Assessing the Societal Benefits of Earth Science Information: New Paper Maps Methods to Do It

     A new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) maps out methods of assessing the societal benefits of Earth science information. The study is mainly statistical. It involves information from sensors, satellites, radars, drones, and other remote sensing techniques, collecting data about climate, air, water, and the Earth.

     According to Phys.org

"We're trying to use the information we gather from all this instrumentation to answer questions, but we don't just want to know the scientific answers to these questions; we want to be able to take that science and use that to benefit society," said O'Hara, who is a project scientist at the campus's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS).

"We use ESI to make real-world decisions that benefit people and society, such as managing climate impacts, improving agricultural yields, targeting policies to reduce air pollution and responding to natural disasters," O'Hara said.

"But we rarely measure the degree to which ESI improves decision outcomes. When we do, the valuation methods may only account for monetary benefits and fail to account for others—such as the benefits of social connection among people or with nature."    

     In the study, the researchers selected 171 studies that applied specific valuation methods to their data. They examined these methods and sorted them into three value types: instrumental (i.e., means to an end), where the benefit was measured in 1) monetary and 2) non-monetary (e.g., healthy crops or clean water) terms, and 3) relational, in which the benefit is less tangible, such as community-building or cultural significance.

     As an economic geologist, I know well the potential value of Earth science information, for example, in mapping the subsurface rocks in order to find oil & gas resources. It works. I mainly used well logs to map the subsurface, but also used another remote sensing technique: seismic reflection surveys, which have gotten very good over the years at accurately imaging the subsurface. Of course, those efforts were oriented toward the goal of economic success rather than direct societal benefit.

     The paper attempts to quantify the societal benefits of Earth science information obtained via remote sensing. This is no easy task and may be subject to various caveats. They note that many of the papers examined exhibited scientific benefits but not societal benefits. In time, some of those scientific benefits could be turned into societal benefits, I would assume.

     Again, societal value was assessed in terms of instrumental, intrinsic, and relational value types. The paper notes that Earth science information (ESI) can be turned into useful products “such as land cover maps, climate forecasts, and drought early warning systems that managers and policy makers can use to inform societally consequential decisions.”

     The authors note that assessing societal benefits is a common feature of conservation science and sustainable development:

“The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Values Assessment, a multiyear effort by scores of experts in diverse forms of valuation, identified three categories of value that reflect the ways in which nature and ecosystems are important for people: instrumental value as a means to satisfying specific human needs or interests, e.g., more revenue, higher crop yield, better health outcomes.”

     Quantifying societal value is not easy since it involves human value judgements, which can be quite subjective. Thus, at best, these are estimates or approximations. The value of any kind of information may be variable and typically hard to quantify. Examples of the economic value of information can be things like improved profit (as in my oil & gas geology example) and improved crop yields. Those values are more quantifiable than intrinsic and relational values such as fair decision processes, sustainability, justice, and human well-being. Basically, this paper is an attempt to quantify the societal value of this type of information.

     The figure below from the paper shows the valuation methods used in the context of the three value types: 1) instrumental (monetary), instrumental (non-monetary), and relational. Examples of instrumental non-monetary value include things like pollution reduction and lives saved. Examples of relational value include connection with land, poverty alleviation, social justice, and knowledge transfer within the community. These are mostly qualitative benefits that, for such a study as this, need to be converted into a quantitative form.

     Figure 3 from the paper, below, shows the differing methods used to determine the societal value of ESI, such as value of information (VOI) analysis, cost-benefit analysis, surveys, and statistical analysis. VOI refers to methods that assign value based on the data's ability to reduce uncertainty in decision-making.

     Figure 4, below, shows the different subject areas, or as they call them, general decision context areas, where societal values were assessed. These were classified into eight groups: 1) agriculture, 2) climate and resilience, 3) water resources, 4) ecological conservation, 5) capacity building, 6) disasters, 7) health and air quality, and 8) wildland fires. Categorizing as “various” means that multiple decision context areas were present. 

     Below is a graph of the multiple contexts.

     The authors also note that there is not much previous research to determine the societal value of ESI. I think the reason for this is that such valuations are difficult and vulnerable to scrutiny and possible disagreement.  

“Despite a broad, inclusive search for research on diverse methods for valuing Earth observation information, we found very few examples of evaluations of the societal benefits of ESI. Such a low inclusion rate (1.2%) may reflect a lack of general research on ESI and values, even though our search string was intentionally designed to be inclusive to maximize opportunities to find edge cases in the literature. The paucity of research directly addressing the value of ESI suggests a strong need to better understand how such information is being used to generate societal value, and to identify methods that can effectively assess this value.”

     They also note that the availability of data can influence societal benefits, with increased availability being associated with increased societal benefits.  

“The scientific, political, and commercial structures governing ESI, including whether datasets are publicly accessible or proprietary, freely available or commercial, in part determine who is likely to access benefits from their application, but also whose values are represented in the data (and whose are not). Clearly, making ESI data freely available enhances the ability to generate societal benefits; for example, citations and downloads surged for Landsat data following the shift from a paid service to a free and open data policy in 2008, ultimately stimulating billions of dollars in scientific and societal benefits.”

     I know of many geoscientists who have utilized freely and publicly available datasets to assist them in deriving economic value. Governments and scientific institutions such as the U.S. Geological Survey and state geological surveys provide valuable information for earth scientists to derive economic and other forms of societal value, for example. The U.S. EPA and many other institutions provide similarly valuable information. Another example is the satellite data that is used to quantify things like methane emissions from oil & gas systems, landfills, or wetlands. That arms us with knowledge to then fix discovered leaks, providing societal benefits such as less greenhouse gas emissions.

     Overall, I think it will remain difficult to arrive at a satisfactory quantitative valuation of the societal benefits of ESI, but it is an effort that we must continue to pursue as we are able. Some societal benefits of ESI are evident, and others are likely more covert but could become more evident in the future. This is being realized, for instance, with AI analyzing large datasets and uncovering hidden relationships in data that may be transferable to societal benefits. Companies must evaluate the potential economic benefits of their own ESI acquisition and analysis. For instance, oil & gas companies have geology and geophysics (G&G) budgets, where they need to determine how much money they will spend to unlock economic value. Of course, assessing purely economic value is not always easy, but it is usually easier than assessing societal value, at least quantitatively. The research here is certainly not groundbreaking, but more an attempt at quantifying something difficult to quantify. One might ask what the societal benefit is of assessing the societal benefits of ESI.  In that respect, it is useful as a proposed way to improve such assessments in the future.

    

 

References:

 

Moving beyond money to measure the true value of Earth science information. Sonia Fernandez. Phys.org. February 10, 2026. Moving beyond money to measure the true value of Earth science information

A systematic map of methods for assessing societal benefits of Earth science information. Casey C. O’Hara, Mabel Baez-Schon, Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer, +14 , and Benjamin S. Halpern. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Vol. 123 | No. 6. February 6, 2026. A systematic map of methods for assessing societal benefits of Earth science information | PNAS