The entire GEO community works in synergy to create and manage GEOSS. GEOSS interconnects shared Earth observation resources globally and between the multiple areas of social interest that characterize GEO's action (sustainability of biodiversity and ecosystems, resilience to disasters, management of energy and mineral resources, food security and agriculture Sustainability, Infrastructure and Transport Management, Public Health Monitoring, Sustainable Urban Development, Water Management) and makes these resources usable to enable more informed decision making in policy.

EGIDA combined bottom-up and top-down approaches; the first represented by initiatives and projects financed at local and regional level, and the second defined by GEO, in particular with reference to the Roadmap introduced by the GEOSS Committee for Science and Technology. This approach aims at the sustainability of GEO / GEOSS, an initiative based on the voluntary contribution of participants, through alignment with its objectives through nationally or regionally funded data sharing initiatives. To this end, EGIDA has foreseen a first phase of coordination and support explicitly dedicated to the two macro-objectives of the GEO Science & Technology Roadmap: a) promoting GEO in the scientific and technological communities; b) involve the scientific and technological communities in the development of GEO. Subsequently, the results of the first phase, and more generally the project experience, were consolidated in the development of a general methodology for the re-engineering of national and regional infrastructures for a sustainable contribution to GEOSS: the EGIDA Methodology. This methodology has been tested in specific use cases.

The two main results achieved by EGIDA are:
a) the EGIDA Methodology, which consolidates the overall activity of the project;
b) the creation of a stakeholder network (Science & Technology Stakeholder Network).

The project produced a general methodology (EGIDA methodology) to enable national scientific and technological communities to redesign their data infrastructures in order to facilitate their integration and interoperability to provide a sustainable contribution to GEOSS. The EGIDA Methodology is based on good practices deriving from previous international experiences, collected in guidelines and related to actions useful for the re-engineering of data infrastructures.

The EGIDA methodology was subsequently reused and extended in further use cases within other FP7 / Horizon2020 projects, including: EO-POWER, IASON, RECODE, BYTE.