A citywide geospatial infrastructure that centralises open data, enables informed decisions, and positions Medellín as a living lab for innovation, transparency, and data-driven urban management.

Why Understanding the Territory Comes First

Cities face a fundamental challenge: accessing reliable, integrated, and up-to-date territorial information to support decision-making. Fragmented data, limited accessibility, and the lack of interoperability between systems often hinder effective planning, investment, and responses to urban challenges. In this context, having a single and reliable source of territorial information becomes essential.

At the same time, there is a growing need to understand the city across multiple dimensions, including housing, environment, transportation, land use, and infrastructure, through accessible and actionable data.

Imagine a platform where users can consult categories such as housing, city and territory, environment and sustainable development, transportation, and territorial planning, among others. A platform that offers more than 1,000 open datasets and has amassed over 500,000 visits, more than 100,000 downloads, and interest from more than 50 countries across five continents.

That is GeoMedellín: the spatial data infrastructure of the Medellín District.

GeoMedellín,launched on May 30, 2023, is an open-access geospatial web platform designed to centralise geographic information in one place, offering free access, and avoiding data dispersion, making consultation and use significantly more efficient.

How the Platform Works

The platform operates through two complementary layers: governance mechanisms and interactive tools.

Management mechanisms:

• Geospatial Committee: a space for coordination where entities organise the production and exchange of geographic information, avoiding duplication and promoting joint decisions.

• Reference Map: the official base of the territory, including administrative boundaries, roads, hydrography, and land use, serving as a starting point for the creation of thematic maps.

• Standards: a set of guidelines (OGC and ISO 19100) to document, exchange, and guarantee the use of geographic data with quality and interoperability.

Interactive Tools:

• Image Bank: allows users to explore historical and current aerial photographs to understand the evolution of the territory.

• Geographic Catalog: an inventory of available data, including its description, responsible parties, and characteristics.

• Medellín Maps: an interactive platform to explore information about land use, mobility, environment, infrastructure, among many others.

In addition, GeoMedellín features a resource bank that includes manuals, guides, and video tutorials to make use easier for users to navigate the platform.

From Data to Real Decisions

This infrastructure is not just a repository of data; it is actively used across sectors.

Professionals such as Ana María Jaramillo, sanitary engineer at EPM (Empresas Públicas de Medellín), use it to visualise information from the Territorial Planning Plan. It allows her to consult areas of non-mitigable risk to define where to lay aqueduct and sewer networks, ensuring compliance with current regulations. This saves time by avoiding unnecessary trips and enabling access to up-to-date information at all times.

It is also a key tool in the academic field. Juan Carlos Tobón, professor of the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) course at the Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia, highlights that the platform offers a real learning experience. “The platform is not a simulator or a set of static data without context; it is official, contemporary, and multi-thematic territorial information provided by the Medellín City Hall,” he says. Its use allows students to work with real data such as road networks, land cover, urban infrastructure, and environmental data, in standard formats like Shapefile, GeoJSON, GDB, and KML, ready to be analysed in tools such as QGIS or ArcGIS.

Unlike exercises with synthetic data, students engage with real challenges of data quality, integration, and metadata management, building the applied competencies that professional GIS practice demands.

It also drives entrepreneurship. This is demonstrated by Ricardo Olarte, founding partner and general manager of Treeshapp, a technology-based company focused on tree planting to reduce the carbon footprint. Through the platform, they identify specific locations of urban trees, analyze which species are present, and identify suitable spaces available for new plantings. This allows them to plan interventions efficiently, optimising time and avoiding unnecessary travel.

Likewise, it enables the focusing of public investment. Through territorial monitoring, it is possible to identify, at the neighborhood and/or block level, issues such as food insecurity, facilitating the efficient allocation of resources.

Startups make use of the available information, take an interest in the city, and recognise the District as a laboratory for innovation. A Chilean technology company specialised in geospatial analysis, advanced modeling, and simulation of future urban scenarios chose the city as a pilot laboratory in Latin America to test its tools, thanks to the quantity, variety, and easy access to information. This enables generation of applied evidence under real operating conditions and supporting decision-making with clear technical backing.

Powering the Data-Driven Economy

Innovation requires more than good ideas: it needs to stem from a real market need, and, in the geographic sector, this presents itself as a broad and expanding field. For innovation to occur, creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, diversity, access to open data, and the building of strategic connections are essential.

In this context, the platform positions itself as a key contribution to innovation and the geospatial analytics market. According to Technavio estimates in 2026, the global geospatial analytics market size is expected to increase by USD 62.71 billion, at a CAGR of 6% from 2025 and 2030. Medellín, as a District of Science, Technology and Innovation, strengthens its ability to enter this market and drive the knowledge economy.

It is also a concrete expression of the GovTech approach, understood as a comprehensive model of public administration for modernising the public sector, focused on citizen-oriented services, universal accessibility, and digital transformation. Its public value lies in enabling the analysis of decisions before investment, avoiding inefficient allocation of resources and relying on real territorial data rather than assumptions.

What Comes Next: Building Territorial Intelligence

This infrastructure is committed to innovation to strengthen the understanding of the territory and urban planning within the District, developing territorial analytics capabilities that allow the evaluation of prospective scenarios and open new ways of interpretation. Within this framework, the creation of a Digital Twin stands out as one of the most ambitious initiatives, aimed at generating dynamic models that reflect the city’s evolution and support strategic decision-making.

At a broader level, it is part of a District Data Infrastructure that seeks to deliver the right information to the right actor (stakeholder), at the right time, and at the lowest possible cost. It promotes a smart public sector and a citizenry capable of transforming data into knowledge, generating value, undertaking, researching, and optimizing daily activities.

When Access to Data Reshapes How the City Works

Much of the impact of this spatial data infrastructure has already been illustrated through the experiences of its users. Access to reliable and up-to-date territorial information is already enabling a deeper understanding of the territory, transforming the way decisions are made, projects are designed, and solutions are developed.

Beyond these individual use cases, its impact is also reflected at a systemic level. One of the most significant outcomes has been the reduction of PQRS (Requests, Complaints, Claims, and Suggestions), which not only signals improved access to information but also reflects a shift in how knowledge flows between government and citizens. At the same time, open and accessible data reduces information asymmetries, strengthening transparency and institutional trust by making public decision-making more visible, understandable, and grounded in evidence, while fostering both an internal culture of data-driven decision-making and a broader culture of open data and smart citizenship.