Blue Marble image of the Earth taken by the crew of Apollo 17 on Dec. 7 1972.
Image Credit: NASA

On the 9th December, the United States released its 2019 National Plan for Civil Earth Observations, which was a report by the U.S. Group on Earth Observations Subcommittee, Committee on the Environment of the National Science & Technology Council.

The report positively notes it aims to inspire action across the Earth Observations Enterprises because … it touches the lives of all Americans every day and enables new discoveries. It essentially sets out the US Government’s approach to planning, coordinating, investing and leveraging Earth Observation (EO) and the theme running through the document is a much greater focus on engaging, integrating and leveraging public/private partnerships with all types of organisations.

This direction of travel is not hugely surprising as the current administration has previously indicated its preference for NASA to focus on going into space, rather than the Earth.  It’s interesting to see has this principle has been translated into a plan – although a lot of the actions seem to be developing further documents, rather than concrete actions!

The document lays out three goals with underlying actions and commentary supporting each of them. Briefly summarised, these are:

Goal 1 Support & Balance the Portfolio of Earth Observations

There are four objectives to this goal:

• Prioritise the availability and continuity of EO – Recognises one of the strengths of EO are time-series capabilities, and that any decisions to modify or stop a dataset needs careful thought to understand how it might affect all users. There is also a confirmation of support for Landsat 9.
• Implement innovative Federal procurement and acquisition strategies – This is one of the key drivers of this document, the desire to have a much better engagement with the private sector. It acknowledges that there are currently a range of challenges and difficulties which must be overcome to enable this including funding, insurance arrangements, technology and procurement systems.
• Strength research and capabilities that enhance usability – Focuses on the need to establish mechanisms to identify the accuracy, precision, characterization, calibration and uncertainties for EO data to promote interoperability and usage. It also highlights the importance of AI, machine-learning, cloud computing and algorithm development to the industry.
• Provide long term stewardship – Reinforces the need for standardisation and for integrating new sensors and satellites with historical datasets, together with the aim of ensuring all the data from publically funded projects are provided to a publically accessible archive.

Goal 2 Engage the Earth Observations Enterprise

Three objectives for this goal are:

• Strengthen coordination within the EO Enterprise – Another of the core objectives focussing on engaging better with the private sector across the whole EO value chain, and ensuring that start-ups, SME’s and not-for-profit organisations are part of these discussions and are encouraged.
• Coordinate research and development for experimental technologies and techniques – Highlights the importance of Government money to ‘seed’ new EO ideas and that this promotes the commercialisation of EO. It identifies the need to better measure this relationship.
• Recognise and analyze program models for leveraging data as a strategic asset – Publically funded EO data is a public good, paid for by the America tax-payers, and therefore the data should be used as widely as possible to promote economic growth, which is more than simply the collection of the data but is the translation of this into commercial products which is critical. A similar refrain can be heard in Europe regarding Copernicus data.

Goal 3 Improve the Impact of Earth Observations

Four objectives for this goal are:

• Articulate the value of EO – This is something everyone in the EO industry has an interest in particularly as identifying the benefits, and therefore value, of EO directly is often difficult. The report notes the NASA Resources for the Future: VALUABLES consortium is developing systematic methods for measuring value and will be interesting to see what they come up with, and how it compares with other such assessments such as ones produced by the Copernicus Programme or by national space bodies such as the UK Space Agency.
• Improve the EO portfolio through learning and adaption – Continual assessment of whether the mix of EO data available to federal departments is optimal, and looking for acquiring new emerging data where there are risks, dependencies and gaps.
• Promote and leverage international collaboration – Everyone knows greater value can be added by combining multiple satellite, and other, datasets. It is something that commercial data analytics firms tend to be better at than Governments who often have specific contacts to use specific datasets and don’t always have the opportunity to combine them. The aim is to encourage this principle much wider within Government.
• Develop a skilled and capable workforce – An acknowledgement that the US, like all countries, will need a workforce capable of analysing, using, visualising and commercialising EO data and that better roadmaps need to be greater for careers in EO.

Overall, although there is nothing Earth-shattering the report, there are a lot of positive and sensible comments for the industry. The key success criteria will be whether the new approach to engagement and partnerships with the private sector turns into funded and profitable contracts for businesses – without this the long term sustainability of this approach will be difficult.