14 Nicholas C. Flemming
is possible to construct mailing lists of many hundreds or thousands of potential
beneficiaries from a marine observing and forecasting service at the nationallevel.
A study of this kind has been carried out for the users of the data products from the
MFSPP.
EuroGOOS has designed a survey of customers for operational ocean data and
their data requirements, which has been ron in 6 countries (Fischer and Flemming,
1999). The survey was conducted in Denmark, The Netherlands, UK, Italy, Spain,
and Greece. This provides a reasonable balance between northem, temperate,
Atlantic operators and southem, warm climate, Mediterranean operators. The survey identifies classes of hundreds of serious users of operational marine data and
forecasts, and prioritises by frequency of requirement the variables which are most
in demand, their geographical scale, accuracy, temporal and spatial resolution,
product type (raw data, proces sed, statistics, forecast, hindcast, nowcast) and
latency and medium of delivery. A side effect of such surveys is to build up a
familiarity and working relation between the agencies planning new observing systems and their potential customers. Presentation of papers and reports on these
themes at trade and industry conferences provides a very positive feedback.
There is the further range of additional benefits which are more difficult to quantify, but which aU add value to the benefits from EuroGOOS. Firstly there are the
long term benefits from improved climate prediction which are quantifiable,
though reduced in value by discounting. These are being examined by GCOS, and
there is no doubt that this will show increased benefits attributable to GOOS
(GCOS, 1994).
Then there are a host of rather intangible benefits which may be measurable in
economic terms, but which at first sight are intractable to measurement in money.
Econometric techniques have been developed in this field, but they have not yet
been applied to marine and coastal activities. These benefits include the aspects of
conserving biodiversity, protecting wildlife, preserving the aesthetic appearance of
the coastal zone and wetlands, preserving ecological balance even when it is not
shown to jeopardise fisheries or other living resources, and minimising the public
sense of disturbance or insecurity which may be caused by climate change or rise
in sea level. In its extreme form, this type of analysis computes the overall economic benefit from the existence of different natural environments (Costanza et al.,
1997).
The costs of EuroGOOS and the benefits achieved may be balanced in various
ways. If EuroGOOS Member agency activities were regarded as a pure public
good, then a computation of the notional value of the benefits would be sufficient,
and there would need to be no actual charging of customers or direct recovery of
costs. If EuroGOOS Member activities were regarded as a commercial exercise,
alI the costs would have to be recovered from the sale of services and products. It
is premature to make judgements on these factors, but already it is possible to see
that parts of the infrastructure, parts of the remote sensing, deep ocean sampling,
and long term climate predictions tend to have the characteristics of public good
economics, while the short term coastal engineering, navigational, and fisheries
is possible to construct mailing lists of many hundreds or thousands of potential
beneficiaries from a marine observing and forecasting service at the nationallevel.
A study of this kind has been carried out for the users of the data products from the
MFSPP.
EuroGOOS has designed a survey of customers for operational ocean data and
their data requirements, which has been ron in 6 countries (Fischer and Flemming,
1999). The survey was conducted in Denmark, The Netherlands, UK, Italy, Spain,
and Greece. This provides a reasonable balance between northem, temperate,
Atlantic operators and southem, warm climate, Mediterranean operators. The survey identifies classes of hundreds of serious users of operational marine data and
forecasts, and prioritises by frequency of requirement the variables which are most
in demand, their geographical scale, accuracy, temporal and spatial resolution,
product type (raw data, proces sed, statistics, forecast, hindcast, nowcast) and
latency and medium of delivery. A side effect of such surveys is to build up a
familiarity and working relation between the agencies planning new observing systems and their potential customers. Presentation of papers and reports on these
themes at trade and industry conferences provides a very positive feedback.
There is the further range of additional benefits which are more difficult to quantify, but which aU add value to the benefits from EuroGOOS. Firstly there are the
long term benefits from improved climate prediction which are quantifiable,
though reduced in value by discounting. These are being examined by GCOS, and
there is no doubt that this will show increased benefits attributable to GOOS
(GCOS, 1994).
Then there are a host of rather intangible benefits which may be measurable in
economic terms, but which at first sight are intractable to measurement in money.
Econometric techniques have been developed in this field, but they have not yet
been applied to marine and coastal activities. These benefits include the aspects of
conserving biodiversity, protecting wildlife, preserving the aesthetic appearance of
the coastal zone and wetlands, preserving ecological balance even when it is not
shown to jeopardise fisheries or other living resources, and minimising the public
sense of disturbance or insecurity which may be caused by climate change or rise
in sea level. In its extreme form, this type of analysis computes the overall economic benefit from the existence of different natural environments (Costanza et al.,
1997).
The costs of EuroGOOS and the benefits achieved may be balanced in various
ways. If EuroGOOS Member agency activities were regarded as a pure public
good, then a computation of the notional value of the benefits would be sufficient,
and there would need to be no actual charging of customers or direct recovery of
costs. If EuroGOOS Member activities were regarded as a commercial exercise,
alI the costs would have to be recovered from the sale of services and products. It
is premature to make judgements on these factors, but already it is possible to see
that parts of the infrastructure, parts of the remote sensing, deep ocean sampling,
and long term climate predictions tend to have the characteristics of public good
economics, while the short term coastal engineering, navigational, and fisheries