Ready Data: Focusing on data quality, documentation, provenance, and governance as prerequisites for responsible and reproducible AI use.
- Human Resources and Capacity Constraints: Leveraging the broader OGC ecosystem to complement NMA capabilities without requiring immediate organizational change.
Alignment with EU Policy
Testbed Europe aligns closely with EU goals for a secure, interoperable Single Market for data and digital services. It supports the European Strategy for Data, the Data Governance Act, the Open Data Directive, and INSPIRE requirements for cross-border spatial data infrastructure. The initiative’s focus on hybrid cloud adoption, defense synergies, API modernization, and AI governance directly supports EU priorities for digital sovereignty, resilient infrastructure, and responsible innovation.
Current Status and Next Steps
Testbed Europe was discussed intensively at iDays in Bad Nauheim (December 2025) with representatives from NMAs across Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, Iceland, Finland, and other countries, plus NATO headquarters and European institutions. These discussions confirmed strong interest in Testbed Europe as a safe space to explore cloud architectures, APIs, AI, and dual-use requirements.
The initiative now moves forward with two key milestones: a February 2026 follow-up meeting (coordinated with EuroGeographics) to deepen discussions and scope pilot activities, and the OGC Member Meeting in Helsinki (week of June 1st, 2026) to finalize priorities and establish participation models.
Who Should Engage?
Testbed Europe is relevant to:
- National Mapping and Cadastre Authorities
- European institutions and agencies
- Defense and security stakeholders with civil–military interfaces
- Industry and technology providers
- Research organizations and standards experts
Participation offers an opportunity to shape the conversation early without implying endorsement of specific outcomes.
Join the Conversation
Input and engagement from across the geospatial community are essential to ensuring Testbed Europe remains relevant, balanced, and practically useful. To contribute or learn more, please contact Muthu Kumar at mkumar@ogc.org.