[2] The institute's mission was the "promotion and development of Geomatics, through applied research and teaching, for the benefit of society".

Since 1999 it worked intensively on research, knowledge transfer and dissemination of geomatic science and technology.

Geomatics connects various traditional disciplines, like geodesy or cartography with more recently developed fields like remote sensing, satellite navigation and latest information and communication technologies.

As a result, geomatics allows us today to obtain information about the Earth and its atmosphere globally and within very short time.

More specifically, the IG research lines entailed: The IG participated in a wide portfolio of research projects, covering areas such as cartography,[6] topography,[7] search-and-rescue,[8] civil engineering,[9] agriculture, mobile mapping, location-based services,[10] unmanned aerial vehicles,[11] and many others.