The social value of Earth observation: A new evaluation framework for public high-tech infrastructures

Abstract

This paper addresses the main challenges of evaluating the socio-economic impact of high-tech infrastructures, using Earth observation (EO) as an example. EO is a critical domain of the space economy, providing valuable insights into planet Earth's natural and societal aspects. As national agencies invest in high-tech infrastructures like EO, there is a growing need for evaluate their socio-economic returns (not to be confused with their financial returns). However, there is no clear consensus on how to assess such social impact.Building on a new field of studies of social cost–benefit analysis of research infrastructures and the socio-economic impact of investment in the space economy, we propose a new evaluation framework that considers the various stakeholders along the EO value chain.This approach can be adapted to evaluate the socio-economic returns of other high-tech public infrastructures, such as telescopes, particle accelerators, genomic platforms, synchrotron light sources, supercomputers and cloud infrastructures.