1. The social value of Earth observation: A new evaluation framework for public high-tech infrastructures.
- Author
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Morretta, Valentina, Florio, Massimo, and Landoni, Matteo
- Subjects
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INFRASTRUCTURE (Economics) , *COST benefit analysis , *SOCIAL values , *EARTH (Planet) , *LIGHT sources - Abstract
• This paper discusses and addresses the main challenges of evaluating the socio-economic impact of high-tech public infrastructures using Earth observations (EO). • The EO infrastructure employs an array of cutting-edge technologies that ultimately contribute to understanding, analysing and managing different natural and societal aspects of Earth with a tremendous socio-economic impact on current and future generations. However, this impact is challenging to understand and quantify. • This paper reviews the current fragmented literature on the socio-economic impact of high-tech infrastructure and builds on a new stream of studies on the cost–benefit analysis of large-scale research science-based infrastructures and on investing in the space economy. • This new evaluation framework estimates EO infrastructures' benefits from the perspective of different types of social agents, directly or indirectly involved, along the value chain. • The framework can be adapted to estimate the socio-economic returns of other high-tech infrastructure investments. 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2023
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