The ASPRS report on the US industry and 10 year forecast states that only about 40% of the US companies it surveyed had their own R&D programmes. The others depended on technology suppliers or academic and government institutions to fund R&D in new capabilities. The implication is that most R&D is undertaken in rather than funded by public sector institutions. An initial review of R&D funding opportunities specifically for EO applications development supports this implication
US GEO has a different emphasis and structure to GMES, being focussed on coordinating public sector activity and provision of EO datasets. The emphasis in private sector participation seen in GMES is almost entirely absent in US GEO. The latest US GEO progress report (2007) states that… “USGEO will build stronger links to the
academic and industrial sectors by creating formal processes for obtaining private sector input. Stronger partnerships to industry will ensure that USGEO utilizes and leverages the latest capabilities in such areas as spatially-enabled search portals, geo-referenced
emergency alerting, modeling and data assimilation, and decision support tools.” This indicates using private sector capabilities rather than investing in them.
Earth observation oriented programmes
NASA’s Applied Sciences Program aims to use research results have the potential to serve US society by enhancing environmental management decision making capabilities. The programme is split into two parts. The first is in the National Applications program where prototypes are used to assess the incorporation of NASA research results into a user partner’s decision support systems. Partners are generally federal or state agencies. The second is the Crosscutting Solutions program where prototypes that are low cost and quickly produced are used to evaluate the potential of a wider collection of NASA research results to serve society. The result is an evaluation of NASA research results for their potential to be candidates for further, more rigorous development. The National Applications programme is organized along the lines of the benefits areas identified by GEO. NASA’s specific categories are:
• Agricultural Efficiency
• Air Quality
• Aviation
• Carbon Management
• Homeland Security
• Invasive Species
• Public Health
• Water Management
The programme involves lot of in-house R&D and involves collaboration with a range of Universities and government operational agencies. The programme also includes an initiative for external funding known as Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences (ROSES). ROSES allocates approximately $20M per year to a range of projects of 1-3 years duration concerned with applying the results of NSAS research or NASA mission data. The programme is open to all types of applicants and examining the recent results shows that most of the funded projects are led by Universities, research
institutions or NASA centres. The statistics below show the budget, total number of projects and number of projects led by private sector organisations over the past three years.
Table 5.2 Overview NASA ROSES program
NASA ROSES Program 2005 2006 2007
Budget $22M $20M $23
Number of Project 23 19 33
Industry Leads 1 3 4
The US geological Survey (USGS) which is the other main US Federal Agency involved in remote sensing appears not to run an SBRI programme. The USGS Land Remote Sensing Program which is responsible for the Landsat program states in its mission with respect to the remote sensing industry…
“The USGS LRS Program, with the help of its Federal, State, and private sector partners, provides leadership to the Federal civil community by developing and reviewing remote sensing space policies, by cooperating with other Federal agencies to validate data accuracy and to ensure the data's utility to the requirements of the remote sensing community, by developing contractual mechanisms for the civil community for accessing these data, and by calibrating cameras and other sensors for industry and government and advancing calibration methodologies.”
However there is no specific investment or R&D programme targeted at industry. Other intra-mural R&D programmes developing EO applications are also undertaken by several other government departmental agencies, including the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Hydrology and remote Sensing Laboratory and the US Forest Service.
Industry targeted programmes
There are two US federal government schemes for R&D that fund some EO applications development work via NASA and NOAA: the Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI), and the Small Business Technology Transfer Program. SBRI funds research in small
businesses that is relevant to the needs of a federal agency and also allows exploitation of the research by the business concerned. STTR funds research undertaken in an academic research institute in partnership with a small business. All government agencies with an extramural research budget over $100m per annum have to operate the SBIR and dedicate 2.5% of their budget to it and those with extramural research budgets over $1Bn must dedicate 0.3% of it STTR. The definition of a small business for these programmes is:
• Legally established and organized for profit with the place of business located in the U.S.;
• Operated primarily in the U.S. or makes a significant contribution to the U.S. economy;
• Majority owned and controlled by U.S. citizens or permanent resident aliens; and,
• 500 employees or less, including any affiliates.
The stated aims of SBIR are to: stimulate U.S. technological innovation; use small businesses to meet federal research and development needs; increase private-sector commercialization of innovations derived from federal R&D; and foster and encourage participation by socially disadvantaged businesses.
The programmes both operate a two phase system whereby a small first phase proof of concept project may be followed by a larger implementation project. NASA’s operation of the scheme is described below: