Ahead of the Sentinel-2B launch on Monday 6 March in Kourou, the European Commission’s director for space policy and Copernicus, Philippe Brunet, explained that the European Commission did not currently have a methodology that could enable it to determine the economic impact of the European terrestrial observation programme, with any precision.
The Copernicus programme is characterised by the huge quantities of terrestrial observation data that can be freely accessed. Since the beginning of the programme, around 21 PB of raw data has been collected. During the same conference, Josef Aschbacher, the new director of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) terrestrial observation programmes, explained, “This is more than all the photos and videos uploaded on Facebook everyday”.
The European Commission is hoping to develop a very dynamic services sector by providing this free freely accessed data at a European level and internationally. According to studies requested by the Commission, there is a factor 10 estimate on the return on investment.
Nonetheless, as pointed out by Mr Brunet, there is also currently no viable methodology for accurately calculating the economic impact of the European programme. Speaking in the “Jupiter” control room, he said that, “We have an enormous problem and that is the methodology”. He regretted the fact that, “We have tried to find consultants that have this kind methodology. It needs to be created because it does not exist”.
Mr Brunet therefore explained that they will possibly need every user of Copernicus data to identify themselves when using raw data by providing a certain amount of professional and economic information. He explained, “This data as a whole is absolutely incompatible with the personal data protection in Europe” and concluded that communicating this data could subsequently only be done on a voluntary basis.
Simonetta Cheli, Head of Coordination Office Directorate of Earth Observation Programmes at ESA informed EUROPE that, “We are currently discovering the methodologies, in the most comprehensive way possible”. This senior official therefore indicated that the ESA will be submitting a methodology to the next ESA ministerial meeting in 2019.
For the time being, the only quantifiable data remains the number of registered users on the different Copernicus platforms that use the data (approximately 63,000), as well as quantity of data transferred.
This is a very significant challenge. Calculating Space data is also one of the pillars of the European space strategy adopted at the end of October 2016 (see EUROPE 11655, 11540). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)