Preface: ISPRS Technical Commission IV (Spatial Information Science)

In the period 2022-2026, the Commission concentrated on many fundamental as well as application-oriented topics related to digital twins and the metaverse. In a rapidly changing world, digital twin models of reality are crucial for governments and businesses to address environmental and socio-economic issues and to promote sustainable development. The demand for effective decisions in evolving spaces highlights the necessity of complex, multi-dimensional spatial data. Digital twins and the metaverse have emerged as pivotal technologies, allowing testing and analyzing intricate systems, overcoming challenges like data discovery, visualization, sharing, fusion, analysis, and simulation, as well as managing big multidimensional data with GeoAI models. These topics were largely reflected by the papers presented at the XXV ISPRS Congress in Toronto, 4-11 July 2026.