USGEO's Earth Observation Assessment and its Support to National Earth Observing Decision Making

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy oversees development of the Earth Observation Assessment (EOA), conducted to ensure greater coordination of civilian Earth observations. The EOA is a government-wide assessment of the Nation’s civil Earth observation portfolio, the principal purpose of which is to guide the US Group on Earth Observations’ development of the next National Plan for Civil Earth Observations. EOA 2023 is a targeted assessment of two Societal Benefit Areas: Climate, and Agriculture & Forestry.

This briefing will describe how the results of the EOA analysis can and should be used to inform and support decision making about the civil Earth observation portfolio. The analysis describes the impact of observing systems and their products on federal enterprise missions and goals. It uses a hierarchical structure to represent the relationship between missions and data sources to support the missions. Analyses on the value tree can be used to:

• Demonstrate how existing observing systems support and impact societal benefit areas, including climate, and agriculture and forestry.
• Reveal linkages of products, users, applications and organizations to understand key dependencies and choke-points.
• Document user satisfaction for existing products to inform product improvements
• Identify observing system gaps to inform future investments.