Workshops and Community Building

 Workshop Objectives: Define case studies and use cases that assess value by tracing the information flow end-to-end from geospatial data acquisition system to decisions by end users. The goal is to demonstrate and compare approaches to valuation of geospatial information and forge a path forward for research. Focus Areas: Disasters and Ecosystems. 2016 Workshop Announcement-GEOValue Call for Abstracts Call for Abstracts GEOValue Agenda Workshop agenda Feb 25. Agenda now includes abstract authors selected to participate in panels. Registration is closed (limited to 60 attendees). You will receive a confirmation from the organizing committee prior to February 15, 2016. 

The tutorial is organized by the GEOValue Community in collaboration with OECD, NASA, USGS, and EUROSDR. See Tutorial information 2-25 for details. A $200 per participant will be charged. For  registration go to registration site  

Jay Pearlman gave a  Presentation-GEO-XII on “the Value of Geospatial and environmental information” at the codata side session. Material for the Codata presentation was contributed by Rich Bernknopf  and Carl Shapiro. The GEO-XII-GEOValue poster.pptx on “CD-03, a Proposed Fundational Task” was displayed in the IEEE booth.

Our sessions were scheduled for Friday December 18, 2015; despite being on the last day of AGU, our sessions were well attended and quite productive We had an oral session, PA53B from 1:40 to 3:40pm, and a poster session PA51C from 8:00 to 12:20 .  The chairs for the oral and poster sessions were Francoise Pearlman, and Richard Bernknopf. These sessions were offered within the context of several socio-economic benefit workshops conducted alternatively in the US and Europe over the last few years .  The production and accessibility of geospatial information is changing from both technological advances and broader human participation.  New approaches are being developed to address the valuation and impacts of natural resources. These include the identification, design and measurement of indicators for natural resource changes and methodologies for interpreting and comparing indicators. Our sessions addressed the creation and monitoring of environmental indices and related methods of impact and benefit assessments.  This included for example “stacking” indicators on top of one another and the identification, design, and measurement of a set of indicators overlaid on a unit of a natural resource.

Highlights: The objectives of this workshop are to examine the consequences of the changing technology, data, and policy landscape, evaluate the emerging new data-driven paradigms, and advance the state -of-the-art methodologies to measure the resulting socioeconomic impacts.This is a working meeting with strong participant engagement leading to recommendations for action. Participants include economic, social and natural scientists in a forum where dialog and strategy for future directions is the theme. Outcomes of the workshop include a plan for a sustained, multi-disciplinary community to address impacts and identification of use cases for further research and applications.  Participation include policy makers and analysts, financial analysts, economists, geospatial practitioners and other experts from government, academia and the private sector.There were a series of keynote addresses and panels. The format for each panel was centered on a pre-circulated position paper and the panel included the paper author and two discussants.Details: Workshop announcement – detailsAgenda: SEB14 Washington Agenda-detailsShort Biographies for speakers, position paper writers and organization committee: Short-Bios Proceedings Open-File report 

Our sessions on assessing socioeconomic impacts are scheduled for Wednesday December 17, 2014. We have an oral session, PA33A from 1:40 to 3:40pm, and a poster session PA31A from 8:00 to 12:20 .  The conveners are Lawrence Friedl, Molly Macauley, Francoise Pearlman.These sessions are offered within the context of several socio-economic benefit workshops conducted alternatively in the US and Europe over the last few years .  This AGU session will address the dramatic changes in the production and accessibility of geospatial information including earth observation both technologically and in terms of human participation.  Technology advances have changed the way that geospatial data is produced and accessed, resulting in more efficient processes and greater accessibility.  Improved technology has also created opportunities for greater participation in the gathering and interpretation of data through crowd sourcing and citizen science efforts.  Increased accessibility has resulted in greater participation in the use of data as prices for government-produced data have fallen and barriers to access have been reduced.You are invited to join us .  We look forward to your participation.

“Understanding socioeconomic benefits (SEB) and impacts” was one of the pre-event workshops hosted by the Group on Earth Observation (GEO) during their 10th Summit in Geneva Switzerland. The socioeconomic benefits community held a standing room only workshop on January 13.  In addition, the SEB community hosted a booth in the exhibit area, introducing many participants to the concepts of socioeconomic benefits. See GEO summary   

“Information for Innovation and Socioeconomic Development” , an International Workshop at the crossroad of Earth Information, Technology and Social Sciences, was conducted as a pre-event to the INSPIRE conference, June 23 – 24, 2013, Florence, Italy.This workshop included the following themes:

1. Information (Earth Observation, geospatial data, community generated data) as a driver for economic and social development, including measures of well-being that move beyond GDP as an indicator
2. Economic impact of innovations stemming from Open Data and the re-use of Public Sector Information
3. Importance of communications to reach across disciplines from scientists to citizen-scientists to end-users.

Keynote addresses highlighted the state of the art, in this multi-disciplinary field and introduced the three themes above. The workshop had a combination of invited presentations, submitted papers, and panel discussions. In addition, use cases addressing quantitative results were included. Recommendations for a path forward were presented at the conclusion of the second day. See proceedings at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6ovZrDPKFGuNEp0SHhkZnFYbVU/edit?usp=sharing .

The meeting was held in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, on May 13 through 16, 2013. The theme was “Monetizing geospatial value and practices”, and the event included a plenary and parallel sessions, one of which we organized on May 15. Our all-day session focused on Societal Impacts of Improved Environment & Geospatial Information. Starting with a vision for the future, and foundations for assessing and communicating socioeconomic benefits, the meeting addressed both benefits, and business cases.

The three-day workshop on the socio-economic benefits of geospatial information/GEOSS 2012 was held in Boulder, Colorado, on June 12 through 14, 2012. It provided a forum for advances on methodology evolution and presentation of relevant case studies. Te program included tutorials for non-experts on cost effectiveness and benefit – cost analysis.  The meeting had presentations on North American and other international developments. The workshop was sponsored by IEEE, in collaboration with NCAR, JRC, GeoConnection, NASA, and the Group on Earth Observation (GEO). The summary proceedings and selected presentations are available in IEEE Xplore; see Socio-economic Benefits Workshop, 2012 ; Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/SeBW.2012.6292266 ; Publication Year: 2012 , Page(s): 1 – 60.

A workshop on the socio-economic benefits of GEO-GEOSS was hosted on July 11-13 2011 at the Joint Research Center in Ispra Italy.  The purpose of the workshop was to identify a program of activities to undertake during 2011-14 to support the GEO 10-year implementation plan and the assessment of the benefits that can and will be achieved. Recommendations included the consolidation of dispersed bodies of literature relevant to the assessment of impacts and benefits of geographic information/earth observation, the evaluation of different methodologies appropriate to undertake such assessments, the gathering of evidence of impacts/benefits in different user communities and societal benefits areas, and outreach activities to develop shared understanding across disciplinary boundaries on value and methods of assessment. The workshop was sponsored by JRC, IIASA, IEEE and NASA. References: Ispra workshop July 2011 JRC technical report

The “GeoValue” workshop was held at HafenCity University in Hamburg on 30^th September-2^nd October 2010, and was organised with the support of HafenCity University, the Association for Geographic Information Laboratories in Europe, the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, and the University of Laval, Canada. The workshop focused on the value of geo-information, the assessment of Spatial Data Infrastructures, the socio-economic aspects of geo-information, and quantitative methods and models for impact assessment – view presentations and proceedings here.

The Value of Information workshop was held on June 28 and 29 2010 in Washington, DC.