The Value of  
Open Data Sharing
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
EDITORIAL NOTE 
 
 
The report on the Value of Open Data Sharing was first prepared for the GEO-XII Plenary by the GEO 
Participating Organization CODATA (the ICSU Committee on Data for Science and Technology). Through 
showcasing diverse benefits of open Earth observations data, the report is designed to facilitate the 
process of transitioning from restricted data policies to more open policies for government data.  
At the GEO-XII Plenary the report received positive feedback from GEO Member countries and 
Participating Organizations, who also expressed willingness to contribute supplementary case studies. 
Therefore, it was decided to maintain this report as a living document, with this version for the record as 
version 1.  The GEO community will provide periodic updates, examples and case studies.  
To help us on more examples and case studies, please contact:  
Simon Hodson, CODATA,  simon@codata.org 
Paul Uhlir, CODATA,  pfuhlir@gmail.com  
Wenbo Chu, GEO Secretariat,  wchu@geosec.org
  
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Preface and Acknowledgements 
The Members and Participating Organizations of the Group on Earth Observation (GEO) make their Earth 
observation and environmental data available through the GEO Global Earth Observing System of 
Systems (GEOSS) portal. The preferred approach of the organization is to provide open access and 
unrestricted use to those data through the GEOSS Data-CORE (Collection of Open Resources for 
Everyone). This approach has not been adopted by all the GEO participants, despite the call for even 
greater openness that is promoted by the revised GEO Data Sharing Principles for next decade. 
 
The Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA), a non-governmental Participating 
Organization of GEO, analyzed and synthesized the existing work on the various benefits and value of 
open data, with particular reference to Earth observation data made available through GEOSS. The 
mission of CODATA is “to strengthen international science for the benefit of society by improving 
scientific and technical data management and use.” CODATA is an interdisciplinary committee of the 
non-governmental International Council for Science (ICSU) in Paris, France. Both CODATA and ICSU are 
Participating Organizations of GEO. Simon Hodson is the Executive Director of CODATA and the manager 
of this project. Additional information about CODATA may be found on its website at: www.codata.org.  
 
The report was produced by CODATA specifically at the request of the GEO Secretariat in order to 
summarise arguments in favour of broad and open data sharing, and to present these to the 2015 GEO 
Plenary in Mexico. The short timescale for its production meant that it was not possible for the report to 
go through a formal review process with DSWG. However, DSWG colleagues were consulted and 
commented on the draft at a number of stages. DSWG acknowledges the merits of the report as an 
articulation of the value of data sharing and therefore is in favour of the report being presented to the 
Plenary for information. 
 
The lead author for CODATA was Paul F. Uhlir, J.D.  CODATA submitted the draft of this report for formal 
review by many other individuals who were chosen for their expertise and their geographical 
representation. These experts included the following: 
 
Enrique Alonso Garcia, State Council of Spain; Bonnie Carroll, Information International Associates; Tim 
Foresman, Queensland University of Technology; Huadong Guo, RADI, Chinese Academy of Sciences; 
Simon Hodson, CODATA; John Houghton, Victoria University; Wim Hugo, South African Environmental 
Observation Network; Jose-Miguel Rubio Iglesias, European Commission; Shuichi Iwata, University of 
Tokyo; Raed Sharif, Canada’s International Development Research Centre; Frazier Taylor, Carleton 
University; and members of the GEO Secretariat. 
 
CODATA wishes to thank these experts for their contributions to the results of this report, and the GEO 
community for its constant advocacy for broad, open data. 
 
For CODATA, Simon Hodson, Executive Director. 
 
  
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Table of Contents 
 
 Page number 
 
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 4 
 
I.  INTRODUCTION 6 
A.  The Data Sharing Principles of the Group on Earth Observations 6 
B.  Underlying Trends 7 
C.  Scope of the Discussion 9 
D.  Organization of this Report 10 
 
II. THE MANY DIVERSE OPPORTUNITIES FROM OPEN DATA 11 
A. Supporting Broad Economic Benefits and Growth 11 
B.  Enhancing Social Welfare 13 
1.  Evidence of societal benefits, both individual and collective 
2.  Meeting society’s expectations for access to and use of digital information 
3.  Promoting reputational benefits 
4.  Implementing ethical principles 
C.  Growing Research and Innovation Opportunities 16 
1.  Enhancing interdisciplinary and international research  
2.  Enabling data mining 
3.  Permitting interoperability in the creation of new data sets  
4.  Reducing inefficiencies, including duplication of research 
5.  Promoting new research and new types of research  
6.  Facilitating citizen scientists and crowdsourcing approaches 
7.  Stimulating downstream applications and commercial innovation 
8.  Encouraging the verification of previous results 
D.  Facilitating the Education of New Generations 23 
E.  Benefits for Effective Governance and Policy Making 24 
1.  Improving decision making  
2.  Demonstrating leadership and broadening influence 
3.  Promoting capacity building in developing countries 
4.  Helping to implement “data repatriation” objectives of developing countries 
5.  Building freedom and trust 
 
III. CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS 28 
 
APPENDIX A: Definition of Key Terms 30 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 34 
 
 
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 
 
OBJECTIVE 
 
As the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) transitions to its second decade of operations, it is 
important to take stock of what the abiding vision of GEO is: “a future wherein decisions and 
actions for the benefit of humankind are informed by coordinated, comprehensive and 
sustained Earth observations and information.” There are several major trends that have made 
the open and unrestricted uses of public data available through the GEOSS portal essential to 
implementing this vision, including especially the rise of digital networks, e-infrastructures and 
technologies, and the uses of big data. Massive—and increasingly urgent—global public-
interest challenges face humanity in the form of climate change, environmental degradation, 
management of common resources, food security, and health concerns. Open data support and 
are supported by these larger trends.  
 
BENEFITS 
 
Indeed, there are many diverse opportunities and benefits to be derived from providing open 
data through GEO for unrestricted use worldwide. The main reasons are compiled in this 
Executive Summary and they are substantiated in greater detail in the body of the report. 
 
Economic 
Perhaps the most important reasons are the broad economic benefits and growth, both public 
and private. Public data openly served through GEOSS have been shown to be economic force 
enhancers, creating value many times over and providing much greater returns on the public 
investment than have restrictive, proprietary approaches. The generative effects from open 
data on digital networks are key in this regard. 
 
Societal 
Social welfare is enhanced for both individuals and society at large. Open data meet society’s 
expectations of appropriate management of public digital resources, provide diverse 
reputational benefits, and incorporate ethical principles for accessing and using public data. 
 
Research and Innovation 
Public research and private innovation opportunities expand with a policy of openness for 
upstream data resources. Such data can substantially reduce unproductive barriers to 
interdisciplinary, inter-institutional, and international research. They enable data mining for 
automated knowledge discovery in a growing sea of big data. Open data are essential for the 
verification of research results and in generating broad trust in them. They avoid many 
inefficiencies, such as the unnecessary duplication of research and the identification of 
erroneous results. They promote more research and new types of research. They permit the 
legal interoperability of data when multiple sources of data are combined for new knowledge. 
Citizen scientists and “crowdsourcing” approaches, which are promoted by GEO, are facilitated. 
5 / 42 
 
Moreover, open public upstream data are inputs to and stimulate downstream commercial 
research and applications that benefit Member economies and the larger society. 
 
Education 
Closely related to the public research opportunities is that the education of new generations is 
significantly facilitated. Open GEO data promote the education of new students and the public, 
whether at school, in higher education, or increasingly at home. They also support important 
studies of data collection methods and management. This is why nonprofit research and 
education were given special status in GEO’s first Data Sharing Principles. 
  
Governance 
Finally, there are key advantages for improved governance. Public data made openly available 
through the GEOSS portal support improved decision-making and transparency in government 
and society. Such data demonstrate leadership at home and abroad, thereby enhancing 
influence and legitimacy. For less economically developed countries, open data policies 
promote capacity building and help to implement “repatriation” objectives. Not least, open 
public data generally build freedom in society, and trust in governance and its many functions. 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS 
 
In sum, the Members and Participating Organizations of GEO stand to gain much more than 
they lose from making their public Earth observation data available on a full and open basis, 
freely and without reuse restrictions, as promoted by the GEOSS Data-CORE. They also will 
avoid all the negative effects that come with attempts at narrow cost recovery and policing 
leakage in the restricted uses of such data. It is thus imperative for GEO to seize the many 
benefits from publicly generated Earth observation data now, as the new Data Sharing 
Principles are being implemented for the coming decade. It is the primary organizational raison 
d’être of GEO to make those benefits a reality.  
 
  
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I. INTRODUCTION 
 
 
A.  The Data Sharing Principles of the Group on Earth Observations 
 
The Group on Earth Observations (GEO) is a consortium of the largest amount of publicly 
funded environmental data in the world. By some estimates, the data controlled by GEO’s 
Members and Participating Organizations exceeds many petabytes in the aggregate, and is 
rapidly growing to the exabyte level (Mazzetti, Nativi, Santoro, and Boldrini 2014). Many of 
those datasets are expected to be made available through GEO’s Global Earth Observing 
System of Systems (GEOSS) portal.        
 
Established in 2005, GEO is a voluntary partnership of governments and organizations that 
envisions “a future wherein decisions and actions for the benefit of humankind are informed by 
coordinated, comprehensive and sustained Earth observations and information” (GEO 2005).  
The rationale for the organization is thus even truer today than when it was created a decade 
ago. 
 
It is worthwhile reviewing at the outset GEO’s original Data Sharing Principles and those 
proposed for adoption at the 2015 Ministerial Plenary. The Principles in 2005 for data made 
available through the Global Earth Observation System of System’s (GEOSS) portal were as 
follows (GEO 2005): 
 
 1. There will be full and open exchange of data, metadata and products shared within 
GEOSS, recognizing relevant international instruments and national policies and 
legislation; 
2. All shared data, metadata and products will be made available with minimum time 
delay and at minimum cost; 
3. All shared data, metadata and products being free of charge or no more than cost of 
reproduction will be encouraged for research and education.  
 
The draft of the new Data Sharing Principles advocates a more open position for data, 
consistent with the GEOSS Data-CORE (see Appendix A), made available by GEO through GEOSS 
(GEO 2014a): 
 
 1. Data, metadata and products will be shared through GEOSS as Open Data by default, 
by making them available as part of the GEOSS Data-CORE without charge, without 
restrictions on reuse, subject to the conditions of registration and attribution when the 
data are reused.  
2. Where international instruments, national policies or legislation preclude the sharing 
of data as Open Data they should be made available through GEOSS with minimal 
restrictions on use and at no more than the cost of reproduction and distribution.  
7 / 42 
 
3. All shared data, products and metadata will be made available through GEOSS with 
minimum time delay.  
 
As a reader of this short report, you are most likely a funder, manager, steward, or user of an 
environmental data system that is affiliated in some capacity with the Group on Earth 
Observations. You know the importance that the organization has; if it did not exist, there 
would be compelling reasons to create it. 
 
This report provides the rationale for why it is important for GEO to make the data that are 
available through its GEOSS portal as low-cost to access as possible (free online) and especially 
unrestricted in use. Put another way, it marshals the evidence for the participants in GEO to 
adopt the proposed new Data Sharing Principles. If you are already of the view that this is the 
right approach to take, then the arguments presented here will only help to solidify your 
opinion and provide a more diverse rationale for that point of view. However, the report is 
written specifically for those who believe that broad restrictions on access to and use of data 
are appropriate and good public policy, or who need more reasons to justify greater openness. 
 
 
B. Underlying Trends 
 
There are several major developments or trends over the past two decades that have made the 
provision of EO data through GEO on a free and unrestricted basis essential as a default rule. 
One is the rise of the internet and digital networks. Table 1 summarizes the data characteristics 
in the pre- and post-internet eras.  
Table 1: Comparison of Some Print and Digitally Networked Paradigm Characteristicsa 
Print Paradigm 
[Industrial Age] 
Global Digital Networks 
[Post-industrial Information Age] 
 Fixed, static  Transformative, interactive 
 Rigid  Flexible, extensible 
 Physical  Virtual 
 Digital tools cannot be used to manipulate 
the content 
 Many tools available (e.g., visualization) 
 Local  Global 
 Limited content types  Unlimited contents and multimedia 
 Distribution difficult, slow  Easy and immediate dissemination  
 Copying cumbersome, not perfect  Copying simple and identical 
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 Significant marginal distribution cost  Zero marginal distribution cost 
 Single user (or small group)  Multiple, concurrent users/producers  
 Centralized production  Distributed and integrated production 
 Slow-knowledge diffusion  Accelerated knowledge diffusion 
 Quasi-private good  Quasi-public good 
a This table is adapted from Uhlir, Paul F., “The Emerging Role of Open Repositories as a Fundamental 
Component of the Public Research Infrastructure,” in Open Access: Open Problems, G. Sica, ed., Polimetrica, p. 
62 (2006), available at http://eprints.rclis.org/9656/1/OpenAccess.pdf. 
As Table 1 demonstrates, there are many features of digitally networked data—from both 
quantitative and qualitative perspectives—that have radically changed in just the past two 
decades how we perceive and need to approach data and information resources. From a purely 
quantitative standpoint, Earth observation systems are a major source of the data deluge and 
have the concomitant potential to change in many positive ways how we manage the planetary 
environment. The EO data capabilities that are made available through GEO are the 
quintessential manifestation of “big data” and one of its most familiar forms.  
 
While the amount of EO data available is significant in its own right, it is the qualitative nature 
of digitally networked data and information that makes the free and unrestricted provision of 
those publicly financed resources essential. This report documents that conclusion from many 
different perspectives. 
 
While these digital developments provide essential rationales for making public data as open 
and unrestricted as possible, there are many common—and increasingly urgent—global 
problems that can only be observed and then analyzed with EO data. The development of full 
understanding of these problems and working toward comprehensive solutions are highly data-
driven. Certainly climate change and the well-documented warming of the atmosphere, 
constitute one such trend. The many manifestations of large-scale environmental degradation, 
and the response to and mitigation of disasters, are all problems that know no political 
boundaries and that require a common approach to lessen their effects.   
 
In fact, all of these regional and global problems are reflected in the nine GEO Societal Benefit 
Areas (SBAs) and are the principal focus of the organization. The current thematic SBAs (in 
alphabetical order) are: agriculture, biodiversity, climate, disasters, ecosystems, energy, health, 
water, and weather (see the GEO website for more details at: 
http://www.earthobservations.org). GEO reflects these broader trends, both digital and 
environmental, and has the resulting power to effect positive changes to the global commons 
and to promote the benefits to humanity. The data made available through GEOSS are thus 
vital for addressing social needs comprehensively. As the first GEOSS 10-Year Implementation 
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Plan stated: "The societal benefits of Earth observations cannot be achieved without data 
sharing" (GEO 2005).   
 
 
C. Scope of the Discussion  
 
This report consequently focuses mainly on the benefits that can be derived from the provision 
of open GEO data to the public and not on the rationales for restricting them. There are, of 
course, many well-known reasons for keeping some data more proprietary or secret than 
others, although they need to be balanced against the benefits of openness discussed here. 
Such countervailing reasons include restrictions based on the protection of national security, 
law enforcement, personal privacy, and commercial proprietary concerns. Less well-known and 
narrower motivations include protections of indigenous peoples’ rights, the exact location of 
cultural artifacts or endangered species, and access and benefit sharing of genetic resources. 
Many governments or individual ministries favor some immediate or even prospective cost 
recovery (but see the summary discussion under Part III. CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS, below, 
as to why such a position may be “penny wise, but pound-foolish”).  
 
The extent of restrictions on the data may vary according to their spectral and spatial 
resolution, the subject matter being observed, whether the operator is in the public or private 
sector, and the possibility of serious negative effects. Moreover, each government or 
organization must determine what data fit those categories, so a wholesale policy of open 
access is inappropriate. Because the potential negative aspects that might be inherent in any 
given data-collection system vary greatly, this report does not focus on them further and leaves 
the reasons for imposing restrictions as a policy judgment to be made by each GEO Member 
and Participating Organization. Any restrictions, however, such as those noted above, should be 
based on legitimate factors and need to be balanced against the many benefits that could be 
realized through a more open data policy.   
In particular, there are some unifying features and important arguments that support the open 
and unrestricted availability of data through GEOSS as a default rule. There are intrinsic benefits 
that can be realized from the open provision of data on global digital networks. These 
advantages are the topic of this report and are amply demonstrated.  
This report also focuses almost exclusively on public-sector operators of environmental data 
collection systems, the most voluminous of which are EO satellites. Because of the overview 
nature of the discussion that follows, the many different sources or levels of processing of 
observational environmental data, including related e-infrastructures and software such as 
geographic information systems (GIS), are not considered in a nuanced manner or discussed 
separately. And although a case can be made for some data in some specific circumstances to 
be made freely available by private-sector operators, we do not dwell on it here either because 
it is the exception to the rule, rather than the default obligation. 
10 / 42 
 
The report also only considers digital data. While analog data may be very useful and in many 
cases are the only source of historical facts, the rise of networked digital data and information 
has made analog data of only tangential significance in the present context.    
Finally, while the rationale for open and unrestricted availability of data and information can be 
made very broadly for all types of public data, the focus here as much as possible is on Earth 
observation and geospatial data made available through the GEOSS portal, with examples given 
in the SBAs. All of these limitations in scope are necessary to keep the arguments cohesive and 
tractable, and to limit this overview to a reasonable length. 
 
D. Organization of this Report 
 
The rest of this report focuses on the many benefits that can accrue from the free and 
unrestricted uses of data served through GEO. Most people look at the economic returns, in 
part because it is perhaps the easiest to quantify and also because such evidence is very 
important to make the case. Although there already are many studies that have documented 
the large increase in monetary benefits from the free and unrestricted dissemination of data, 
including especially EO or geospatial data, there are numerous other substantial advantages 
that can be realized as well. The benefits of open data that are reviewed here also include those 
that are enjoyed by society, both collectively and individually; the inherent ethical dimensions; 
the enhancement of innovation and not-for-profit research activities; broad educational 
pursuits; and the improvement of various public policy and governance functions and concerns 
in both developed and developing countries.  
 
The report concludes with some observations about the importance of the GEO initiative in the 
coming decade and beyond. In particular, the many barriers posed by restrictions on access and 
use, and lost opportunity costs and the foregone value from such barriers, are summarized.  
 
Finally, Appendix A provides some definitions of key terms used in this report. Many 
publications, but by no means all, are included in the bibliography at the end. The references 
are limited by time, space and language, but together form an extensive set of evidence in favor 
of an open approach to public data and to EO data made available through the GEOSS portal, 
specifically. 
 
  
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II. THE MANY DIVERSE OPPORTUNITIES FROM OPEN DATA 
 
 
A. Supporting Broad Economic Benefits and Growth 
 
Among the main reasons and the greatest amount of evidence in favor of the open and 
unrestricted availability of public EO (and other) data on digital networks are those in the 
economic sphere. Many studies and reports have documented the positive value of openness 
for EO data, specifically, and for various other types of data and information, more generally. 
This section draws on that past work in describing the issues important for a robust knowledge 
economy. 
 
Economic studies initially attempted to quantify the overall economic stimulus of open and 
unrestricted government data in relation to more closed governmental information policies. 
Although economic effects are difficult to quantify, they are more amenable to measurement, 
at least as a direct value, than other effects, such as social or political. There have been 
numerous studies that have looked at the economic value of an open data policy or that have 
compared the relative economic costs and benefits of open vs. restricted data access policies. 
 
One early study tried to broadly quantify the relative economic advantages of the relatively free 
and unrestricted information policies with cost-recovery and proprietary approaches (PIRA 
2000). Other comparative reports followed, leading to similar conclusions. These included ones 
by Houghton and Gruen 2014; Beagrie and Houghton 2013; Ubaldi 2013; Deloitte 2012; and 
Dekkers et al 2006.   
 
Some analyses have been done specifically in the context of Earth observation data, as well as 
for other types of data, including all types of research data or government data more broadly. 
Within the Earth observation data community itself, the studies and examples over the past 15 
years or so similarly have shown the superiority of free and open dissemination of government 
EO data. A 2008 workshop held by the U.S. CODATA in collaboration with the OECD compiled a 
set of reports done on Earth observations and other government data (Uhlir and Sharif, in NRC 
2009).  
 
Several examples help to demonstrate both the direct and indirect benefits of an open 
government Earth observation data policy. In the United States, NOAA collects both 
geostationary and polar-orbiting meteorological satellite observations, which it either down-
streams free to anyone who has a receiving station or makes all the data available for the 
marginal cost of fulfilling a user request (free online). As a result, a very robust value-added 
private industry has developed in the United States for both general and specialized weather 
forecasting products and services.  
 
A 2002 report looked in greater detail at the commercial meteorological sector in the United 
States (Weiss 2002). According to that report, in the early 2000s the amount of economic 
12 / 42 
 
activity in the U.S. from the open data policy in the weather satellite sector produced $400-700 
million in gross receipts, helped stimulate the formation of 400 commercial businesses for this 
purpose, and employed about 4,000 people in the private sector. This direct economic growth 
was further compounded indirectly by the taxes paid back to the U.S. Treasury by the firms and 
their employees, as well as in social benefits to the general population many times over (see, in 
particular, Section II.B). 
 
In the European Union, another report analyzed the economic benefits of free and open access 
to the Sentinel satellite data, now called the Copernicus Programme (Sawyer and de Vries 
2012). It found the “business model paradigm” was shifting, particularly for public-sector 
information (PSI). The report provided sector-specific evidence and analyzed the value of open 
EO data—especially in the economic re-use of such data. 
 
Similar positive economic effects of open public geospatial Earth observation data were 
recently found internationally (WMO 2015). At the national level, numerous studies have 
corroborated such findings as well. These include, for example, the United States (NASA 2012; 
Kite-Powell 2005), Canada (Roche 2007; Sears 2002), Australia (Houghton 2011; ACIL Tasman 
2010), the United Kingdom (Deloitte 2012), and several continental European countries (Ubaldi 
2013; Vickery 2011; Garcia et al 2007, Dekkers et al 2006). These reports, and many others, not 
only documented specific economic benefits of open data in the EO sector, but provided 
evidence of other, harder to measure, network effects and spillover aspects. 
 
Finally, it should be acknowledged that giving away data from a spacecraft or a sensor system 
cuts off any direct opportunities for cost-recovery by the operator in the public sector. The 
studies reviewed above, however, demonstrate that the economic benefits to society and the 
return on public investments as a whole from an open policy greatly outweigh the benefits that 
might accrue directly to the public-sector operator. 
  
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) provides one specific example from a data-intensive 
government institution, which is one of the few to compare the effects of an open access policy 
before and after it took effect. It clearly shows that the ABS saved money by giving its data 
away, including no sales transactions or staffing, far fewer license inquiries with a CC-BY 
common-use license, and broad social uptake, saving just that one government agency about 
AU$3.5 million and the users AU$5 million per year, among other cited benefits (Houghton 
2011).  
 
  
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B. Enhancing Social Welfare 
 
Although most of the documentation of the value of open public data has focused on the 
economic effects, primarily because such metrics are easier to quantify, there have been some 
studies that have tried to demonstrate the benefits to society from such a policy. It is no 
coincidence that GEO calls the substantive focal points of its work “Societal Benefit Areas.” 
 
This section reviews the individual and collective benefits of open data for non-monetary, social 
applications, including fulfilling the expectations of the “born digital” generation, promoting 
broad reputational benefits, and implementing ethical principles.   
 
1. Evidence of societal benefits, both individual and collective 
 
A policy of making public data available freely and with no restrictions on reuse, can help 
citizens make decisions about their lives. Data products and information derived from GEO data 
can be useful for individuals to better understand the environment in which they live and work, 
in protecting the health of their family, in better educating themselves, and through the 
positive results of many other generative and even serendipitous applications (Zittrain 2006; 
Benkler 2006; NRC 2009; Mayo and Steinberg 2007). Such possibilities are greatly enhanced 
when they are able to easily locate and use data made available through GEOSS and accessed 
on computer terminals at their local library, or on their laptops or smartphones virtually 
anywhere. 
 
Although individuals may not always be personally enterprising, EO organizations in 
government, in the not-for-profit sector, and various commercial enterprises are more likely to 
be. Some public organizations that make environmental data openly available have begun to 
document the social applications and benefits of their data (see, e.g., 
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/societal-impacts/).  
 
2. Meeting society’s expectations for access to and use of digital 
information 
 
An important, but fairly narrow, point is that there is a growing expectation by the younger, 
“born digital” generations that most data and information online, especially data that are 
publicly collected, should be able to be freely accessed and shared. Such normative values are 
entrenched by the capabilities of the technology itself and are therefore growing. If the data 
are unavailable, costly, or restrictive in their re-dissemination, the users will most likely either 
opt to use other open sources—if they can—or do something else. In that event, the restrictive 
public data steward will lose multiple opportunities for enhancing its reputation and whatever 
collateral benefits that may bring. Conversely, restrictions on public EO data, may breed 
distrust and disdain by the (potential) users in the national institution, and stymie creativity at 
the local level.   
 
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3. Promoting reputational benefits 
 
Reputational benefits have been associated primarily with the substantial not-for-profit 
research and educational communities that are an important part of each nation’s 
constituency. More about that aspect is discussed in several sections below. 
 
However, the issue here is the reputational effects from data disseminated to the public, 
especially if they are freely available and used by many. Salutary effects can accrue to both the 
provider of the data as well as the many users. Assuming that the data are accurate and 
useable, as is the case with the vast majority of data made available through GEOSS, the 
providers of the data that are used will gain in reputation and garner the praises of the users 
and their circles. The data providers are thus able to avoid the distrust and disdain from the 
public that were discussed in the previous section. Users of GEO data outside the relatively 
narrow research and educational communities can similarly gain in recognition—whether 
professional or merely social—through their varied applications of those data at work or in 
their personal pursuits. The actual effects or perceptions of such benefits will vary, however, 
depending on the country or community in which such data access and uses are made. 
 
4.  Implementing ethical principles 
 
There are important ethical considerations in determining whether to make data collected by 
the public sector and with public money freely available, as well as what the users of those data 
may do with them.  Access to information is a fundamental human right, as first posited by 
Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights some half century ago 
(UN 1948). 
 
More specifically, if the data made available through the GEOSS portal were collected using 
public funds, the taxpayer has already paid for that function. The entire activity therefore 
should be presumed in the public interest and open to the public, in the absence of some 
legitimate countervailing and overriding purpose (Uhlir 2004).1 The outputs may be considered 
as belonging to the public that paid for it, with the GEO data collector and disseminator acting 
only as an agent on behalf of the public. 
 
Moreover, for government employees, at least, there is no need to apply intellectual property 
laws to incentivize and protect those public outputs. Excluding the public can be considered 
unethical and inequitable. Furthermore, those economically or socially marginalized in any 
society are especially disadvantaged by high prices for data, with the effects of cost recovery 
policies for public data being especially great in developing countries, where the large majority 
of people and institutions are poor (see further the discussion in Sections II.E.3 and 4, below).   
 
                                                          
1
 This assumes that no new investments for e-infrastructures and related equipment are needed. There may well be additional 
public investments of this kind and, like all infrastructures, their costs and benefits should be assessed and validated. The 
analysis of such other related investments is important, but is outside the scope of this overview.  
15 / 42 
 
The users of GEO data also have ethical obligations. They must use the data in accordance with 
the terms and conditions imposed by the data provider and they must not act contrary to the 
law of the country in which they live or the norms of the community within which they work. 
The freer the data policy of the provider regarding the use of its data, the more creative the 
users can be with the data and the greater the opportunities for generative and serendipitous 
results. Also, the fewer restrictions there are on the users, the fewer chances there are for the 
users to contravene them.  
 
It is important to emphasize as well that most GEO data applications have ethical 
considerations, with some expressly recognized in national and international law. All SBAs have 
an ethical dimension to them in embodying global public interest problems, and the data 
supporting public knowledge for their solution may be viewed as global public goods (Stiglitz 
1999). There are also strong ethical considerations—now codified in many public policies 
mandated by Constitutions, treaties, or national laws--that require open data, either expressly 
or implicitly. Examples of such dimensions include the protection of biodiversity and 
endangered species from extinction, the maintenance of water and food security in forestalling 
famines, the protection of populations from pandemics, and the avoidance of deleterious 
international effects from various forms of environmental degradation—all topics directly 
relevant to the GEO SBAs (GEO 2015) and open data availability.  
 
Improved responses to disasters are especially prominent in this regard, with the sharing of 
relevant data—even from private-sector data sources—enshrined in the International Charter 
on Space and Major Disasters (UN 2000). However, the ethical dimensions of mandatory or 
encouraged data sharing have already been codified in other major non-sovereign 
environmental areas that are also topics of GEO SBAs, including the 1949 Antarctic Treaty 
System (http://www.ats.aq/e/ats.htm), the 1984 Law of the Sea (http://www.un.org/ 
Depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/closindx.htm), the 1985 Vienna Convention for 
the Protection of the Ozone Layer (https://treaties.un.org/pages/ViewDetails.aspx 
?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=XXVII-2&chapter=27&lang=en), the 1992 Convention of Biological 
Diversity (https://www.cbd.int/), the 1998 Aarhus Convention (https://treaties.un.org/ 
pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=XXVII-13&chapter=27&lang=en) and many 
other international environmental executive agreements and national laws (Uhlir, Chen, 
Gabrynowicz, and Janssen 2009).   
  
  
16 / 42 
 
 
C. Growing Research and Innovation Opportunities 
 
All of GEO’s SBAs have very strong research and education applications. To the extent that 
research and education is performed in the public sector or with government funds, and is 
fundamentally not-for-profit, it may be presumed to be carried out in the public interest and 
have public-good characteristics. Public data from GEO sources used for such public research 
and educational purposes thus have particularly strong rationales for free and unrestricted 
uses. As noted earlier in this report, the special status of not-for-profit research and education 
was explicitly called out for more favored treatment in the third Principle of the original GEO 
Data Sharing Principles (GEO 2005). This is especially true for data collected from non-sovereign 
areas, such as the Antarctic, the high seas, the atmosphere and outer space, as discussed 
above. 
 
1. Enhancing interdisciplinary and international research 
 
The GEO SBAs have numerous discipline and sub-discipline characteristics, with many different 
participating institutions often in multiple countries. Supporting data that provide the factual 
basis for most areas of research has always been absolutely essential, but is becoming even 
more so as research is ever more data intensive. Many are now calling such data-intensive 
research or data science as the “fourth paradigm” of the research process (Hey, Tansley, and 
Tolle 2009). 
 
The rise of digital networks and technologies has also enabled opportunities inherent in 
working across boundaries. Indeed, this is one of the defining features of GEO itself, and the 
Internet generally (WSIS 2003), and can result in great advances in knowledge and applications 
as new generative and serendipitous connections are constantly made and old boundaries 
erased.  
 
There are several types of boundaries that have caused major barriers to the progress of 
science and to human development, all of which can be ameliorated by the availability of free 
and unrestricted data. Two of them are considered here.  
 
The first is disciplinary. Prior to the Internet, most researchers collaborated, if at all, with other 
researchers in the same discipline. The broad availability of digital networks changed that and 
made hybrid, cross-disciplinary investigations much more common. “Small science” became 
“big science” and new interdisciplinary fields emerged, such as geoinformatics and 
sustainability science (NRC 1997; NRC 1999). More recently, we have seen the formation of 
data-intensive science, as noted at the outset of this section. The GEO SBAs and the rise of open 
access policies for research data in many science-funding organizations reflect that trend. It is 
thus not enough for a funding agency or a research facility to enable only a small circle of 
principal investigators (PIs) from the same discipline to have privileged access to some data. 
The PIs need access to many kinds of data and to the data produced by other scientists, while 
17 / 42 
 
many others--whether researchers from other disciplines or even citizen scientists--need access 
to the data produced by many projects or facilities.  
 
The other boundary is a political one, across nation-states. Many research collaborations are 
increasingly international in scope, yet each nation has its own laws, culture, and norms that 
can make cooperation difficult. Such projects reflect not only the global reach of the Internet 
and the resulting “global village” syndrome, but also the need to address recognized problems 
that bridge nations in a multi-national way and are independent of political boundaries. More 
to the point, EO satellite systems and the data they produce are inherently international and 
can provide the information resources that are needed to research those problems and find 
solutions. To the extent that those data collection platforms are publicly owned and operated, 
they are able to support such inquiries broadly and with reduced legal friction and transaction 
costs if the data are free and unrestricted.  
 
GEO’s SBAs and its organizational principle is to transcend those boundaries with an open data 
approach and thereby enhance the potential for synergistic discoveries and an increase in 
human knowledge as a global public good.     
 
2. Enabling data mining 
 
One of the key attributes of the deluge of digital bits today from EO sensors and many other 
sources is the requirement to perform automated knowledge discovery; that is, to have 
machines find, extract, combine, and disseminate the data with minimal or no human 
intervention (NRC 2012b). The accumulated databases, even when properly documented, 
curated, and stored are simply too large for humans to do the initial interface (NRC 2015). New 
software and algorithmic methods are continually being developed for extracting knowledge 
from big data. 
 
Even 15 years ago, there already were some examples of significant discoveries being made 
through the mining of large archived databases on an open basis. For example, new galaxies, 
quasars, and other astrophysical objects and phenomena were automatically discovered when 
using data mining techniques (NRC 2001). More recently, the Landsat program has been 
supporting new generations of researchers with new technologies and funding for data mining 
discoveries (Serbina and Miller 2014). The problems of sifting through vast amounts of digital 
resources to find patterns, correlations, and outliers worthy of further study in large databases 
has only become more urgent. 
 
These applications, of course, require other technological improvements to succeed, and a 
discussion of this ancillary infrastructure or data processing techniques is beyond the scope of 
this report, as previously noted. There are nonetheless many legal obstacles that make the 
intelligent sifting of massive databases by others than just the rights-holder difficult or 
impossible. Unnecessary intellectual property protections of government databases create a big 
hurdle that can easily be modulated to allow beneficial user exploitations. Publicly funded big 
18 / 42 
 
data—especially in collections of information—thus increasingly require open access and uses 
to allow the applications capable of extracting value from them (Hague Declaration 2014).  
 
Some governments have begun to expressly consider the link between open data and the need 
for such automated intermediation (Obama 2013). As the preeminent international 
organization devoted to disseminating open environmental data, GEO also can and should be a 
world leader in stimulating automated knowledge discovery and generation as a public good for 
human benefit worldwide. 
 
3. Permitting interoperability in the creation of new data sets 
(when data from multiple sources are combined) 
 
A major focus of GEO has been to promote the interoperability of its Members’ data (GEO 
2015). Because scientists—and others—often use multiple sources of data, many of which may 
not be their own, they need to be able to integrate those data in a successful manner to 
generate new knowledge, products, and services.  
 
Interoperability may be defined as “the ability of a computer system or software to work with 
other systems or products without special effort on the part of the user” (Belmont Forum 2015). 
The interoperability of data has technical, semantic, and legal dimensions. From a technical 
standpoint, the data need to have compatible formats and well-known qualities that make 
those diverse data possible to integrate to form new data products. For most geographically 
referenced environmental data made available through the GEOSS portal, geographic 
information software (GIS) has been used already for several decades to accomplish such 
applications. GIS-enabled applications are thus especially valuable for almost all GEO data, 
although they are not discussed separately here. 
 
Interoperability of diverse data is also dependent on semantic compatibilities, which have two 
main aspects. The first, more obvious one, is that the metadata used to describe any given 
dataset may well be in a different language from that of the user, and therefore difficult to 
understand, even with automated translation software. The other semantic aspect relates to 
the nomenclature of the discipline or sub-discipline that generated and described the dataset. 
Different disciplines have very different ways of naming and describing different (or even the 
same) phenomena that are important to their understanding, but that may be 
incomprehensible or even contrary to the usage of that term in another discipline. If a 
researcher wishes to integrate data from multiple languages, disciplines, and other sources, 
such problems may proliferate and pose insurmountable barriers. 
 
Finally, there is the problem of legal interoperability that is the most germane here. In 2014, 
the GEO Data Sharing Working Group (DSWG) published a white paper, Mechanisms to Share 
Data as Part of the GEOSS Data-CORE, which defined legal interoperability this way (GEO 
2014b): 
   
19 / 42 
 
“Legal interoperability among multiple datasets from different sources occurs when:  
- use conditions are clearly and readily determinable for each of the datasets,  
- the legal use conditions imposed on each dataset allow creation and use of combined or 
derivative products, and  
- users may legally access and use each dataset without seeking authorization from data 
creators on a case-by-case basis, assuming that the accumulated conditions of use for each and 
all of the datasets are met” (GEO 2014b). 
 
That white paper went on to say that: 
 
Public domain status is the best legal option for promoting the various social benefits 
and goals intended by GEO through making available data as the GEOSS Data-CORE by 
enabling and securing unrestricted re-use, re-dissemination, and legal interoperability. 
Public domain may be created formally by public laws through national legislation that 
excludes certain categories of data and information from copyright protection or 
prohibits impositions of restrictions on their use. The public domain may also be created 
through regulation or policies that place publicly-funded data in the public domain, as 
well as through national funding mechanisms, such as grants or contracts (GEO 2014b). 
 
Until relevant government measures are broadly adopted and enforced in the jurisdictions of 
GEO Members, however, that white paper recommended that they use waivers of intellectual 
property laws and common-use licenses on a voluntary basis for the data, metadata, and 
products that they control. The white paper concluded that GEO Members and Participating 
Organizations should “consider adopting one of the following existing voluntary waivers or 
standard common-use licenses compatible with the GEOSS Data-CORE mechanism:  
a. Creative Commons Public Domain Mark.  
b. Statutory waiver of copyright.  
c. Creative Commons Public Domain Waiver (CC0).  
d. Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL).  
e. Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0).” (GEO 2014b) 
 
These legal interoperability mechanisms all allow the researcher and anyone else who wishes to 
combine data from different sources, re-use or re-disseminate them on an open basis.  Such 
mechanisms provide the user with certainty that such actions are lawful, at least in the context 
of infringement of intellectual property rights. 
 
4. Reducing inefficiencies, including duplication of research  
 
Many inefficiencies can be avoided with the open availability of data. Public research, in 
particular, needs to access large amounts and diverse sources of factual data and information 
to conduct studies, communicate findings, and share results with the world. Factual data, such 
as the GEO data sources, are the currency of science. Barriers to access and re-use makes the 
research process more difficult, incomplete, or inefficient. By making access to data restricted 
20 / 42 
 
or too expensive for researchers, the chances of duplicating efforts and wasting resources are 
greatly increased.  
 
For example, a country may fund multiple ground stations with public money to download data 
that are freely broadcast from an orbiting remote sensing satellite. Despite the free access 
provided by the operator of the satellite to its data and the payment by a government ministry 
of the public ground-station equipment, the ground station managers may not share the data 
that they archive with others. In that case, not only has the government ministry funded 
multiple ground stations at substantial public expense, but the country’s researchers did not 
get the benefit of broad use of the free data that were downloaded by those stations. 
 
5. Promoting new research and new types of research  
 
Of course, more research can be conducted and new types of research can be promoted if the 
data are openly available since many more scientists, their machines, and their institutions can 
access and use the data. Open data reinforce scientific inquiry and encourage diversity of 
analysis and opinion. They can add increasingly to the reputation and subsequent reward of the 
researcher. They also encourage the testing of new or alternative hypotheses and methods of 
analysis. Finally, the open availability of data can lead to serendipitous results, enabling the 
exploration of topics not envisioned by the initial investigator(s) and the primary research 
community (Beagrie and Houghton 2014; Arzberger et al 2004). 
 
6. Facilitating citizen scientists and crowdsourcing approaches  
 
Digital networks allow new forms of research to be undertaken, but only if the data and 
information are openly available for people to access and use. The Internet enables entirely 
new forms of collaborative knowledge production on a broadly distributed, interactive, and 
even anonymous basis, changing the hierarchical and centralized organizational models 
through which information was produced and knowledge diffused previously (Benkler 2006; 
Uhlir 2006). One of the prominent GEO initiatives for the next decade along these lines is to 
promote cooperation with citizen scientists and either obtain data using crowdsourcing 
techniques or add value to existing data in that highly distributed way (GEO 2015). 
 
There are many examples already of the involvement of the general public in voluntary ad hoc 
associations to accomplish specific research tasks. One such application is the provision of a 
database online in segmented scenes on which the public can work voluntarily. One of the 
earliest examples of this approach was a project called NASA Clickworkers, in which the public 
was asked to mark the boundaries of craters on the moon (see:  
http://www.nasa.gov/open/plan/peo.html). The results showed that such crowdsourcing was 
more accurate (and cheaper) than having a Ph.D. geologist doing the same work. 
 
Another crowdsourcing application is through distributed computing and processing. The first 
such instance was launched by the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence in SETI@home. In 
21 / 42 
 
that project, tens of thousands of volunteers have downloaded distributed processing software 
onto their computers, which processes the data received by the SETI project while the 
computers are not in use by the owners (see http://www.setilive.org). For a list of results by 
SETI, see http://www.crowdsourcing.org/navigate-search?q=Seti.  
 
Other such projects soon followed, including in the EO and remote sensing area. For example, 
the collection and analysis of satellite imaging is not detailed enough to obtain a 
comprehensive understanding of vegetation cover. Besides various formal ground sensor 
systems, such data can be crowdsourced through the participation of citizen scientists using 
personal cell phones (See and McCallum 2014). 
 
One type of crowdsourcing that has been very successful has been through citizen scientists 
contributing data to a project, which then puts the entries in a database. Examples include the 
submission of oceanographic data (Lauro et al. 2014) or bird sightings (Robbins 2013), but many 
such projects have been undertaken. 
 
A variation of this has been implemented with the more professional and organized 
contributions of data by researchers. For instance, in the United States, the National Oceanic 
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) uses crowdsourcing techniques for obtaining some 
magnetic data at its National Geophysical Data Center. NOAA uses the CrowdMag App, in which 
users can enable background recording with a digital magnetometer installed on their phones 
so that NOAA can anonymously collect magnetic field data to help keep track of Earth’s ever-
changing magnetic fields (see http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/crowdmag.shtml). For 
NOAA´s crowdsourcing initiatives, in general, including the NOAA Integrated Ocean and Coastal 
Mapping, see Glang 2013.  
 
Even private-sector entities have advanced crowdsourcing techniques. For instance, Digital 
Globe Corporation, has organized huge numbers of volunteers to conduct image interpretation 
services to identify and locate flotsam from the lost MH370 aircraft (Barrington 2014). This 
project helped upgrade the scale and complexity of crowdsourcing using remote sensing data in 
the Earth and environmental sciences. 
 
The incentives for the people who participate in these and many other projects are not 
monetary; they are reputational in nature and are also driven by the personal satisfaction of 
contributing to a topic or project that they support. At the same time, they would not 
participate if their data and those of the other contributors led to results kept on a proprietary 
basis. Thus, open access to the resulting crowdsourced database is a key feature.  
 
7. Stimulating downstream applications and commercial 
innovation 
 
The non-commercial, public-sector systems used for collecting EO data that are then made 
available through GEOSS may be considered “upstream data.” That designation refers to data 
22 / 42 
 
that are meant to be a community resource, and that are non-commercial, non-proprietary, 
and should not be restricted from broad use, including by value-added firms. The U.S. 
government has followed this policy, which does not distinguish between commercial and non-
commercial users in its access and re-use terms and conditions (OMB 2000). This has led to the 
very large differences that have been documented and analyzed in various studies reviewed 
above (see Section II.A.1). 
 
Scientists have always cooperated in the public sphere, with fewer barriers among government 
and academic scientists than between researchers in the private sector. Whereas the sharing of 
data was (and can be) relatively less problematic in a purely public setting, researchers funded 
by public money have increasingly been encouraged to form public-private partnerships (PPPs) 
to commercialize the fruits of their research that may have economic potential or at least to 
find new revenue sources. At the same time, with increased competition and smaller profits 
endemic in the private sector, research-intensive firms have looked to public-sector scientists 
for joint collaborations at a lower overhead. This has led to a restructuring of the research 
process, with most data directly produced by the private sector or in PPPs being highly 
proprietary or secret, whereas those same entities have relied increasingly on access to open 
data for their work.  
 
Open data from public sources thus helps to fuel downstream applications and the creation of 
wealth, more broadly. Moreover, there have been high-level recommendations for a “global 
network of data innovation networks” to bring organizations and experts together for the 
common good and use open data to innovate collaboratively (Data Revolution Group 2014). For 
a discussion of further issues and references to many reports, see the OECD website on “Data 
driven innovation for growth and well-being” (http://www.oecd.org/sti/ieconomy/data-driven-
innovation.htm). 
 
8. Encouraging the verification of previous results 
  
Science is mostly a process of small, incremental advances, with an occasional leap forward 
though a major discovery. The analogy of “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants” is as apt now as 
it was a few hundred years ago, when it was etched into the sarcophagus of Sir Isaac Newton. 
However, this process is crucially dependent on the independent verification of the published 
results, not only through what has come to be known as “peer review,” but also afterward. 
 
Thus one of the most important benefits for the scientific community and for the integrity of 
the scientific process itself has been to provide access at least to the data underlying published 
research results (e.g., National Research Council 2009a; 2004; 2003; 1999; and 1997). Although 
the amounts of data needed to be accessed to verify the findings in any one article may be 
relatively small, the volume becomes quite large when one adds up the many thousands of 
research results that are made with the data provided (or could be provided) through GEOSS. It 
is inefficient and likely to be quite costly to obtain permission many times over to share the 
data underlying each finding, which a blanket policy of openness would eradicate all at once. 
  
23 / 42 
 
 
D. Facilitating the Education of New Generations 
 
Educational uses and users are another favored category, closely coupled with not-for-profit 
research. Many of the rationales used above for providing data to the academic research 
community are also applicable to promoting better education, particularly at the higher 
education levels. What everyone knows is that a well-educated population is an asset to every 
nation. Data that are easy to obtain and use through GEO can help foster such benefits. 
 
Open data support the education of people at many levels, and across all ages and disciplines. 
As we have already seen, researchers have much to gain from the unfettered access to and use 
of data.  
 
As big data and data science grow in prominence, there will be an increasing demand for 
university graduates to be capable of using, integrating, and generally managing large volumes 
of data, not only within their own disciplines, but across many others. Data curation and data 
management generally is an expanding field of work, with many jobs already available at data 
centers and repositories, digital libraries, archives, and all types of businesses, as two studies 
recently reported about the U.S. job market (NRC 2015; Manyika et al. 2011). Restrictive and 
costly data policies are significant barriers to the education and training of new generations of 
such students, driving up costs of education and taking away time from study and research. 
 
Just as more open data can benefit students, both disadvantaged and not, it can also benefit in 
educating more established researchers in providing examples of the latest data techniques and 
big data management. Although many researchers have some limited access to data and 
databases for this purpose, they do not necessarily have a broad range of examples to use, nor 
are they able in many cases to access and use the data on their own or on different platforms 
and venues. They also cannot use those opportunities to show or teach others informally in 
different settings. The point is that a very restrictive data policy limits the educational 
opportunities of students, experts, and many others who may not be part of some formal 
educational program. With the greater use of digital networks for distributed or distance 
education, this is a major barrier to education, training, and self-help instruction. 
 
Although there are clear opportunities for better jobs in the digital economy that require higher 
education degrees, younger students in the secondary and even primary levels can learn a lot 
from environmental observations and data that are openly available. For example, in the United 
States, NOAA has had a program for younger students to learn from and use meteorological 
data in their schools’ regular curricula (see http://www.goes-r.gov/education 
/students.html#NOAA). Similarly, the open EO data from other government organizations have 
supported the education of students in schools (see, e.g., the Globe Program at 
https://www.globe.gov/). 
  
24 / 42 
 
The general public too can learn a lot, whether at work or at home. Some of these educational 
pursuits involve formal mid-career retraining to become data curators and digital stewards 
(NRC 2015). Many others are simply informal personal learning and the ubiquitous fact-
checking. The phenomenal success of Google Earth, using government remote sensing data that 
are in the public domain and even commercial remote-sensing data on an open basis (though 
partially restricted in use), demonstrates the power and demand for such information, and has 
been used for geography lessons in the classroom (Ganzel 2010). 
 
Open data made available through the GEOSS portal therefore can significantly enable and 
enhance all these educational and training endeavors. 
 
 
E. Benefits for Effective Governance and Policy Making 
 
Finally, there are the issues of better public policy making (including better regulation) and 
more effective governance in general. This report has already demonstrated how businesses, 
researchers, educators, and individuals of all kinds can benefit from the open access to 
networked data made available through the GEOSS portal. But does this apply to government 
policy makers and managers themselves?  
 
All the GEO Members are representatives of governments, leaders of various Ministries and 
public organizations, and/or public-sector information managers and policymakers. They have a 
strong interest in improving the decisions they have to make on behalf of their constituents, to 
demonstrate leadership, and to build freedom and trust of the public they represent. 
Developing countries, in particular, can be the beneficiaries of open GEO data, even if they do 
not have their own data-collection systems. These topics are explored in greater detail below. 
 
1. Improving decision making 
 
As one might expect, there are numerous significant opportunities for improved decision 
making in the public sector, from the local to global levels. For purposes of keeping this review 
simple, we divide the discussion according to the national level (e.g., local, state or province, 
and country), and at the international level (e.g., bilateral, regional, and global). There are many 
telling examples from all these perspectives. 
 
From a national point of view, for instance, the Earth Resources Observation and Science 
(EROS) Data Center, which is managed by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in Sioux 
Falls, South Dakota, archives many kinds of remote sensing data and provides most of them 
freely. That data center documents numerous uses of various state agencies in the United 
States (Nelson 2011). Similarly, at the international level, open GEO data can be used more 
extensively in decisions by governmental entities in all the Societal Benefit Areas. For example, 
the Global Infrastructures for Supporting Biodiversity research (GLOBIS-B) project, 
supported by the European Commission, fosters global cooperation of biodiversity 
25 / 42 
 
research infrastructures and biodiversity scientists to promote the implementation and 
calculation of Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs). The concept of EBVs was introduced 
by the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON), one of 
the SBAs. For more information, see the GLOBIS-B website (http://www.globis-b.eu/). 
 
These examples—and many more like them—are difficult, if not impossible, to demonstrate if 
government ministries have to buy the data from other ministries, even in their own countries, 
or overcome other time-consuming bureaucratic burdens. 
 
2. Demonstrating leadership and broadening influence 
 
It is no coincidence that EO data made freely open and unrestricted in use by the Members of 
GEO are by far the most ubiquitous and are also found in the most applications worldwide. 
Data providers that disseminate GEO data openly are consequently well-known in other 
countries, their websites are broadly visited and used, and the users are appreciative of the 
opportunities. For example, the EROS Data Center, cited above, keeps (anonymized) statistics 
on international users (Nelson 2011).  
 
The broad use of such data can have many economic and other spillover effects, as noted 
earlier, including political ones that accrue to the government data center, organization, and/or 
country providing the data. Such effects are difficult to quantify, but are sure to exist (Uhlir and 
Schröder 2007). Open data providers in government do not primarily provide their data for 
those reasons, but they enjoy such collateral benefits nonetheless. 
 
3. Promoting capacity building in developing countries 
 
One of the most important advantages from the open data principles practiced by GEO and its 
Members and Participating Organizations are for economically developing countries. The World 
Bank categorizes countries by level of economic development 
(http://data.worldbank.org/about/country-and-lending-groups#High_income). The groups of 
low-income and lower-middle-income economies and countries do not have many of their own 
EO systems or data centers, but they particularly can benefit from the applications of those 
data. The same is true for economically disadvantaged individuals or institutions within even 
more wealthy nations.  
 
The open provision of data through GEO makes such data available for use by those least able 
to afford any access fees. Open data policies provide a level playing field and opportunities for a 
leapfrogging effect. Such policies enable the supply of data to data-poor areas, where such 
information can be most needed (Data Revolution Group 2014; NRC 2012a; NRC 2002). 
 
Thus, for example, a geospatial data training and policy workshop in 2014 in Beijing, China and 
Nairobi, Kenya organized and conducted by CODATA used free Landsat data for the hands-on 
data management sessions and then developed the Nairobi Principles on Data Sharing for 
26 / 42 
 
Science and Development in Developing Countries (CODATA 2014). Open EO data made 
available through the GEOSS portal can be a very valuable tool for capacity building in the 
environmental and information sciences and related applications (GEO 2015). 
 
 
4. Helping to implement “data repatriation” objectives of 
developing countries 
 
Among the pernicious effects of colonization of poor countries by the richer ones over the 
centuries has been the transfer of valuable heritage materials (also called “patrimony” in 
Hispanic countries), consisting of both human-made and natural artifacts. The human-made 
ones consisted of archeological treasures, artistic works, and other valuable creations. Natural 
ones were comprised mostly of specimens of flora and fauna, many unique and sometimes 
endangered or even now extinct. 
 
Many of these artifacts ended up in the hands of private dealers and personal collections. 
However, a substantial fraction of both the artificial and natural ones were—and still are—
displayed in museums, primarily in the OECD countries. The GEO SBAs, especially the one 
focused on biodiversity, but also in the other environmental areas, have much to gain by free 
and unrestricted access to the virtual representations and the data about these holdings, some 
of which are the only way for many users to get any access at all if the species has become 
extinct. Importantly, it is also a way for the originating country to obtain unfettered access to at 
least the digital representations of the specimens—assuming that the language and literacy 
barriers can be bridged. 
 
Data “repatriation” has been championed by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). 
In 2008, the GBIF Governing Board passed two resolutions in this regard. First, it recommended 
that “natural history institutions housing biodiversity materials from other countries ensure 
that species and specimen-level data and associated metadata be digitised and made openly 
and publicly available through mechanisms cooperating with GBIF.” It also recommended that 
funding agencies and private foundations around the world “provide funding for research, 
capacity building, training and other relevant activities that include the digitisation and open 
dissemination of species and specimen-level data collected beyond their national territories, in 
accordance with GBIF-mediated standards and protocols” (GBIF 2008). 
 
The key concept here is for the data to be “made openly and publicly available” through other 
organizations that cooperate with GBIF. Without the open data policy of GBIF, which only 
requires a default rule that data be properly attributed, most data users in the developing 
world countries of origin could not afford to access them.  
 
 
 
 
27 / 42 
 
5. Building freedom and trust 
 
We have seen ample evidence of the individual and collective freedom of action that open data 
bring in myriad opportunities for applications. Digital networks multiply those opportunities 
exponentially. It is thus no coincidence that the countries that have the most closed and tightly 
regulated access to information in the public sector are also the most dictatorial and 
oppressive, with the lowest rankings in the personal freedoms of their citizens (Uhlir 2004). 
 
According to article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the right to freedom of 
opinion and expression “includes the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and 
ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers” (UN 1948).  Article 27(1) of the same 
Declaration provides for the “right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community ... 
and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits” (UN 1948). Thus, one of the ultimate 
goals of any society striving for human development is the empowerment of all its citizens 
through access to and use of information and knowledge. 
 
The many laws and policies for open data referenced in this report have built on this 
fundamental concept and promoted that freedom of information—particularly in the public 
sphere. The GEO Data Sharing Principles are consistent with numerous other Earth observation 
and geospatial data laws and principles that promote access to and use of such public data, 
thereby empowering individuals in society to freely pursue their own decisions in an informed 
way. 
 
Together with such enhanced freedom is the building of trust in the governance of any nation. 
Open data are strongly indicative of confidence of the governing institutions in their positions, 
as well as a maturity of the political system and of concomitant transparency in governance. 
The citizens of each country recognize that and support it. These are the aspirational ideals that 
the Member governments of GEO implicitly adhere to when endorsing and implementing GEO’s 
Data Sharing Principles.   
 
  
28 / 42 
 
III. CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS 
 
The preceding discussion illustrated the impressive extent, the existing value, and the 
unrealized potential that truly open public EO data can have worldwide. Open data are thus of 
fundamental importance to GEO and all public geospatial applications.   
 
What is not always so obvious is what is lost when such public data are not free to access and 
use. Of course, many of the benefits from an open data approach outlined above would either 
not be realized or would be substantially attenuated. Nonetheless, there are additional 
negative effects that perhaps are not as apparent (Uhlir and Schröder 2007). 
 
From a purely economic or financial standpoint, a policy of cost recovery for public EO data has 
many embedded hidden costs that can make the monetary returns illusory (NRC 2009). 
Although not expressly addressed in this report, a substantial fraction of the functions 
associated with producing, maintaining, and disseminating the data are already subsidized by 
the public. Because the public data provider is frequently a monopoly and has no private-sector 
competitor, the operation is inherently inefficient from an economic theory perspective, with 
unnecessary transaction costs and onerous restrictions on public goods (Weiss 2002). Even if 
there are competitors in the private sector, they operate at a disadvantage to the subsidized 
public entity (NRC 2009).   
 
Even less obvious are the lost opportunity costs, since many potential users who would use the 
data if they were free and unrestricted, will opt for alternate and perhaps less effective 
solutions instead, assuming that any alternates are even available (NRC 1999). There is thus not 
only a failure to capture many of the benefits from the public investments, but a strong 
disincentive for the stimulation of an economically rewarding (and taxpaying) value-added 
industry and the applications or development of other social goods. Charging other government 
entities for access and restricting their uses only shifts public monies around in a counter-
productive circle (Weiss 2002). 
 
Research and education would suffer as well (NRC 1997; NRC 1999; NRC 2003). Many of the 
individuals and even the institutions in these areas are in the public sector and cannot afford 
even small costs for obtaining data. Moreover, they are inherently re-users of data, not end- 
users, so restrictions on the uses are especially limiting. They are also much more cooperative, 
so such restrictions would particularly hurt interdisciplinary and international research projects. 
Finally, automated extraction and knowledge creation would essentially be stopped, at a time 
when such approaches are even more essential.  
 
Last but not least, the opportunities for improved governance would suffer. Because individuals 
and institutions in developing countries are least able to afford any costs of obtaining GEO data, 
they would be the most disenfranchised. The gap between the OECD nations and the least 
developed countries would continue to widen. 
 
29 / 42 
 
In sum, the Members of GEO stand to gain much more than they might lose from making their 
public EO data available on a full and open basis, freely and without reuse restrictions, as 
promoted by the GEOSS Data-CORE. They also would avoid many of the negative effects that 
come with attempts at cost recovery and policing leakage in the various potential uses of their 
data. For all these reasons, openness for such data should be the default rule. It is therefore 
imperative for GEO to seize these many benefits from publicly generated environmental data 
now, as the new Data Sharing Principles are being implemented for the coming decade. And it 
is the primary organizational raison d’être of GEO to make those benefits a reality. 
 
 
 
  
30 / 42 
 
APPENDIX A 
 
Definition of Key Terms 
 
There are some concepts used throughout this report that may not be obvious or that may 
mean different things to different people. It is therefore useful to provide a few definitions. 
A key distinction needs to be made between a pure public and private good, and how to 
characterize goods that are somewhere in-between. A public good is both not exhausted in its 
use (non-depletable) and cannot be kept from others (non-excludable) (Wikipedia 2015 at 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good). The warnings from a lighthouse are often cited as 
being a pure public good, but there are few goods or services that have both aspects in their 
entirety.   
A private good can be both depleted and excluded. Most tangible objects have private good 
characteristics. 
Data and information, whether from a public or a private source, have quasi-public good 
characteristics. That is, they can be used without diminution, since an exact copy can be made 
and shared while the original remains intact, but they can be excluded, since it is possible to 
keep them restricted or even secret. The exclusion of data from a public entity is inherently 
inefficient, however. 
EO satellites and sensor systems—whether public or private—that collect data also have quasi-
public good attributes. If the source is fully governmental, however, there is the further 
dimension of a public interest in the collection of the data, whether to support research, 
improve the economic and social welfare of the country’s citizens, or enhance various 
governance objectives, all of which have strong public-interest dimensions themselves.  
Not-for-profit academics and educators also have many public-interest goals, but have 
increasingly been encouraged to commercialize their outputs and to form public-private 
partnerships. Although their products and services may not have fully public-interest objectives, 
they frequently have the creation and transfer of knowledge to the public as their principal 
purpose and therefore practice public openness as a default rule. It is for these reasons that 
not-for-profit researchers and educators were given preferential status as users of GEO data in 
the 2005 Data Sharing Principles (GEO 2005). 
Global public goods are important to consider in the context of public EO satellites and the 
uses of the resulting data for ameliorating global problems for broad human benefit.  Human 
knowledge, the fruit of such data and information, has global public good qualities (Stiglitz 
1999).   
Externalities are another important economic concept that is most relevant here. An 
"externality is the cost or benefit that affects a party who did not choose to incur that cost or 
31 / 42 
 
benefit" (Wikipedia 2015 at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality). The externality may 
have a positive or negative effect. Economists developed this information theory to describe 
the effects of a telephone or fax system. Simply put, there is no value in producing and using 
only one telephone or fax machine, but with every device added to the system, the value from 
its use--usually positive—increases exponentially. The same can be said for the Internet, 
particularly for online information in the public domain that can be accessed and reused by 
anyone with access to a networked computer—a network effect. This is true of EO data that 
are freely available and have no use restrictions, including through the GEOSS Data-CORE.   
Data, data products, and metadata are all subject matter at the heart of the GEOSS Data 
Sharing Principles, and therefore of this report. Data may be defined as 
“a set of values of qualitative or quantitative variables” or as “individual pieces of information” 
(Wikipedia 2015 at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data). Whereas data can run the gamut of 
unprocessed or “raw” facts from observation or experiments to highly processed products, they 
typically need to be organized and stored in a collection of information, commonly referred to 
as a database or dataset. 
Data products are data that have undergone correction and higher levels of processing from 
their original, raw state. Data products are usually standalone datasets, often in an image form 
or some other graphical representation that makes them easier to use. Value-added data is a 
term closely related to data products and can be used interchangeably with that term.  
Finally, metadata “describes other data. It provides information about a certain item's 
content,” such as a database (http://www.techterms.com).   
Turning now to data policy, the concept of full and open access to data is a term used for some 
25 years and was the formulation used in the 2005 GEO Data Sharing Principles. “Full and open 
exchange” means that “data, metadata and products made available through the GEOSS are 
made accessible with minimal time delay and with as few restrictions as possible, on a 
nondiscriminatory basis, at minimum cost for no more than the cost of reproduction and 
distribution” (GEO 2009). 
Open data is a relatively new term that is very relevant here as well. The history of satellite 
remote sensing and other forms of digital data collection is still quite short—less than 60 years 
for the United States and the former USSR, and even less for other countries and regions. 
Because comprehensive laws and policies always lag the progress of technology, their 
implementation has been shorter still and in many ways are not yet fully formed. Such laws and 
policies are usually accompanied by analyses of the benefits and drawbacks of different courses 
of action. Those analyses are undertaken by governments and academia, often at the request 
of public-sector entities, and it is those reports and articles that form not only the evidentiary 
base for each nation’s course of action, but for this report. 
Even more recent are the various declarations, statements, and policies that promote openness 
for public and publicly funded data. Some are governmental or inter-governmental (e.g., 
32 / 42 
 
Bromley 1991; WMO 1995; OMB 2000; Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology 2003; 
Strong and Leach 2005; OECD 2007 and 2008; European Union 2010; G8 2013; National Science 
and Technology Council 2013; Holdren 2013; and Sunlight Foundation 2015), while others are 
academic (e.g., Berlin Declaration 2003; The Royal Society 2012; Hague Declaration 2014; 
CODATA 2014; and RECODE Project 2015), or discipline-based (e.g., Bermuda Principles 1996 
for human genome data; Bouchout Declaration 2014 for biodiversity data). However, together 
they show a rising recognition about the value of openness on digital networks and an 
emerging consensus for implementing laws and policies that affirmatively recognize such an 
approach.  
Open data have been defined more succinctly as “data that can be freely used, re-used and 
redistributed by anyone - subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and sharealike” 
(Open Knowledge 2015). The Royal Society of the United Kingdom goes on to say that data 
must be “Intelligently open:” meaning that to be fully open, data need to be discoverable, 
accessible, intelligible, assessable, and usable (Royal Society 2012).   
Common-use licenses, waivers of rights, and information commons are also new terms that 
should be defined in this context. Common-use licenses were first introduced in 2002 by 
Creative Commons, a not-for-profit organization of lawyers and scholars in the United States 
(http://www.creativecommons.org). Creative Commons and some other groups like it are 
dedicated to developing and improving licenses “with some rights reserved.” Unlike copyright 
law and database protection statutes under which the data rights holder has “all rights 
reserved,” a common-use license derogates from those rights in favor of the users and then 
relies on copyright and database protection laws to enforce those reduced rights.  A waiver of 
rights is the legal means employed by data providers to eliminate all intellectual property 
protections and allow users unfettered use of the data set. 
The most appropriate and frequently applied licenses for promoting broad, unrestricted uses of 
data include the Creative Commons “attribution only” (CC-BY 4.0 license), which allows the 
recipients of the data to use them in any lawful way, subject only to the requirement that the 
data source be duly attributed. The Creative Commons waiver of rights (CC0) eliminates even 
that legal attribution requirement, and relies instead on the norms of the community for giving 
credit to the data sources. For both instruments, see http://www.creativecommons.org. 
By applying such common-use licenses or waivers of rights to GEO data sets and other works 
protected by intellectual property laws, the rights holder can voluntarily promote the 
unrestricted uses of the data. Together with others using the same or similar legal instruments, 
the rights holders can collectively form an information commons that can benefit not only all 
users, worldwide, through the private law construction of a vast public domain (Reichman and 
Uhlir 2003), but the original rights holders or providers of the data as well. Some GEO data 
providers now use these legal instruments for making their data available through the GEOSS 
Data-CORE and the specific benefits of such openness are detailed in the body of this report. 
33 / 42 
 
Finally, there is the GEOSS Data-CORE, which is a distributed pool of documented datasets, 
contributed by the GEO community under the following principles, as set forth in the 2010 
GEOSS Data Sharing Action Plan (see also GEO 2013):  
1. The data are free of restrictions on re-use;  
2. User registration or login to access or use the data is permitted;  
3. Attribution of the data provider is permitted as a condition of use; and 
4. Marginal cost recovery charges (i.e., not greater than the cost of reproduction and 
distribution) are permitted. 
 
 
  
34 / 42 
 
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