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EARSC position paper on GMES data policy

In March 2011, EARSC published a position paper that provided views on how the European EOServices industry could support and benefit from a publicly-owned GMES infrastructure * ; the goal being to maximise the overall economic return from the substantial pubic-sector investment.

One of the main conclusions and recommendations from that paper concerned the need to establish a suitable policy for the data generated by the GMES space component and the information products generated by the GMES Services.

The European Commission will shortly prepare legislation to define the GMES Data Policy. EARSC, as the organisation that represents the EO geo-information services industry in Europe, puts forward the views of its members on some details concerning such a data policy.

In our previous paper, we recommended to establish a clear data policy, with appropriate procurement budgets for satellite data, core GMES services and GMES value-added, downstream services:

  • Raw data from Sentinels should be free and open.
  • Data from commercial satellite operators should be procured under appropriate license conditions.
  • Core services to be freely and unconditionally available to all users and downstream partners.
  • Downstream services should be procured commercially on a fair and competitive basis.
  • A registration system for GMES users should be put in place to ensure that basic quality conditions are met and licensing conditions are respected as well as achieving fair competition on the international market.

In this paper, we build upon these recommendations.

EARSC positon paper on GMES data policy