Chapter 5
36
decreasing in most of the world and there are several initiatives by the
private sector to get into the business of Earth Observation on a commercial
basis. As with any endeavor where financial resources are in short supply,
the key issue faced by decision-makers is that of benefits realized for the
investments made, i.e., the return on the investment. Earth Observation in
the public and private sectors is no exception.
Historically, civilian remote sensing of the Earth’s surface from space at
moderate to fine spatial resolution (with a ground spatial sampling resolution
< 100 meters) began in 1972 with the launch of Landsat 1. Since that time,
many successor spacecraft have been launched, billions of dollars have been
spent and thousands of trillions of bytes of data have been downlinked and
stored away. Aside from its positive impact on the fortunes of the aerospace
industry and the employment of a few thousand scientists, it is often difficult
to attribute significant economic or social impact to this endeavor. However,
if Earth Observation is to continue to flourish in the long run, whether it is
financed by commercial or public means, the question of its economic and
social impacts must be addressed, for it is these impacts which provide the
returns on the investments made. This is certainly true in the purely
commercial case. If there is sufficient economic demand for the products and
services that spaceborne Earth Observation produces, then a commercial
industry will materialize and develop. If there is insufficient demand for its
output to cover the costs and produce a profit, such an industry will not
materialize, or if it does it will not last long. This is also true, in a different
way, for publicly funded Earth Observation programs. In this case the
ultimate investor, the taxpayer, must perceive a benefit in terms of direct
economic, social, strategic, political or environmental “good” sufficient to
justify public investment in the system and its operation. Failing this, public
support for such programs will weaken and potentially disappear. Thus, as
we approach the mature phase of the remote sensing business, those of us
who are in the business are well advised to consider, in critical terms, the
impact of our business on the societies and economies of which we are a
part, and to address how the economic and social benefits which we believe
are possible can be realized through observation of the Earth from space.
It is worth pointing out here that the criteria which determine whether or
not an Earth Observation enterprise flourishes or dies, are essentially the
same in both the public and private sectors. What differs is the mechanism
by which judgements are made. In the private sector success depends on the
ability of the enterprise to sell sufficient product to cover the costs of
acquiring the data/information, archiving and distributing it and, at the same
time, generate a profit thus providing a return to the investors. This, in turn,
requires that the enterprise satisfy the needs of a sufficient number of
customers (information consumers) to generate the necessary revenues. In
36
decreasing in most of the world and there are several initiatives by the
private sector to get into the business of Earth Observation on a commercial
basis. As with any endeavor where financial resources are in short supply,
the key issue faced by decision-makers is that of benefits realized for the
investments made, i.e., the return on the investment. Earth Observation in
the public and private sectors is no exception.
Historically, civilian remote sensing of the Earth’s surface from space at
moderate to fine spatial resolution (with a ground spatial sampling resolution
< 100 meters) began in 1972 with the launch of Landsat 1. Since that time,
many successor spacecraft have been launched, billions of dollars have been
spent and thousands of trillions of bytes of data have been downlinked and
stored away. Aside from its positive impact on the fortunes of the aerospace
industry and the employment of a few thousand scientists, it is often difficult
to attribute significant economic or social impact to this endeavor. However,
if Earth Observation is to continue to flourish in the long run, whether it is
financed by commercial or public means, the question of its economic and
social impacts must be addressed, for it is these impacts which provide the
returns on the investments made. This is certainly true in the purely
commercial case. If there is sufficient economic demand for the products and
services that spaceborne Earth Observation produces, then a commercial
industry will materialize and develop. If there is insufficient demand for its
output to cover the costs and produce a profit, such an industry will not
materialize, or if it does it will not last long. This is also true, in a different
way, for publicly funded Earth Observation programs. In this case the
ultimate investor, the taxpayer, must perceive a benefit in terms of direct
economic, social, strategic, political or environmental “good” sufficient to
justify public investment in the system and its operation. Failing this, public
support for such programs will weaken and potentially disappear. Thus, as
we approach the mature phase of the remote sensing business, those of us
who are in the business are well advised to consider, in critical terms, the
impact of our business on the societies and economies of which we are a
part, and to address how the economic and social benefits which we believe
are possible can be realized through observation of the Earth from space.
It is worth pointing out here that the criteria which determine whether or
not an Earth Observation enterprise flourishes or dies, are essentially the
same in both the public and private sectors. What differs is the mechanism
by which judgements are made. In the private sector success depends on the
ability of the enterprise to sell sufficient product to cover the costs of
acquiring the data/information, archiving and distributing it and, at the same
time, generate a profit thus providing a return to the investors. This, in turn,
requires that the enterprise satisfy the needs of a sufficient number of
customers (information consumers) to generate the necessary revenues. In