Appendix A
Committee Charge
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The panel will examine the present roles of the public sector, the private sector, and the academic community in the provision and use of weather, climate, and related environmental information and services in the United States.
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The panel will identify the effects that advances in observing, modeling, forecasting, and information dissemination technologies may have on the respective roles of the public, private, and academic sectors.
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The panel will examine the interface between the various sectors described above in the provision and use of weather, climate, and related environmental information services and identify barriers to effective interaction. In particular, the panel will examine the legal, institutional, or policy (e.g., data access, distribution and dissemination, intellectual property) foundations of the various sectors and identify resulting barriers that are “culturally” produced. The panel will consider these issues in the context of present information policy statutes and guidance, and recommend changes in policies or practices that could improve the potential for responding to various environmental threats ranging from severe weather events to episodes of extreme air pollution to prolonged droughts.
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The panel will make recommendations regarding how most effectively to coordinate the roles among the various sectors described above so that each can make the most cost-effective investments in needed infrastruc-
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ture, efficiently share the information generated from that infrastructure, and provide a necessary planning baseline for users of weather, climate, and other environmental information to understand what to expect from the government in the future. Recommendations will focus on identified barriers to improved interaction and will include principles to guide policy formulation in evolving areas of interaction among the sectors.