52°North is an international research and development partner network with partners from academia, the public sector and industry. Our goal is to foster innovation in the field of geoinformatics by organizing and facilitating a collaborative software development process. The topics we address comprise for example sensor web technologies, web-based geoprocessing the web of things, linked open data, spatial data infrastructures, citizen science, earth observation, and 3D. This selection of topics reflects both the strengths and strategies of the partners involved.

Some of our software projects are enviroCar, 52°North SOS, 52°North Helgoland (JavaScript Sensor Web Client), ILWIS, and 52°North WPS. Check out our GitHub organization and our Open Hub page to learn more about the wide range of software our communities work on: from mobile apps to standardized web services, from cutting edge research to established products. 52°North open source projects are used in a broad range of domains (e.g. oceanology, air quality, hydrology, traffic planning) and operational as well as research projects (e.g. European Horizon 2020 projects such as NeXOS, FixO3, ConnectinGEO, WaterInnEU, ODIP 2, SeaDataCloud).

All of the 52°North software is published under an OSI approved open source license.

52°North GmbH, which is the legal body and service center of the network, acts as a non-profit organization. This means that the shareholders of 52°North do not receive profit shares or payments from company funds. Instead, the profits earned by 52°North are completely re-invested into the innovation and software development process.