5. Conclusions

We live in a globalized world, where processes such as climate change, land cover and population growth are evolving rapidly and impacting the environment. At the same time, the means of communication have evolved and taken on a remarkable role in our society, giving us access to an enormous and continuous flow of information, particularly in the environmental field.

Our planet is a multidimensional system made up of complex, highly interconnected interactions that are constantly evolving on many spatial and temporal scales. To understand these interactions, we need to collect and integrate diverse data on physical, chemical, biological and socio-economic properties. Together, these data sets constitute environmental or environment-related data. These data are often georeferenced, describing a geographical location through a set of attributes, and can therefore...