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1
Introduction
A CHANGING WORLD
Whether it is the air we breathe, the flowers we look forward to each
spring, or the tornado that threatens our houses, the natural environment
concerns us all. In our industrialized society, we count increasingly on
reliable, factual information (see Box l.1 for definitions) about the
environment. Electric utility companies predict demand during heat
waves; structural engineers design buildings to withstand hurricanes and
earthquakes; water managers monitor each winter's snow pack. Over the
past several decades it has become increasingly apparent that humans are
altering climate all over the globe, whole ecosystems are being trans-
formed, and innumerable species are becoming extinct. The implications
of such fundamental changes are largely unknown, bringing a new
urgency to understanding how natural systems have fared under external
stresses in the past, documenting how they are responding at present, and
establishing the scientific principles that allow us to predict their possible
future courses.
All these applications historical, current, or predictive~epend on
science-based measurements, gathered and analyzed within a formal or
informal information system framework. In many cases, an established
process exists for exchanging, compiling, and interpreting environmental
data nationally and internationally. In other cases, the process is less
structured, but it still takes place through research and publication in
scientific journals and government statistics or reports. These data are
then correlated and interpreted by scientists and engineers to provide a
reliable, factual basis for actions by others.
To further environmental understanding and develop good public
policies for dealing with all aspects of the environment, the U.S.
7
/
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8
The Privatization of Environmental Data
government invests in basic research and in information systems.
However, declining agency budgets, which force the government to seek
partners for sharing costs, as well as improvements in technology for
collecting, handling, processing, and publishing data have opened new
opportunities for the private sector to participate in the environmental
enterprise. Although the involvement of the private sector brings
potential advantages to science and society, it also introduces laws and
business practices that are different from those of the scientific
community. For example, international programs for global change
research and environmental monitoring depend on policies guaranteeing
full and open access to data (i.e., data and information made available
without restriction on a nondiscriminatory basis for no more than the cost
of reproduction and distribution). However, the private sector and
commercialized government agencies in other countries operate in a
commercial environment in which revenues must at least cover the costs
of generating a data product, and controlling access to data is key to
remaining competitive.
Five major groups of stakeholders, each of which has different goals,
generate and/or use environmental information:
1. scientists involved in generating and interpreting data;
2. government agencies involved in funding much of the enterprise
and in delivering products that achieve the overall goals of understanding
the environment and providing information to improve decision making
concerning the environment;
3. private-sector organizations, which have an increasing role in
collecting data and producing value-added products;
4. policy makers, who make informed judgments about what is in
the best Tong-term interests of the communities they represent; and
5. the general public, in whose interest basic research and
environmental monitonug are being undertaken.
The purpose of this report is to identify the issues and potential
conflicts that inevitably arise from interactions among these five groups.
Special attention is given to the concerns of scientists, who currently
Governments also invest in basic research because it yields enormous
economic benefits. See C.I. Jones, and J.C. Williams, 1998, Measuring the
Social Return to R&D, Quarterly Journal of Economics, v. 113~4), p. 1119-
1135.
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Introduction
9
enjoy full and open access to an enormous quantity of gove~nment-
collected data. A shift from public funding to a commercial market could
relegate scientists' uses to a small niche,2 giving scientists little or no
voice in the collection of data that are necessary for understanding the
environment and for generating knowledge on behalf of the public.
Unless accomplished under carefully crafted conditions, such a shift with
its associated increase in prices (compared with marginal cost) and
restrictions on use could disrupt or even fundamentally change the
scientific practices that have led to the scientific and economic successes
of the last half century.
The Committee on Geophysical and Environmental Data was
charged with examining the impact of commercialization and priv-
atization policies (including database legislation) on established
scientific practices in the environmental sciences (ocean, atmosphere,
land surface, solid-earth), with an emphasis on (1) problems in obtaining,
using, sharing, or publishing data and (2) solutions that have worked in
the past. Because most of the information used by environmental
scientists is currently collected by government agencies and managed in
inflation systems, the committee focused on environmental infor-
mation systems created purely or partly for public purposes. The
committee could not assess the impact of database legislation, which
2Examples of market-driven changes that decreased the influence of
scientists on further development include the personal computer revolution, the
global expansion of the World Wide Web, and the privatization of Landsat.
More powerful and less expensive computers have greatly benefited the
scientific enterprise, but mass markets have resulted in a focus on parallel
architectures. The benefits of such architectures have yet to be demonstrated for
the large and complex multiply-connected computations that are characteristic
of environmental simulations, but U.S. scientists have little option but to try to
adept to them. See NRC, 1998, Capacity of U.S. Climate Modeling to Support
Climate Assessment Activities. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 65
pp. Similarly, the World Wide Web has provided a means for scientists to obtain
and transfer enormous quantities of information, but participation by the general
public has introduced long delays due to competition for bandwidth. An
example in which privatization reduced the influence of scientists over data
collection is Landsat-4 and -5. As a result of privatization, the strategy for
acquiring global datasets critical to global change research was replaced by a
strategy of collecting data over certain land-surface areas of interest to
commercial customers. See NRC, 1997, Bits of Power: Issues in Global Access
to Scientific Data. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 235 pp.
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10
The Privatization of Environmental Data
does not yet exist in the United States, even though five bills have been
introduced in Congress. Similarly, database legislation in Europe (the
European Union Database Directive) is too recent to have affected
scientific practices.3
3The key elements of the directive remain open to conflicting interpretation
and controversy. See P.B. Hugenholtz, The new database right: Early case law
from Europe. Ninth Annual Conference on International IP Law & Policy,
Fordham University School of Law, New York, April 10-20, 2001, 13 pp.
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Introduction
11
THE INFORMATION TREE
This report portrays the elements of a typical environmental
information system in terms of a simple analogy: an "information tree"
(see Figure ~.1~. The tree consists of four parts, each of which is operated
by individuals working in a variety of settings (universities, government
centers, commercial organizations), either independently or as members
of national or international coalitions:
1. The roots represent data collection, in which instruments of
varying sophistication are deployed and operated to collect raw data.
2. The trunk represents the synthesis of all available inflation,
including new and retrospective (Iooking backward) raw data as well as
processed information, into a limited set of core products that are useful
for many purposes and serve multiple users.
3. The branches represent the transformation of the core products
to value-added products designed to serve a specific user need.
4. The leaves represent the end uses of core and value-added
products.
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12
The Privatization of Environmental Data
The Wee also provides a means of identifying where conflicts may
arise among the five stakeholder groups and where negotiations shouic3
take place.
J
Distribution
and Use
Processing (quality
control, validation,
synthesis, archive)
Observations and
Data Collection
~ -_
^c~
_
,0
_
I;
In
~ r
~T~-
FIGURE 1.1 Schematic tree used to illustrate the elements of an environmental
information system created for public purposes. Observations recorded in the
roots are synthesized in the trunk and are distributed by many branches for
different groups of end uses that are represented by the leaves. The information
needs that these users have in common place requirements on the whole
structure beneath, including the types of measurements made and the products
synthesized from them. A more detailed version of the same figure is given in
Figure 3. 1.
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Introduction
13
ORGANIZATION OF THE REPORT
The purpose of this report is to illustrate the issues that arise in the
interaction of the five environmental stakeholder groups (scientists,
government agencies, private-sector organizations, policy makers, and
the general public) and to outline a process by which the stakeholders
can negotiate among themselves. Chapter 2 surveys the different
viewpoints held by the stakeholders. The roles of each of these groups in
environmental information systems are described in Chapter 3. Chapter 4
provides the economic and data policy fiamework for public-purpose
information systems and examines the compatibility of open access to
data with a competitive market. Chapter 5 illustrates the potential
conflicts among stakeholders in environmental information systems
created purely or partly for public purposes. Guidelines for negotiating
solutions are given in Chapter 6. Finally, negotiating effectively requires
that scientific and legal issues are understood by all parties; overviews of
these topics are in Appendixes A and B.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
environmental data
