Book excerpt: At a time when people use more and more geographic information and tools, the management of geographical information in software systems still holds many challenges and motivates researchers from different backgrounds to propose innovative solutions. Representing geographical space beyond our mere perception is key to making relevant decisions, whether it is with respect to sustainable development or to the planning of everyday activities. Designing, sharing and exploiting such representations entails many challenges. This book presents recent software design projects, led in teams, which sometimes have different backgrounds, to address these challenges. It analyzes the specificities of these projects in terms of motivation, data models and analysis methods. Proposals are also put forward to improve resource sharing in this domain. Contents 1. Introduction, Bénédicte Bucher and Florence Le Ber. Part 1. Software Presentation 2. ORBISGIS: Geographical Information System Designed by and for Research, Erwan Bocher and Gwendall Petit. 3. GEOXYGENE: an Interoperable Platform for Geographical Application Development, Éric Grosso, Julien Perret and Mickaël Brasebin. 4. Spatiotemporal Knowledge Representation in AROM-ST, Bogdan Moisuc, Alina Miron, Marlène Villanova-Olivier and Jérôme Gensel. 5. GENGHIS: an Environment for the Generation of Spatiotemporal Visualization Interfaces, Paule-Annick Davoine, Bogdan Moisuc and Jérôme Gensel. 6. GEOLIS: a Logical Information System to Organize and Search Geo-Located Data, Olivier Bedel, Sébastien Ferré and Olivier Ridoux. 7. GENEXP-LANDSITES: a 2D Agricultural Landscape Generating Piece of Software, Florence Le Ber and Jean-François Mari. 8. MDWEB: Cataloging and Locating Environmental Resources, Jean-Christophe Desconnets and Thérèse Libourel. 9. WEBGEN: Web Services to Share Cartographic Generalization Tools, Moritz Neun, Nicolas Regnauld and Robert Weibel. Part 2. Summary and Suggestions 10. Analysis of the Specificities of Software Development in Geomatics Research, Florence Le Ber and Bénédicte Bucher. 11. Challenges and Proposals for Software Development Pooling in Geomatics, Bénédicte Bucher, Julien Gaffuri, Florence Le Ber and Thérèse Libourel.