The Full Picture

GEOSS: An emerging

public infrastructure

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GEOSS C

OMPONENTS

e are entering a new era of global risks and opportu-

nities where policy and management decisions must

be based on the near-real-time environmental moni-

toring of the entire planetary system. So much is at stake:

millions of people are vulnerable to natural disasters, desertifi-

cation, food insecurity and emerging diseases; global problems

such as climate change and biodiversity loss are worsening with

each passing day; and too many opportunities for managing

energy, water and other natural resources more effectively are

being wasted.

Addressing these challenges will require interlinking existing and

future Earth observation systems into one comprehensive ‘system of

systems’ that will, more than ever before, provide ‘the full picture’

that today’s decision makers so urgently need. This system is neces-

sary because of the complexity of the Earth system itself and because

of the growing demands that the dynamism of our modern civiliza-

tion is placing on decision-makers. Their hunger for information

about changes in the natural environment has evolved beyond the

capabilities of what until now have been separate, single-purpose,

stand-alone Earth observation systems.

This Global Earth Observation System of Systems is not only neces-

sary, it is now possible as well. This is because investments in Earth

observation instruments and technologies have reached a critical

mass. The construction of new systems has increased dramatically

over the past ten years and promises to continue rising steeply over

the decade to come. The number of new Earth observation satellites

alone that will be put into orbit may even double over the next decade.

But for this global public infrastructure to become a reality, a great

deal of technical work will be required on developing compatible

data standards and configuring diverse instruments and systems to

communicate with one another. The challenge is to make widely

different technologies, from remote-sensing satellites and ocean

buoys to weather stations and wildlife-tracking radar and sonar

systems, fully ‘interoperable’. This will lead to important improve-

ments in both data assembly and modelling.

For this to happen, the people and organizations involved in

producing and disseminating data will need to collaborate more fully

than ever before. These diverse groups have recently started to coop-

erate through the Group on Earth Observations. Their goal is nothing

less than the construction of a Global Earth Observation System of

Systems, or GEOSS.

Building upon existing partnerships, GEO’s members

and participating organizations are interlinking a large

number of observing and processing systems and encour-

aging the development of new components. Ranging

across the data processing cycle, from data collection to

analysis to dissemination, the participating organizations

are connecting up their systems while respecting and

maintaining their own individual mandates.

Building synergies and sustainability

When an observing system operates in isolation, its data

is limited by what its own instruments and components

can gather. But when it is linked to other systems, its

coverage expands accordingly. Today, rapid technical

progress is making it easier to combine different types of

data. For example, the broad spatial coverage that is one

of the great advantages of satellites can be combined

with the precision of in situ instruments located in the

ocean or on the land. By coordinating and co-designing

an integrated observation strategy, partner organizations

can maximize the effectiveness of the collection, process-

ing and dissemination of information.

Earth observation systems that serve multiple purposes

also make it easier to remove redundancies, and thus

generate cost savings. For example, validating the find-

ings of land cover monitoring requires a distributed

network of ground-level instruments. If these instru-

ments can be co-located with existing weather stations

the overhead costs of basic infrastructure can be reduced,

and better datasets can be provided to each partner.

Observation systems often suffer from gaps and from a

lack of continuity. Environmental changes take place on

decadal time scales, so observation systems have to be

maintained on similar scales. GEOSS will help to identify

these gaps and mobilize the resources needed to ensure

the long-term sustainability of observation systems.

Ocean monitoring provides an early example of what is

needed. The global system of Argo ocean floats, which

measures ocean temperature and salinity, is being

supported by satellite altimetry instruments, which provide

information on the heat trapped in the oceans and on

currents. All of these data are essential for long-termmete-

NTRODUCTION