Mariel Borowitz - Open Space: The Global Effort for Open Access to Environmental Satellite Data

Information Policy Series

Edited by Sandra Braman

The Information Policy Series publishes research on and analysis of significant problems in the field of information policy, including decisions and practices that enable or constrain information, communication, and culture irrespective of the legal silos in which they have traditionally been located as well as state-lawsociety interactions. Defining information policy as all laws, regulations, and decision-making principles that affect any form of information creation, processing, flows, and use, the series includes attention to the formal decisions, decision-making processes, and entities of government; the formal and informal decisions, decision-making processes, and entities of private and public sector agents capable of constitutive effects on the nature of society; and the cultural habits and predispositions of governmentality that support and sustain government and governance. The parametric functions of information policy at the boundaries of social, informational, and technological systems are of global importance because they provide the context for all communications, interactions, and social processes.

Virtual Economies: Design and Analysis, Vili Lehdonvirta and Edward Castronova

Traversing Digital Babel: Information, E-Government, and Exchange, Alon Peled

Chasing the Tape: Information Law and Policy in Capital Markets, Onnig H. Dombalagian

Regulating the Cloud: Policy for Computing Infrastructure, edited by Christopher S. Yoo and Jean-Franois Blanchette

Privacy on the Ground: Driving Corporate Behavior in the United States and Europe, Kenneth A. Bamberger and Deirdre K. Mulligan

How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet, Benjamin Peters

Hate Spin: The Manufacture of Religious Offense and Its Threat to Democracy, Cherian George

Big Data Is Not a Monolith, edited by Cassidy R. Sugimoto, Hamid R. Ekbia, and Michael Mattioli

Decoding the Social World: Data Science and the Unintended Consequences of Communication, Sandra Gonzlez-Bailn

Open Space: The Global Effort for Open Access to Environmental Satellite Data, Mariel John Borowitz

Mariel John Borowitz

The MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts

London, England

2017 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

This book was set in ITC Stone Sans Std and ITC Stone Serif Std by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited. Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Borowitz, Mariel.

Title: Open space : the global effort for open access to environmental satellite data / Mariel Borowitz.

Description: Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, [2018] | Series: Information policy | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017019414 | ISBN 9780262037181 (hardcover : alk. paper)

eISBN 9780262343800

Subjects: LCSH: Astronautics in earth sciences. | Environmental monitoringRemote sensing. | Climatic changesRemote sensing. | Communication policy. | Information resources management.

Classification: LCC QE33.2.R4 B677 2018 | DDC 550.28/4dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017019414

ePub Version 1.0

d_r0

To family, especially my husband, Jeff, who also provided endless support and a bottomless cup of coffee.

Sandra Braman

The story is complex. We tend to think of openness as an on/off conditionbut often, as Mariel Borowitz's comprehensive analysis of access to satellite data from around the world finds, the most successful way to maximize usage of very large datasets is to blend diverse types of access. The industrial economy has given way to an information economybut as Borowitz's history of efforts to commercialize satellite data shows, that doesn't mean that every attempt to make a market in information will succeed. There is wide agreement on the importance of making publicly available data that will help communities recuperate from problems such as those raised by the environmental crisisbut as we learn from Open Space, short-term or spot sharing won't do the trick. In a lot of systems, data become available only when users specifically request it based on particular needsbut a great many of the most valuable uses of data develop only after the information is freely available.

With all of today's talk about and experimentation with open access to data, to publications, and to decision-making procedures, it will be a surprise to most of us to learn that one of the earliest references to open data as a policy issue showed up in debate over what to do with data gathered by satellites. Indeed, Mariel Borowitz's in-depth analysis of meteorological and space agencies in the United States, Europe, and Japan found that they all began operations assuming they would provide open access. The fact that a mix of approaches is currently in use, both for those satellite-sensing systems presented in full case studies and in the rest of the 35 countries that conducted remote sensing by the beginning of 2016 that are all analyzed in Open Space, is evidence of just how difficult it is to achieve effective and meaningful access to data for all who desire it, in a manner in which they can use it.

A variety of factors figure in. There is an interplay between expectations, reputations, innovation, economics, and the uses to which data are put. Implications of developments are not always obvious and a change in any one factor can affect the relative weighting and relationships among the rest. The trend toward storing ever-larger satellite datasets in clouds provides an example. The US government chose to move its satellite data to private sector clouds because doing so was more cost-effective and efficient than trying to developing its own cloud-based storage. It might seem that such a move would inevitably shift costs to users who then must access the data through a private sector provider, but Borowitz points out that that isn't sowhatever funds a government entity had been devoting to storage and access on its own servers could be used in an arrangement with companies to ensure that user access and use of data is free.

Borowitz's research was inspired by the problem of how to get access to satellite data that is of such value to environmentalists. By its conclusion, though, this clear and insightful analysis, informed by theories and research from multiple disciplines, provides a model for understanding the complexities of open access to data of any type, and from any source. Open Space concludes with real golda range of realistic, feasible policy recommendations for data access that maximizes access and openness for countries, situations, and data of different types. These, too, can be used as models for access to data from sources other than satellites.

Unusually, and usefully, in her conclusions Borowitz notes things that users as well as data providers and the governments standing behind them whether through intimate or arm's-length relationships can do. We can make sure to always attribute sources of data, a practice that runs counter to the big data trend of ignoring or losing provenance altogether in an important and necessary way. We can analyze and publicize the value of data that are openly accessible. We can be consistent in our reputational treatment of those who do and do not make their data available for use by environmentalists and others concerned about social issues of such importance to us all. And, whether or not particular leaders and communities have turned their backs on facts as the basis of their decision-making, we can demand the data, and use them.