By Marina Malenic
Northrop Grumman [NOC] CEO Ron Sugar wants President-Elect Barack Obama to increase funding for technologies and institutions that can better exploit climate-change data by more effectively linking existing Earth observation systems.
“We now record a tremendous amount of Earth-monitoring data from satellites, from sensors on aircraft, from balloons, from sensors deep within the oceans or buried underground,” Sugar told an audience at the Center for Stategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, on Dec. 5.
“But we still suffer from an excess of data and a deficiency of knowledge,” he said.
Sugar explained that the data generated by these sensors are “segregated from each other, as are too many of the world’s institutions that operate them.”
He said the Obama administration should focus on translating the data they generate into actionable intelligence.
“We will have to build a bridge between the abundant scientific data available now, on the one hand,” he said, “and the ability to translate that data into practical, decision- quality knowledge.”
Information sharing among the agencies that collect climate data is essential, Sugar said, and may be improved by the creation of a single, over-arching organization that could eliminate existing stovepipes.
“It may be well time to take the next step, to create a higher-level structural mechanism, under government leadership, which builds on our scientific successes to date,” he said. “What I’m calling for is for the new administration to undertake a national initiative to leverage those investments to provide broad access to decision-quality kind of knowledge.”
Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor for the National Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS). That system is expected to be launched in 2013. The company has also advocated for the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), a multinational monitoring system that would link sensors owned by several countries.
Asked whether he expects more business in this area with the advent of the Obama administration, Sugar said the sector “could certainly grow.” He said Northrop Grumman currently derives “a few percent” of its revenue from climate observation.
Sugar said existing technologies–from satellites to submarines to UAVs–collect an “ocean” of climate change data.
“The missing piece is integration,” he said. “If we leverage our sensors, integrate their data and translate it into practical knowledge, we can make this information more relevant to a larger community.
“We can inspire innovation, establish effective mitigation policies and sustainable practices, and create a knowledge base for economic growth,” he added.