Towards a policy framework for integrating space technology applications for sustainable development on the information superhighway

6. Space technology applications on the information superhighway: dissemination models, success stories and lessons learned

The advent of information highways, signifying the convergence of information and communications technologies on a broadband backbone, has opened up new vistas for addressing wide-ranging socio-economic issues, including those related to poverty alleviation, negative aspects of globalization and societal concerns. Space technology not only provides a means or a “conduit” for augmenting the bandwidth of the backbone itself through broadband communication technology but also enables the provision of “content” on the information superhighway through remote sensing, navigation and space science data for delivery to the users. With the availability of increased bandwidth on the information superhighway, the access to raw data, derived information and value-added services from these space technologies is no more an issue. Routing space applications through information highways has tremendous advantages in terms of timeliness and economic outreach.

While the dissemination of satellite data, information and related services on the Internet has been quite visible in the developed countries, several institutional and operational factors constrain this in the developing countries. Despite the constraints, there are quite a few success stories in the developing countries, not only on the models of dissemination across diverse users down the line but also in integrating space applications on the information superhighway towards improving transparency in decision-making, thus enabling e-governance, and addressing poverty and grass-roots level developmental issues. The lessons learned from dissemination models and the success stories focus on certain institutional issues that could be addressed in terms of policy framework and directions, within the ESCAP framework of regional/subregional cooperation.

6.1 Dissemination models

The trends of space applications through the information highway are reflected in terms of three distinct dissemination models for the users:

(a) The universal model allows any user at any place to access satellite data for weather and environmental data from satellites such as NOAA and the Geostationary Meteorological Satellite (GMS). This model has helped in worldwide dissemination of space inputs for weather monitoring and global change studies. This model is essentially based on the premise that satellite data are of a “public good” nature, so that the services are offered almost free of cost, or at the most at the “cost of filling user request”;

(b) The business model is followed by commercial companies and space technology service providers such as Space Imaging, SPOT Image and Radarsat International. Space products such as data, information and services are disseminated to the clients through the Internet, delivered by File Transfer Protocol to the registered users directly or through application service providers. Such a model has been quite successful in certain dynamic applications such as near-real-time flood/cyclone monitoring and the mapping of rice crops grown in persistent monsoon cloud conditions. However, this dissemination strategy is based on commercial considerations, and unless there is appropriate policy support to access such services economically or in a cost-effective way, it seems unlikely to be put to operational use in the developing countries of the region;

(c) The web-enabled GIS model has enabled the user community to access GIS applications through the Internet by using a web browser and communicating with other people in order to present ideas and integrate information for making decisions.

Until a few years ago, the World Wide Web used to take advantage of text and images only. The introduction of new technologies like Java and ActiveX made it possible to develop Internet GIS for a variety of needs. Since 1994, when the Internet's first interactive map server, namely Xerox PARC Map Viewer, was published, developments in web mapping have been changing as fast as Internet and web technologies, because one depends on the other. Internet applications are being built with a variety of object-oriented languages, such as Visual Basic, Visual C++ and Delphi. On the client side, more and more users are accessing geographic information directly by means of proprietary programs (such as ArcExplorer), and quite a few through freely available standard web browsers. With such convergence, it is now possible to generate detailed maps from huge databases of spatial information and have them distributed all over the world. The GIS databases on the Internet are a cost-effective way to share or provide public access to data, information or even services. The recent introduction of “location-based service” applications of GIS through mobile and hand-held devices for real-time geographic services for personal use, such as mapping, routing and geographic yellow pages, is one such example, which is expected to change the business GIS models in a big way in the coming years.

The arrival of the new Internet domain of “geoportals”, which are customized versions of the popular Internet “portals”, is an indication of the market for spatial data. The geoportals aim to combine the geographic components with the portal gateway concept to create a unique e-commerce “anchor site” for browsing, viewing and procuring spatial imagery on the World Wide Web (Wagner, 2001). Developments in web technology and high-speed Internet connectivity, and perhaps most importantly, the availability of high-resolution images coupled with advancements in image compression techniques, now make spatial imagery and mapping relevant to the desktop through online delivery. However, the concept of geoportals is not really a new phenomenon: many agencies such as the European Space Research Institute (ESRIN) at ESA, the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), and the Canadian Centre for Remote Sensing (CCRS), as well as the satellite operators SPOT Image and EOSAT, had developed the concept of online geospatial data searching and browsing in the early 1990s. With advances in technology, online delivery of high-resolution imagery has now become a possibility.

This business model provides enough opportunity to integrate space applications with other collateral data to create real-time solutions to day-to-day decision-making activities. Integration of satellite remote sensing data and services with the collateral data, combined with the Global Positioning System and organized in a web-enabled GIS environment, is the model that countries, mainly the developed ones, expect will contribute to economic growth, environmental quality and stability, and social progress. The various ongoing spatial data infrastructure activities at the national and global levels are examples for this model (see chapter 5 for details).

The necessary software tools are being developed by many companies around the world, especially in the commercial world, demonstrating the viability and the value of integrating these technologies. There are also many examples in Internet-based e-commerce business, such as the GLOBAL Terrain management information system, in which the e-commerce solution provides direct convenient access to the catalogue of digital elevation models and ortho-rectified radar images, enabling the customers to search through a map interface and preview thumbnail images of any product (Roberts, 2001).

These dissemination models provide appropriate networking strategies to enable the user or application service providers to access needed satellite data through the information superhighway. User-friendliness is the essence of these models, enabling the individuals to search, study, analyse and research multiple layers of remote sensing data in a GIS environment. It is a daunting process to link a variety of databases, both spatial and non-spatial, which are scattered across different organizations and agencies, through common conventions and technical agreements, standards, metadata definitions, network and access protocols, and to provide for a smooth flow of information from local to national levels, and eventually to the global community. The ongoing standardization efforts of W3C, OGC and others in this direction (see chapter 5) – to enable seamless access and integration of geospatial data available in the web-computing environment – are worth noting.

Yet another related major activity is the ongoing effort to create a three-dimensional, digital Earth online, fuelled by the revolutionary three-dimension software, ever-increasing computing capabilities, and the promise of a totally “wired” world with increasing ability to collect information about the world using satellite imagery. Capitalizing on these developments, an Internet customer has the ability to view the total planet by interactively “flying” over millions of square kilometres of images, both satellites and aerial, integrated with other information such as street maps, census data, weather information, travel and traffic reports. The resulting seamlessly blended mass of geographic data provides access to an Earth view that simultaneously conveys global scale and local details. The coming years will see more progress, because efforts are on to address the interoperability challenges as well as the development of appropriate standards for the inclusion of three-dimension features in the virtual environment to provide seamless access to massive data clearing houses. Even with standardized imagery formats, differences in resolutions, acquisition dates, map projection and coordinate systems and delivery format must be addressed. There are other perplexing issues such as cost, copyright, currency and accuracy that make the assembling of a blended, seamless mosaic of data an extremely difficult task (Lorenzini, 2001).

Even as the developments in wireline and wireless technologies have increased the data transfer speeds, not everyone in the market agrees that the medium is robust enough to handle the large file sizes necessary for aerial and satellite images – even with compression (Wagner, 2001). There are other concerns related to the commercial and data security aspects. Striking a balance between providing browse images of sufficient resolution on the web to enable the users to make informed decisions about the purchase and providing online images so pregnant with information that users do not need to buy any further data is a concern for the data providers. From the users’ perspective, the content, data pricing (free, ideally), ease of use, convenience, and speed of delivery are their main concerns as they venture onto geoportals.

Obviously, the efforts involved are extensive, calling for the coming together of various groups of experts and the users themselves and harmonizing their efforts. ESCAP could provide a forum for these groups to exchange their viewpoints and expertise, and help the countries in the region to have a viable information infrastructure that is cost-effective and networked to serve a large community of users.

6.2 Success stories

Even as ICT technologies are evolving and as more and more innovative possibilities are added to the applications scenario because of the convergence of such technologies on the information superhighway, there are a few inspiring success stories emanating from the developing countries in the region. The following success stories are drawn mainly from the developing countries in which the end-beneficiaries, namely the poor and the marginalized population, were able to reach the space applications integrated on the information superhighway in spite of the institutional and operational constraints. There are quite a few success stories in the developing countries in which the satellite data, information and services have been appropriately integrated to provide meaningful operational services of direct relevance to the local rural community. These success stories have a high possibility of replication in other developing countries.

6.2.1 Electronic governance (e-governance)

Fundamental to the concept of good governance are transparent decision-making processes, which means that citizens need to be empowered in terms of information and services. To enable such changes, it is important to make the system more transparent by moving the critical information relevant to grass-roots development away from government control and into the public domain (figure 6.1). Spatial information systems, composed of GIS databases in conjunction with other collateral information, provides the backbone for the e-governance framework. Information, a dynamic phenomenon, needs regular updating and contextually relevant databases. This is where remote sensing plays an important role in generating updated information on environmental fragility, terrain vulnerability, land use, land cover and other aspects. Integrating the spatial and non-spatial information system in a GIS core and sending the information out on broadband information highways ensure its ready availability to the public, enabling e-governance by a transparent administrative regime.

Figure 6.1 Making the transition to e-governance

6.2.2 Value-added services for community development

The information superhighway provides generic information, including satellite data on weather and the environment, covering almost all the regions of the globe. From generic information it is possible to generate contextual information through appropriate value additions by integrating the local information to cater for the information needs for the local community. This approach follows the bottom-up approach in terms of the assessment of community information needs, while it also follows the top-down approach, extracting local information from generic information available on information highways, for value addition (figure 6.2). The information needs to be directly connected with the livelihood of the local community, for example information about the entitlements of the poor community, market information, information on agricultural practices, fisheries, news, school examination results, and so forth, which personalize the information system to suit the local community needs. The context creation is, therefore, the core element, which needs appropriate institutional framework linkages through community participation, and appropriate to the community ownership. The content creation involves expertise to generate the value-added services synthesizing generic information with local databases, and this is where the role of capacity-building and institutional partnerships assume significance.

Figure 6.2 Concept of value addition

6.2.3 Targeting natural disasters: vulnerability and risk

In the event of natural disasters, one of the most crucial things that disaster managers need to know regards the population: their vulnerability and the degree of risk they face. Space applications have demonstrated the ability to provide near-real-time information to disaster managers at various levels. In order to create appropriate disaster information services, it is important to have digital GIS databases on socio-economic aspects, demography, land cover, terrain and other matters, as base layers to integrate with the near-real-time disaster layers (data pertaining to a flood, drought or cyclone, for instance) extracted from the satellite remote sensing data. Synthesis of this integrated information in the GIS environment enables the accurate targeting of relief and other measures to the population, including addressing their vulnerability and risk. Satellite data layers themselves could be transferred through the Internet from the satellite data reception and processing centre, while base layers could be resident at the user end (Kasturirangan, 2001).

While such services, which are possible with Radarsat data, are crucial and effective for targeting relief and rehabilitation measures in real-life flood situations, the commercial arrangement calls for payment of satellite programming costs for real- and near-real-time service provision, in addition to the data/services costs, making it a costly proposition not often affordable or replicable by many countries, particularly the least developed countries.

Figure 6.3 Flood management: targeting for relief and rehabilitation

6.2.4 Disaster management through international cooperation

Against the backdrop of UNISPACE III, and prompted in part by the interest shown by major civil protection authorities, a joint initiative begun by the French Space Agency (CNES) and the European Space Agency has led to an international charter focused on providing space-based services on a voluntary basis towards prevention and mitigation of natural disasters globally. The International Charter on Space and Major Disaster was signed on 22 June 2000 by both agencies, followed by signing by the Canadian Space Agency, the Indian Space Research Organization and the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The data services of various remote sensing and environmental satellites, such as SPOT-5, Radarsat-1, ERS, Envisat, IRS-1C/1D, NOAA Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellites and Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites, are planned for dissemination on the information superhighway to implement the Charter’s goals. The agreement stems from the fact that no single operator or satellite can match the challenges posed by natural disasters. This calls for strong international cooperation among space agencies and operators.

The Charter aims at enlisting space-based services in the aid of civil defence organizations, dealing with the management of major disasters such as cyclones, tornados, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods and forest fires. It also includes some man-made disasters, such as pollution by hydrocarbons and toxic or radioactive substances. The Charter allows civil defence organizations to enlist support from space agencies, those who are signatories, by calling a confidential telephone number 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The satellite data and applications services are disseminated through the Internet to the rescue and defence bodies of the country to which the participating agencies belong: currently ESA Member States, Canada, India and the United States are registered authorized users. Civil protection authorities of other countries are also permitted to enlist the services of these space agencies through existing cooperative mechanisms.

6.3 Lessons learned

When drawing lessons from any such success stories where space technology applications are integrated into the Internet and the web, one needs to consider two major aspects. One is the technology choice itself and its access and affordability by the local population, as well as the contents in the local language. Some of these have been elaborated in earlier chapters and in this chapter. The second most important aspect is the effort related to change management and process re-engineering, once such technology is introduced. Technology pertaining to the “conduit or carriage” and “content creation” is well established, and the role that space technology could play through satellite communication, satellite broadcasting, satellite remote sensing and the Global Positioning System is well understood and appreciated. Defining the requirements clearly and matching the technological potential towards making the appropriate technology choice, though often difficult because of technology transfer and other issues, is not an impossible task if experts handle the work and appropriate investments are made. Making the technologies user-friendly is an associated step. It has been stated that technology makes up hardly 15 per cent of the total work in an e-governance project, while the change management and re-engineering aspects, thought to be only minor concerns early on, play a very crucial role, contributing to nearly 80 per cent of the input (Singh, 2000).

What is most important for the ultimate success of the exercise is the management of change, when the Government and the society take proactive steps to align the society with the changing technological environment and enable society to absorb and adopt its full potential to society’s advantage. Change management is closely connected with the formulation of flexible policies and regulatory mechanisms that enable seamless integration of the dynamic technological advances with societal development. It takes the active participation of all stakeholders, including the public and private sectors, non-governmental organizations, and academia, as well as the scientists and technologists responsible for the technology advances, and it is of the utmost importance, especially in developing countries. The tasks include establishing appropriate infrastructure, enhancing technical and managerial skills, and ensuring necessary capacity transfer to the end-user, whether it is in the broader concept of technology from a developed country to developing country setting or within a developing country itself from an urban environment where people are knowledgeable about technology to a rural setting. It involves administrative reforms to simplify procedures, rationalizing the processes, restructuring the government, and then using space applications to manage these changes, so as to internalize the applications in the developmental process itself. The most important aspect is the role that intermediary institutions, that is, governmental agencies, NGOs, local community-based organizations and so on, play in making meaningful local-level alignments among the technology elements, information needs and affordable access. Creating the content in the local language so as to be in tune with the cultural and social setting and, above all, its acceptability and ownership by the local community, is yet another important factor. Ultimately, skill development and capacity-building at the local level are essential in any success story, in order to sustain these efforts in the long run; it will not come about unless it is scrupulously planned and executed by all stakeholders together. Commitment is the key word in every one of these activities.

The success stories mentioned above reveal some change management exercises carried out in a variety of contexts and institutional environments. It can be seen that, although space applications on the information superhighway have established their direct relevance in addressing core societal issues, there are still several constraining factors that need to be addressed through appropriate policy formulation and regulatory frameworks. There are multiple agencies in the countries, including government, private and autonomous agencies, having scientific, social and commercial interests. From the success stories such as the International Charter on Space and Major Disaster, it is becoming apparent that the commercial interests of service providers are negotiable within a framework of regional and subregional cooperation, especially for applications such as poverty alleviation, environmental monitoring and natural disaster management. The success stories enumerated in this chapter have very large replication potential, especially in the least developed countries in the region, in which the target beneficiaries are the poor and marginalized communities. ESCAP could plan and appropriately restructure the common denominator projects under RESAP and help in identifying a few pilot or demonstration projects of regional relevance, organizing them under clusters of interested countries in the region, with appropriate linkages to international agencies and donor countries. Such an exercise would enable the countries in the region, particularly the least developed among them, to prepare themselves to build adequate endogenous capability and competence in meeting the challenges, against the backdrop of addressing the negatives of globalization and the digital divide. Yet another step ESCAP could initiate at the earliest opportunity is to establish an appropriate regional cooperative mechanism for tapping the full benefits of the emerging International Charter on Space and Major Disaster and help to assist the countries in the region, particularly the least developed countries, in case of disasters.