Memorandum 112
Supplementary evidence from the British
Association of Remote Sensing Companies (BARSC)
BARSC was pleased to receive the Science and
Technology Committee's request for more information on how the
domain of Atmospheric monitoring could be a UK focus in GMES.
For programmatic reasons the planning of the
GMES atmospheric services lags a little way behind the land and
marine services, this therefore opens the possibility for the
UK to take a lead role in Atmospheric services. These services
would relate to public health information such as sunburn risk
and air quality. A trial of this type of service has already been
established by a private British company: http://www.cerc.co.uk/YourAir/
with ESA funding.
Improving and extending this type of activity
is highly complementary with the meteorological services provided
by the MetOffice and in particular the climate change prediction
activities of the Hadley Centre. The key to improving air quality
services is to combine both satellite and ground based data using
modelling and data assimilation techiques. Data assimilation (particularly
of atmospheric data) is a significant UK research strength, which
is also strongly present within the National Centre for Earth
Observation recently established by NERC.
BARSC would wish to stress the importance of
the delivery mechanism for Atmospheric services. Whilst much information
would undoubtedly be made publicly available free at the point
of use there is also substantial scope for added value personalised
and location sensitive air quality services delivered direct to
citizens (eg via mobile text message) for which a commercial business
model may be appropriate in future.
UK should therefore claim leadership in the
atmospheric services domain of GMES on the grounds of established
scientific excellence, alignment with our world leading capabilities
in climate forecast and the proven ability in the UK to develop
innovative commercial services as and when appropriate.
It is important to stress that time is of the
essence so prompt, decisive and coherent action is required within
2007 to achieve this objective. A successful outcome to such action
would correct what BARSC perceives as the previous failure of
the UK in so easily conceding the leadership of land and marine
services within GMES to other European countries.
May 2007
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