How Should We Pay for Earth Observation Data?
Earth observation, i.e. imaging from space, is increasingly getting to be a critical part of our lives. It provides valuable information on climate change, pollution, security, mapping, agriculture, fishing, construction projects and many other applications.
For some years now, US government agencies such as NASA have made the data from their
satellites available free of charge. This has often sparked controversies. Some may feel that this
undermines the investments of commercial satellite companies. Europe has tried to tread a middle
way by charging for some data from earth observation satellites, including hybrid public-private
sector satellites such as SPOT or entirely public sector ones like ERS and Envisat. Mixing public and
private programmes has allowed Europe to gain confidence in the technology and to get benefits
from the data.
What’s different now?
Two big changes have come about in the past five years that throw open the question again. First
is the emergence of Google Earth as a source of high resolution imagery (to view, although not to
process further), and second is the loosening of constraints on American military satellite imagery
as well as the proliferation of high resolution imaging satellites across the globe.
