Assessment of Societal Benefits from Spectrum Utilization Using NOAA Value Tree Relationships

The increased demand for spectrum use mobilized a 2015 study by the Institute for Telecommunications Sciences (ITS), the research and development arm of National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) within the Department of Commerce, to identify the possibility of sharing with other federal services the 1675 MHz to 1695 MHz spectrum now used by NOAA for their newly launched GOES-R satellite. Recently, Ligado Networks has also proposed spectrum sharing to the FCC to include the GOES-R Data Collection Platform Radios (DCPR) downlink band between 1679.7 MHz to 1680.1 MHz. In order to maintain the quality of mission-critical communications that support the Weather Enterprise, NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) is now conducting a more focused analysis on the economic value of weather services enabled by GOES-R which may be potentially disrupted by shared-use interference. More specifically, outside of established protection zones, spectrum sharing has the potential to disrupt the US terrestrial receipt of science data and imagery from GOES-R. It may also disrupt the transmission of observations from a broad range of surface based weather observing systems that rely on GOES Data Collection System (DCS).

To address these concerns, the Technology, Planning and Integration for Observation division (TPIO) along with NOAA’s NESDIS has examined the potential impact to the delivery of NOAA’s products and services from the perspectives of the NOAA Observing System Integrated Analysis (NOSIA-II)¹ and the most recent 2016 National Earth Observing Assessment (EOA 2016). NOSIA-II and EOA both use a value-tree approach to measure the benefits of observing systems to products, the interdependence of products and services, and the priority of products and services to meet NOAA mission defined by NOAA’s Next Generation Strategic Plan and to meet Societal Benefit Areas (SBA) defined by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). This presentation will summarize the value tree approach, describe the sensitivities that products and services may have on the disruption to the relevant band, and summarize the impact GOES-R and DCS dependent observing systems may have on NOAA’s mission and on Societal Benefit Areas.

References:

¹NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service. 2016. NOAA Observing System Integrated Analysis (NOSIA-II) Methodology Report. NOAA Technical Report 147. doi:10.7289/V52V2D1H.
Available: https://nosc.noaa.gov/tpio/docs/NOSIA-II-Methodology-Report-v1.93-NOSC.pdf