A short interview with Dr Szabolcs Rózsa
An interview with Dr. Szabolcs Rózsa, Dean of the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, which is hosting the first International Spatial Data Conference on 8th of October 2026, organised by the Lechner Knowledge Center.
What are the most essential requirements for building a successful national spatial data ecosystem?
I believe that, amongst the most important technological prerequisites, we must mention standardisation, ensuring product quality control, and establishing the technological infrastructure to guarantee widespread access. While it appears that anyone can produce geospatial data; however, spatial data-driven decision-making can only be based on quality-assured and reliable sources. For this reason, I consider the development of education to be of key importance for the establishment of a spatial data ecosystem.
What makes cooperation successful in the geospatial sector?
The production of geospatial data involves significant costs and, in most cases, requires specialised knowledge, including sector-specific expertise. Duplicate data production is redundant and wasteful. Therefore, dividing tasks yields more efficient and professionally better solutions. At the same time, standardization is critical for the linked usage and analysis of geospatial data. The simplest example is the question of location. In the age of GPS, we assume this is easily answered. However, there can be discrepancies of up to several meters between different coordinate reference systems, a spatial offset that is already critical for sensitive technologies like autonomous vehicles. Furthermore, as our planet dynamically changes, these discrepancies continue to grow. Meanwhile, advancing technological tools create a strong temptation to perform every task ourselves. For this reason, I believe professional organizations and the government bear a particular responsibility to continuously promote a culture of collaboration, encouraging governmental, educational, and market actors to cooperate, as this is what can lay the foundations of a true ecosystem. I also consider the implementation of an open data policy to be of paramount importance. Ensuring data access contributes greatly to the continuous and dynamic growth of the geospatial data location intelligence market; by analyzing data, we can create new data products, where innovative enterprises and startups can also play a significant role. Due to the high initial costs of producing geospatial data, neither their development nor the emergence of new innovative products can be realized without an open data policy.
What is the biggest challenge today in making spatial data more accessible and widely reusable?
I believe that ensuring the technological infrastructure is becoming less of a challenge. In my view, three fundamental challenges must be resolved to achieve this. The first is standardization; we need to know exactly what data coming from other sources contains. This is followed by the implementation of quality control, which represents one of the greatest challenges. Today, anyone can produce outcomes that appear to be geospatial data products, yet the client is often unaware of their true quality. Finally, the concluding issue is financing. We must transition toward core funding instead of product fees.
How might artificial intelligence transform the geospatial data sector in the coming years?
Artificial intelligence will bring a quantum leap in the production, analysis, and utilization of geospatial data as well. Today, large-scale data processing and linked data analysis are already inconceivable without AI tools. At the same time, I consider it a massive challenge for the national geospatial ecosystem to keep pace with international and global developments. Therefore, ecosystem management, along with the advancement of education, research, and innovation, is of critical importance, as this market is also becoming globalized.
What is the issue or experience that we should definitely discuss together at the conference?
It would be worthwhile to reflect together on the motivations behind the cooperation framework. Cooperation between many different stakeholders and sectors can only be achieved if there are mutual benefits; we must therefore identify these. In addition, we must also find a way to determine how the geospatial data ecosystem can best contribute to the growth of the national economy (data policy, stakeholders, etc.).
International Spatial Data Conference 2026
Date: 8th of October 2026
Venue: Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Building K – Ceremonial Hall
Attendance is free of charge, but preliminary registration is required. You can register on the conference website until 30 September 2026, or until all available places are filled.