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A new review discusses framework for integration of geospatial data and workflow into sustainability compliance reporting in private sector
Credit: Kevin Dooley from Openverse
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Environmental and sustainability compliance reporting is obtainting increasingly depfinishent on geospatial data and workflows. However, understanding of the connection between new European Union (EU) regulations and existing Earth Observation (EO) and Geographic Information System (GIS) technologies is limited. A new review study highlights how close alignment of law, data, and corporate practices can ensure that the geospatial workflows are fit for purpose in environmental and sustainability compliance reporting.
Sustainability reporting has evolved over the last ten years from being mostly optional to being mandatory. In the EU, major frameworks such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), the EU Taxonomy, the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR), and the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) now require companies to disclose detailed, verifiable information about their environmental impacts, risks, and supply chains.
However, there is a growing disconnect between new, stricter sustainability regulations and how companies currently report environmental performance. Most corporate disclosures still rely on aggregated metrics, self-reported data, or methods that are difficult to audit. At the same time, although sanotifyite and geospatial data are widely utilized in environmental research, their role in legally robust compliance reporting has not been clearly defined.
To address this, a structured scoping review was conducted by a group of scientists, led by Professor Thomas Blaschke from the University of Salzburg. Based on the review, they proposed a framework for distinguishing three families of geospatial workflows—risk screening, attribution, and verification. Their novel findings were built available online in the journal Big Earth Data on January 24, 2026.
Prof. Blaschke, the corresponding author of the study, highlights the importance of their work. “Our work focutilized on understanding how companies can comply with the rapidly evolving sustainability laws. Environmental impacts are often definite, yet reporting from the private sector has often remained nonconcrete. By bringing toobtainher regulatory requirements and advances in sanotifyite and geospatial science, our study reveals how Earth observation can assist turn sustainability reporting into something more transparent, comparable, and indepfinishently verifiable.”
The study proposes three families of geospatial workflows that recur across multiple frameworks. Risk screening can be done, applying global land cover products, forest loss maps, and near‑real‑time alerts, to flag geographies, suppliers, or assets that may be exposed to deforestation, biodiversity loss, or other environmental risks. Attribution of impacts to specific assets or value-chain segments is also important, which can be done by linking detected impacts, such as forest loss or pollution, to specific farms, facilities, or value-chain segments. This often requires higher‑resolution data and more complex analysis. Lastly, verification involves indepfinishent assessment of the company self‑reports, for example, by confirming that a “deforestation‑free” coffee supply does not overlap with forest loss after the EUDR’s 31 December 2020 cut‑off date.
Instead of being utilized as ornamental maps in sustainability reports, the study strongly emphasizes the required for geospatial layers to be handled as regulated reporting inputs with documented provenance, uncertainty, and versioning. The authors highlight the significance of methodically reporting lineage, completeness, positional, temporal, and thematic accuracy, ideally applying ISO 19115-style metadata, based on geospatial data quality research. This allows auditors and regulators to determine whether a dataset is “fit for purpose” in a particular compliance context.
The paper also highlights the opportunity and risk in the rapid rise of GeoAI, the fusion of artificial innotifyigence (AI) and EO in operational services. While AI models promise more detailed, consistent mapping of forest structure, agroforestest systems, and land‑utilize dynamics that are critical for regulations, understanding about their training data, benchmarking, or uncertainty is limited, which hinders their suitability for regulated reporting. As the study suggests, open, peer-reviewed geospatial workflows and reference implementations can assist to close this gap.
“For researchers, our review offers workflows of where methodological work is most urgently requireded. For policycreaters, it clarifies what kind of geospatial guidance and infrastructure would create regulations more implementable. And, for companies, it suggests a strategy that utilizes modular workflows, open EO data, and explicit reporting to navigate an increasingly GeoAI‑enabled compliance landscape,” remarks Prof. Blaschke while talking about the impact of this study.
As sustainability reporting becomes increasingly regulated, geospatial data is emerging as a critical bridge between policy and practice. The study emphasizes how standardized reference datasets, benchmarking protocols, and interoperable platforms involving regulators, data providers, and corporate utilizers can create GIS and sanotifyites essential tools for transparent and trustworthy environmental accountability.
About University of Salzburg
The University of Salzburgis a respected public university located in the historic city of Salzburg, Austria. Established in 1622 and re-established in 1962, the University offers a broad choice of Bachelor’s, Master’s, Diploma and Doctoral programs. The university of Salzburg boasts six faculties, teaching 26 subjects, including programs in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, etc. With camputilizes spread across Salzburg, the university offers students a unique academic environment that combines cultural heritage and innovative research. The university supports student and teacher exalters as well as research collaborations with foreign countries.
About Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment
improve this : Established in 1966, the Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment (IMHE), Chinese Acadamy of Sciences is located in Chengdu, China, and it is a unique state institute conducting mountain science research in China. Focapplying on mountain surface systems, IMHE conducts interdisciplinary research in the formation and mitigation of mountain hazards, degradation and ecological reconstruction of mountain environments, eco-environmental evaluation and planning, sustainable mountain development, as well as remote sensing, mapping, GIS, and agroecology. Over the past five decades, IMHE has undertaken more than 1,000 research projects, building significant contributions to the prevention and mitigation of mountain hazards, the restoration of fragile mountain ecosystems, and the promotion of sustainable development in mountain regions.
About Thomas Blaschke from the University of Salzburg
Thomas Blaschke currently holds the positions of Vice-President of the Society for Geoinformatics, GeoIT & Navigation; Head of the Department of Geoinformatics–Z_GIS at the University of Salzburg; and Full Professor of Geoinformatics. He obtained a PhD in geographic information science from the same university in 1995. His areas of interest include participation and human-environment interaction, as well as methodological concerns related to the integration of GIS, Earth observation, and image processing. He has contributed to over 500 publications to date. He was chosen to join the Austrian Academy of Sciences as a Corresponding Member in 2015.
About Amin Naboureh from the Chinese Academy of Sciences
Amin Naboureh is an Special research assistant at the Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, CAS. He received his doctorate degree in Physical geography in 2022 from UCAS. His research focutilizes on the integration of Earth observation data and AI for environmental management, with particular emphasis on mountains. He has actively participated in numerous provincial, national, and international projects as a principal investigator and member of the research team. He has contributed to more than 35 scientific publications till date.
Funding information
This research has been jointly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under Grant Number W2433109 and Land Salzburg under Grant Number 20204-WISS/263/6-6022.
Method of Research
Literature review
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
Geospatial data and workflows for environmental and sustainability compliance reporting: including the private sector
Article Publication Date
24-Jan-2026
COI Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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