David L B Jupp
CSIRO Earth Observation Centre
AVHRR has provided the world community with global data and a dense time
series of earth observation now for at least 15 years. However, it is only
relatively recently that the data have moved out of the research area to
be evaluated in the 'workplace' of end user needs. This has come about in
Australia from the development of operational receiving stations and programs
of archiving and processing the data received over the continent and EEZ.
CSIRO Office of Space Science and Applications (COSSA) and Agencies such
as the Bureau of Meteorology have played a significant role in this development
and today the availability of daily near real time and archival time series
of data for the Australian region is unprecedented. Nevertheless, the development
of this capability has not been without its problems. Many of these were
described in a review carried out on behalf of COSSA of its Data Acquisition
and Utilisation multi-Divisional Program MDP-19 . In this report (often
referred to as the Simpson Report from its principal author) many of the
issues of fragmentation and dispersion of effort were outlined and remedies
suggested.
One of the outcomes of the Simpson Report has been the formation of the
Earth Observation Centre (EOC) which is developing to provide a focus and
identity for CSIRO Earth Observation Research and Development as well as
act to coordinate some of the activities that were identified in the Simpson
Report as limiting to the full value being obtained from CSIRO activities.
In the area of Land AVHRR use there is considerable focus and activity among
CSIRO scientists who either as part of the formative EOC or from the Divisions
with which it is working closely will outline their work to you this morning.
They are among scientists who have been and will in the future engage in
cross-Divisional projects in the fields of:
The knowledge base for the projects largely rests in the Divisions and
the work will be aimed to support the Divisional needs in data and the Divisional
interface with clients and users in the Sectors which the Divisions address.
However, we see an underlying generic set of activities which are bigger
in scope than can be handled by any one Division and which underpin the
eventual acceptance and usefulness of the products to the real end users
- people who want information about the world and the way it is changing.
The EOC is an initiative that has been developing for some time and is now
fully and rapidly moving to address generic issues in the areas outlined
above. It aims to maximise the benefit obtained from the activities of the
excellent earth observation scientists in CSIRO and see it impact effectively
on the development of the industries that can put the information to work.
In order to do this fully, however, I believe we must all (researchers,
producers and users together) consider the issue of data and product standards.
From the scientific viewpoint, there has been a significant progression
from the type of research paper presented in the inaugural ARSC1 in 1979
to the present ARSC8 in 1996. The mass centre of such presentations has
moved from descriptive work through exploratory research to a point where
advanced measurement based models are being effectively used with remotely
sensed data and widely reported. Remote Sensing is truly becoming a measurement
based activity. Among the international scientific community this progress
is well in train as you will hear from a number of the scientists speaking
today.
However, at the user end, is there evidence of as much progress? If there
is, then it would be seen in a progression from the research question of
"What might AVHRR do for me?" to the operational issue
of "What does AVHRR do for me?". This last question involves
the development of well defined products and standards as well as well established
methods for creating products of value to specific end users. This is not
so much an issue for research as for specification.
Nevertheless, researchers cannot ignore the issue of standards. Standards
are needed if the AVHRR user industry is to leave R&D 'school' and join
the much more engineering oriented 'workplace'. Engineering based standards
define what levels of processed data product are needed and what methods
of value added processing ensure a product with a guaranteed accuracy or
utility can be delivered. Such standard specifications are needed to protect
data and product suppliers and users. They are also essential tools with
which end users can cost the use of remotely sensed data and value adding
into major projects. I claim that the lack of these is the biggest hurdle
to acceptance of our efforts at this time and more vital to us than the
need to do more advanced research.
Ideally, standard data products, data processing and interpretation methods
should be:
The last of these is desirable rather than essential.
The standard procedures with such characteristics that are needed in our
industry are also of two basic kinds. The first is for data delivery such
as from an operational receiving station. These are typically set in a 'Levels'
framework and for each level there are a set of specifications and measures
of performance. Perhaps these are not as well developed and consistently
deliverable in Australia as they should be. The second are for value added
products. These may need manuals of standard practice which, if followed,
provide products of a proven standard. Of course, the standard may seem
quite low to many scientists but I believe the current lack of them is causing
problems for researchers and users alike.
If there are well defined standards, it places research and development
into context and protects it from being confused with operational production.
Research is needed in cases where the standard processing is inadequate,
where it does not solve the user's problems and also needed to create new
products which may eventually become standard processes. The important advance
for researchers in this situation is that when users ask researchers to
try new methods because the standard ones are inadequate it is they, and
not the researchers, who take on the risk that the result may not be any
better.
Having a solid base of established standards also puts into context the
difficult issue of "Best Practice". I think the name is the problem!
It is always better to use "Best Current Practice" and even better
just to say "Standard Practice". I think that 'best practice'
is actually what the 'best people' do and always will be. It is impossible
to specify the 'best' or create it by documentation and imposition of measures
of success. What it is possible to specify is the currently acceptable standards
and it is in everyone's interest that these standards exist and provide
a measure against which new methods can prove their worth.
The area where research lives is in the quest for the best but it may not
be that current research really is better. The measure of 'better' to the
user lies as much in repeatability and consistency as it does in the incorporation
of more 'realistic' components or complex physics. However, the researcher
needs to have room to explore and can move the horisons to create what may
be tommorrow's standards.
An example of such a slow but sure process can be seen in evaporation methods
as practiced in Irrigation Engineering. In evaporation standard practice
the scientifically superior Penman-Monteith method has taken many years
(more than 30) to become included in the standard manuals. It has had to
be proven in operational practice to be simply applicable, reliable, consistent
and even conservative so that it could replace tried although maybe not
very true methods in use for many years in operational calculations of "Consumptive"
Water Use.
In order to bring about these standards, it is important that Australia
work closely with any moves or existing progress in these directions in
the international community. However, there is a need for Australian users
and data or value added product producers to get together and define what
the needs of Australian users are - whatever the progress or lack of progress
internationally. In the case of Land AVHRR Data I think the need is critical.
This Workshop is an ideal place to start the process as there are researchers,
data providers, value adders and some end users all meeting together to
discuss the issues facing the 'industry'. Let's not waste the opportunity.
In any transaction of the kind we are discussing, involving a producer and
a user, there are two risks that must be minimised or at least balanced
if the transaction is to be fair and even for it to keep occurring. These
are the "Producer's Risk" and the "User's Risk". They
assume there is a measure of quality available for the product and a strategy
of testing. In this case, the producers risk is the probability that a perfectly
good product will be rejected as poor and the consumer's risk is the probability
that a product called acceptable is poor. Clearly, standards, measures and
strategies of testing must all be developed by users and producers together
to create a situation everyone can live with. In practice, the financial
viability of a product to the producers may be an important component in
the definition of a standard.
In our area of AVHRR data and products there are two forums for standards.
These are the interface between data producers and data users (or value
adders) and the interface between value adders and the end users. In the
end, the two will form part of the same 'sentence' and need to be compatible:
"With data produced at certified Level x, using processing methods outlined in manual y, with staff and infrastructure of capability z it is possible to produce specified product p with accuracy q."
Perhaps this Workshop, with its useful blend of researchers, data managers,
data suppliers, value adders and users, can outline the cases where Australian
users can fill in the gaps in sentences like this one and help define what
Level x is for the benefit of the data producers. Perhaps there is no existing
sentence of this type of which we can be confident. In either case, what
are the base standards, what can reliably and consistently be achieved and
what measures can we put into place to ensure in the future (to the benefit
of producers and users alike) that they are being met? I claim that although
the answers to these questions do not always involve scientific issues of
interest to leading edge researchers it is in their interest and essential
for their long term survival that some answers be found.
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