The quality of the production processes is a paramount aspect of the competitiveness of companies. Traditionally the issue of quality is associated with large multinational companies which manufacture equipment and consumer goods. Nevertheless our society and companies have evolved and quality is not only a concern of large companies, small and family companies and also public administrations develop their own quality plans and systems. For this reason the job market demands more and more quality specialists.

Geomatics (cartography, photogrammetry, geodesy, remote sensing, surveying, geographical information systems, etc.) is not yet sufficiently close to the quality habits of the industrial processes. In geomatics the positional aspect of spatial information has been a customary quality concern but this does not suffice. Geographic Information has many other perspectives (theme, time, coherence, etc.), and must be understood in the same manner as an industrial productive process: the cartographic production process. Geomatics is based on the use of powerful hardware and software tools but these tools can also be used improperly or in an uncontrolled manner, thus degrading the quality of data being processed.

The new paradigm for the use and distribution of geographic information are the Spatial Data Infrastructures, and quality is a key factor in achieving true interoperability and true profit by means of the synergic use of different data sets. For the above-mentioned reasons there is a current and pressing need for Geographic Information quality specialists. Because quality is not attained in the official studies there is a clear need for training, practical and theoretical, in this discipline.