Vol.5 No.3 2012

30/94

Research paper : International cooperation for the utilization of earth observational data in an integrated manner (K. Iwao)−165−Synthesiology - English edition Vol.5 No.3 (2012) officiated by the GEO Secretariat. To guarantee the fairness of the evaluation result, the participation to the evaluation committee by specialists from all member countries and organizations of GEO was requested. In obtaining the international agreement, importance was placed on geographical balance. The provision of the components was solicited from the institutes and organizations of Europe and the USA. The request for participation to the evaluation committee from regions with high interest in the diffusion and standardization of their original technology was expected from the inception. Meanwhile, there was no organization that offered the components from Asia, Oceania, or Africa. Moreover, in the developing countries, it was expected that troubles will occur in using a system that was decided mainly by Europe and US, since there might be speed limit of Internet connection or lack of spec of the PC used. To ensure wide diffusion of the recommended system to all member countries, active participation was solicited from the developing countries in particular, to guarantee international agreement. However, the evaluation committee members were limited to the members officially recommended by the principals. This was done to ensure the results would reflect the representatives of the member countries and organizations of the GEO. The committee members were composed of the members recommended by the following countries and organizations. The number in the parenthesis shows the number of personnel, and there is no parenthesis when there was only one person.Member countries: Australia, Austria, Brazil, China, Finland, Germany, Italy (2), Japan (3), Madagascar (3), Pakistan (2), USA (5), and EU (2).Member organizations: Committee of Earth Observation Satellites, European Space Agency, The Federation of Earth Science Information Partners, European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., US Environment Protection Agency, EU Joint Research Center, Open GIS Consortium, Inc., and World Meteorological Organization.In addition to the 30 committee members, two members of the GEO Secretariat, including the author, joined the evaluation committee. The functinality and usability testing teams that included the committee members were established under the GEO Plenary. These two teams conducted actual investigation based on the evaluation items for technology and usability created by the evaluation committee. The functionality testing team was composed of the staff from Brazil and the Joint Research Center, while the usability investigation team was composed mainly of people from the EPA. For example, the evaluation committee set the search response time as a technological evaluation item, and the functionality testing team considered the conditions and methods for measuring the response time and conducted the actual evaluation. The fairness of evaluation result was enhanced by reporting the results to the evaluation committee.When the evaluation committee members were solicited, there were applications from organizations with conflict of interests, namely the European Space Agency that provided the WP that is the component of the CI and the USGS that provided the CL. Since the GEO assumed voluntary participation, they could not be completely eliminated, but in a case where the organization itself would be the subject of investigation, the committee member belonging to that organization was eliminated from the discussions. On the other hand, Japan did not provide any components for the CI, and was expected to have increased say due to its fair standpoint. Therefore, additional three specialists were dispatched from AIST, and discussions could be held with the cooperation of the AIST specialists, with the author acting as a coordinator.About two months were required from the GEO Plenary in late November 2009 to the official selection of the committee members. When the committee members were determined and preliminary exchanges were done by telephone conference and e-mails, the first meeting of the evaluation committee was held in February 2010 at the GEO Secretariat. At this meeting the “Terms of Reference” of the committee was drafted, and the three items, functionality, usability, and long-term operability were set as the target of evaluation. Also, as shown in Fig. 6, the overall flow was set toward the creation of a report of the evaluation result.Fig. 6 Flow to the CI selectionThe flow of evaluation and approval conducted by the evaluation committee is shown.ApprovalInvestigation of cause of confusionSelection and evaluation standard for CIApproval by executive committeeApproval at Plenary and Earth Observation SummitScoringSelectionExplanation and answers for target institutesExecutive committeeDiscuss evaluation item and allotment (weight)Establish specialty committeeFunctional testingUsability testing

※このページを正しく表示するにはFlashPlayer9以上が必要です