Inter-agency Earth-Observation Integrated Analysis

NOAA and USGS are collaborating with other federal agencies in developing and piloting methods to assess the impact of Ocean, Atmosphere and Land observations on the Societal Benefit Areas (SBA) defined by the US Group of Earth Observations. SBAs include weather forecasting, climate, energy, agriculture, ecosystems, ocean and coastal resources, space weather, transportation, fundamental reference measurements, water resources, and human health. The pilot assessment approach is based on a methodology NOAA developed for its NOAA Observing Systems Integrated Analysis (NOSIA) (which focused on upper-air observations), as reported at the 2012 AMS Annual Meeting. The integrated inter-agency assessment is intended to improve NOAA and USGS planning and decision-making pertaining to developing programs for earth observations by better articulating the critical cross-agency and cross-SBA impacts of observing systems. The initial phase of model development has focused on current needs and observing systems. A phase-2 analysis is planned to investigate the likely impacts of future observing systems.

The methodology is based on articulating a hierarchical value model for earth observations that explicitly identifies SBAs and their Sub-areas, Key Objectives within each Sub-area, Intermediate Products and Models, and specific data sources and systems. At each level of the value model, subject matter experts from a broad range of federal agencies familiar with the objectives, products and systems were interviewed using a decision-analysis technique called swing-weighting to assess the relationships between the value model elements, and the impact of observing systems on these elements. The value model has been implemented using a tool called PALMA™ developed by The MITRE Corporation for government use. PALMA provides visualization and optimization capabilities for value modeling. The Earth Observation PALMA model can be interrogated to assess the impact of loss of continuity of critical observing systems on the elements of the value model (SBAs, Key Objectives, or Products). With the addition of cost information, PALMA can also be used to identify portfolios of observing systems that maximize the overall societal benefit subject to specified budget constraints.

The pilot value model is quite large and represents the first time that cross-agency, cross-SBA impacts from earth observations have been assessed using value-model and swing-weighting methods.

PALMA is a trademark of The MITRE Corporation.