Al Gore (1998) formulated the vision of a Digital Earth, which efficiently communicates information on virtually any subject to a broad audience using space as the organizing principle. This vision has partly become true with developments such as Google Earth and a series of initiatives that promote the exchange of spatial data (Craglia et al, 2008): e.g. the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE) (INSPIRE, 2011); the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) aims at interlinking Earth observation data and resources across nine societal benefit areas (SBAs) globally (GEO, 2011).