[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
ADVANCING COMMERCIAL WEATHER DATA:
COLLABORATIVE EFFORTS
TO IMPROVE FORECASTS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MAY 20, 2015
__________
Serial No. 114-20
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
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Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
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COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., ZOE LOFGREN, California
Wisconsin DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
DANA ROHRABACHER, California DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland
RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas FREDERICA S. WILSON, Florida
MICHAEL T. McCAUL SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi ERIC SWALWELL, California
MO BROOKS, Alabama ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois AMI BERA, California
BILL POSEY, Florida ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky MARC A. VEASEY, TEXAS
JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma KATHERINE M. CLARK, Massachusetts
RANDY K. WEBER, Texas DON S. BEYER, JR., Virginia
BILL JOHNSON, Ohio ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado
JOHN R. MOOLENAAR, Michigan PAUL TONKO, New York
STEVE KNIGHT, California MARK TAKANO, California
BRIAN BABIN, Texas BILL FOSTER, Illinois
BRUCE WESTERMAN, Arkansas
BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia
DAN NEWHOUSE, Washington
GARY PALMER, Alabama
BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia
------
Subcommittee on Environment
HON. JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma, Chair
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
Wisconsin DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland
RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
RANDY WEBER, Texas AMI BERA, California
JOHN MOOLENAAR, Michigan MARK TAKANO, California
BRIAN BABIN, Texas BILL FOSTER, Illinois
BRUCE WESTERMAN, Arkansas EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
DAN NEWHOUSE, Washington
GARY PALMER, Alabama
LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas
C O N T E N T S
May 20, 2015
Page
Witness List..................................................... 2
Hearing Charter.................................................. 3
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Jim Bridenstine, Chairman,
Subcommittee on Environment, Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology, U.S. House of Representatives...................... 8
Written Statement............................................ 9
Statement by Representative Suzanne Bonamici, Ranking Minority
Member, Subcommittee on Enviorment, Committee on Science,
Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives........... 10
Written Statement............................................ 12
Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking
Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House
of Representatives............................................. 76
Written Statement............................................ 76
Witnesses:
Dr. Scott Pace, Director, Space Policy Institute, George
Washington University
Oral Statement............................................... 14
Written Statement............................................ 17
Mr. Scott Sternberg, President, Vaisala Inc.
Oral Statement............................................... 30
Written Statement............................................ 32
Ms. Nicole Robinson, Chair, Hosted Payload Alliance
Oral Statement............................................... 38
Written Statement............................................ 40
Dr. Bill Gail, Chief Technology Officer, Global Weather
Corporation
Oral Statement............................................... 43
Written Statement............................................ 45
Dr. Thomas Bogdan, President, University Corporation for
Atmospheric Research
Oral Statement............................................... 62
Written Statement............................................ 64
Discussion....................................................... 68
Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Dr. Scott Pace, Director, Space Policy Institute, George
Washington University.......................................... 96
Mr. Scott Sternberg, President, Vaisala Inc...................... 98
Ms. Nicole Robinson, Chair, Hosted Payload Alliance.............. 101
Dr. Thomas Bogdan, President, University Corporation for
Atmospheric Research........................................... 102
Appendix II: Additional Material for the Record
Letters of support of legislation from Geo Optics, Planet IQ,
Spire Global, Tempus Global Data, and Panasonic Avionics
Corporation submitted for the record by Representative Jim
Bridenstine, Chairman, Subcommittee on Environment, Committee
on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 106
ADVANCING COMMERCIAL WEATHER DATA:.
COLLABORATIVE EFFORTS.
TO IMPROVE FORECASTS
----------
WEDNESDAY, MAY 20, 2015
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Environment
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:03 a.m., in
Room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jim
Bridenstine [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Bridenstine. The Subcommittee on the Environment
will come to order.
Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a
recess of the Subcommittee at any time.
Welcome to today's hearing titled ``Advancing Commercial
Weather Data: Collaborative Efforts to Improve Forecasts.''
I recognize myself for five minutes for an opening
statement.
Good morning and welcome to this hearing of the
Subcommittee on the Environment. First, I would like to
acknowledge that last night the House passed H.R. 1561, the
Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2015. I want
to thank Chairman Smith for his continued leadership on this
issue. I thank the Committee Vice Chairman, Mr. Lucas, for his
sponsorship of the bill. As a fellow Oklahoman, I know he
understands the vital need for this bill, and his involvement
has been crucial to the success of H.R. 1561.
I also want to thank the Ranking Member of the Environment
Subcommittee, Ms. Bonamici, for being the lead cosponsor and
being so helpful to this effort. This bill is the result of a
very bipartisan agreement and it is stronger for it. The
Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act will improve
our ability to accurately predict the weather and save lives
and property.
This week, the Senate also introduced weather legislation,
and I am glad that they are beginning to look at an issue that
we here in the House have been looking at for a few years now.
I look forward to working with our Senate counterparts and
would encourage them to take up H.R. 1561 so that we can set in
motion the improvements needed to better predict the weather.
Today's hearing continues this Subcommittee's focus on how
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, uses
weather data to enhance their forecasting capability, how and
where they get the necessary data, and how these processes can
be improved.
A main tenant of our now House-passed weather legislation
is its recognition of the role commercial weather data can play
as a piece of the solution available to NOAA. A previous
hearing of this Subcommittee looked into issues with NOAA's
satellite programs that could lead to gaps in data. That
hearing served to underscore my belief that we need to augment
our space-based observing systems by incorporating alternative
methods of data collection.
Today, we will hear from experts across multiple
disciplines to better understand how NOAA currently
incorporates external data, as well as what options are
available to NOAA outside of traditional sources. For example,
NOAA already purchases limited commercial data for various
modeling and forecasts. These partnerships can serve as a model
as NOAA necessarily evolves to meet its critical mission.
Likewise, hosted payloads offer additional flexibility to the
agency by providing space on commercial satellites that can
host weather instruments and sensors, including proprietary
NOAA instruments.
International partnerships also play an important role.
Namely, NOAA's satellite partnership with the Europeans has
historically been crucial when faced with satellite failures.
Our partnership with Taiwan on the COSMIC and COSMIC-2 programs
demonstrates the value of new weather technology that will
increase our ability to predict severe weather events in the
near future.
Information from commercial aircraft sensors could also
factor more into our data streams than it currently does.
Additionally, we should look at how our unmanned aerial systems
and how they play into this. In Oklahoma, there are people
working every day to incorporate UAS into the airspace,
including how they could be utilized to monitor the weather in
areas where passenger aircraft do not fly.
One issue that will need to be addressed as new options for
continuous, robust, and cost-effective data streams are
explored, is how NOAA shares information it receives. This is a
sensitive subject, I understand that, but it needs to be
discussed. I am concerned that a viable commercial weather
industry could face challenges under NOAA's current
interpretation of how our international obligations regarding
access to data are made.
However, we know that in practice NOAA does in fact
purchase commercial data that they do not share, and that our
international obligations are much more nuanced than are
sometimes interpreted to being.
I know that Dr. Stephen Volz, head of NESDIS, has signaled
his openness to commercial data, and I appreciate his very
forward-looking view on this matter. He and other NOAA
officials have sometimes couched their support with the caveat
that data must be available for free to all. In some cases,
this could hinder a free market for data or a market at all for
data.
I'd like to use this hearing to kick-start the conversation
on how we can craft a data policy that meets our international
obligations, provides access to researchers and the academic
community, and does not prevent the growth of this nascent
industry.
I look forward to a lively discussion today that highlights
the possibilities available to NOAA to add new sources of data
and flexibility to enhance our weather forecasting systems.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Bridenstine follows:]
Prepared Statement of Subcommittee on Environment
Chairman Jim Bridenstine
Good morning and welcome to this hearing of the Subcommittee on the
Environment.
First, I would like to acknowledge that last night the House passed
H.R. 1561, the Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2015.
I want to thank Chairman Smith for his continued leadership on this
issue. I thank the Committee Vice Chairman, Mr. Lucas for his
sponsorship of the bill. As a fellow Oklahoman, I know he understands
the vital need for this bill, and his involvement has been crucial to
the success of H.R. 1561. I also want to thank the Ranking Member of
the Environment Subcommittee, Ms. Bonamici, for being the lead co-
sponsor. This bill is the result of a bipartisan agreement and is
stronger for it. The Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act
will improve our ability to accurately predict the weather and save
lives and property.
This week the Senate also introduced weather legislation, and I am
glad they are beginning to look at an issue the House has been working
on for a few years now. I look forward to working with our Senate
counterparts, and would also encourage them to take up the H.R. 1561 so
that we can set in motion the improvements needed to better predict the
weather.
Today's hearing continues this Subcommittee's focus on how the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, uses weather
data to enhance their forecasting capability, how and where they get
that necessary data, and how these processes can be improved.
A main tenant of our now House-passed weather legislation is its
recognition of the role commercial weather data can play as a piece of
the solutions available to NOAA. A previous hearing of this
Subcommittee looked into issues with NOAA's satellite programs that
could lead to gaps in data.
That hearing served to underscore my belief that we need to augment
our space-based observing systems by incorporating alternative methods
of data collection. Today we will hear from experts across multiple
disciplines to better understand how NOAA currently incorporates
external data, as well as what options are available to NOAA outside of
traditional sources.
For example, NOAA already purchases limited commercial data for
various modeling and forecasts. These partnerships can serve as a model
as NOAA necessarily evolves to meet its critical mission. Likewise,
hosted payloads offer additional flexibility to the Agency by providing
space on commercial satellites that can host weather instruments and
sensors, including proprietary NOAA instruments.
International partnerships also play an important role. Namely,
NOAA's satellite partnership with the Europeans has historically been
crucial when faced with satellite failures. Our partnership with Taiwan
on the COSMIC and COSMIC-2 programs demonstrates the value of a new
weather technology that will increase our ability to predict severe
weather events in the near future.
Information from commercial aircraft sensors could also factor more
into our data streams than it currently does. Additionally, we should
look at how our unmanned aerial systems play into this. In Oklahoma,
there are people working every day to incorporate UAS into the
airspace, including how they could be utilized to monitor the weather
in areas where passenger aircraft do not fly.
One issue that will need to be addressed as new options for
continuous, robust, and cost-effective data streams are explored, is
how NOAA shares the information it receives. This is a sensitive
subject, but it needs to be discussed. I am concerned that a viable
commercial weather industry will face challenges to mature under NOAA's
current interpretation of our international obligations regarding
access to data.
However, we know that in practice NOAA does in fact purchase some
commercial data that they do not share, and that our international
obligations are much more nuanced.
I know that Dr. Stephen Volz, head of NESDIS, has signaled his
openness to commercial data, and I appreciate his forward-looking view.
However, he and other NOAA officials have couched their support with
the caveat that data must be made available, for free, to all.
I'd like to use this hearing to kick start the conversation on how
we can craft a data policy that meets our international obligations,
provides access to researchers and the academic community, and does not
prevent the growth of this nascent industry.
I look forward to a lively discussion today that highlights the
possibilities available to NOAA to add new sources of data and
flexibility to enhance our weather forecasting systems.
Chairman Bridenstine. I would like to now recognize the
Ranking Member, the gentlewoman from Oregon, for an opening
statement.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank
you to the witnesses for being here today.
I want to start by congratulating be Subcommittee Chairman
on the passage of H.R. 1561, the Weather Research and
Forecasting Innovation Act of 2015, on the House Floor
yesterday. We've been working on this together for a couple of
years. I know the Chairman shares my interest in doing all we
can to protect the American people from severe weather events.
The legislation we've been working on together will go a long
way in improving the nation's weather forecasting capabilities.
I'm also pleased that we're holding today's hearing to
discuss the benefits and challenges associated with advancing
the role of commercial weather data in our national weather
enterprise. The legislation passed yesterday takes an important
first step towards strengthening and improving NOAA's
partnerships with the private sector. But there are several
issues that NOAA and this Subcommittee need to work through to
achieve the appropriate balance. The complexity of such a
transition is why I'm glad we're holding this hearing today.
And as impressive as our witness panel is this morning, any
discussion of this topic is incomplete without also hearing
from NOAA. And I understand that NOAA was invited but unable to
attend on this particular date because of time constraints,
but, Mr. Chairman, I trust that we can find another time to
hear directly from NOAA about their current policies and
challenges that they see with expanding the purchase and use of
commercial weather data. Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to
this morning's discussion.
As we're exploring a path forward for commercial weather
data, it's important for us to first understand the history of
the partnership between NOAA and the private sector. It's a
long and fruitful partnership. Currently, NOAA procures the
nation's geostationary and polar satellites through contracts
with the private sector. This government-owned commercially
operated structure provides critical observational data that's
the backbone of our numerical weather prediction and it's based
on the premise that government information is a valuable
resource and a public good. Therefore, the data gathered by
these satellites and used by NOAA is made available to the
public. The preservation of full and open access to core data
products is essential and it's enabled the growth of the whole
weather enterprise, public and private.
Policies that enable the sharing of data and information
with the research community, our international partners, and
commercial entities has brought the weather industry to where
it is today. This billion-dollar industry owes much of its
success to these open-data policies, and I'm concerned about
whether and how the industry will continue to grow if we were
to dramatically alter these open-access policies.
NOAA also has a history of incorporating commercial weather
data into its products and services. For example, we'll hear
today from a company that provides NOAA with real-time
lightning data, which is essential for its severe weather
warnings and forecasts. All of these external data sources are
valuable but they supplement observations from government
satellites; they do not replace them. If we're moving toward a
model where the government is solely a purchaser, not a
provider, of weather data, then there are a number of unique
challenges and important questions that must be addressed to
ensure the stability, credibility, and reliability of the
nation's weather forecasting capabilities.
And, Mr. Chairman, you began to list some but I'm going to
add specifically; can NOAA freely share the data it purchases?
If not, what would that mean for maintaining our international
obligations? If NOAA maintains its policy of free and
unrestricted use of data it purchases, will it be forced to
purchase data at a premium that will outweigh the anticipated
cost savings?
Now, there are several other issues we could discuss but
these are the kinds of questions NOAA has been wrestling with
while developing policies and practices for purchasing
commercial data over the years. I know they're still working
hard to address these questions and others, and again, Mr.
Chairman, I want to emphasize that we need NOAA to be a part of
these discussions going forward.
I know everyone involved in the weather enterprise from
NOAA to its industry partners and our talented researchers are
all working toward the same goal of advancing our ability to
forecast the weather, save lives, and improve our economy in
the process. As we identify ways for NOAA to work more closely
with industry to incorporate commercial weather data into its
models, products, and services, we must be mindful of the
risks.
So thank you, Mr. Chairman, and again, thank you to our
witnesses for being here this morning. And I yield back the
balance of my time.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Bonamici follows:]
Prepared Statement of Subcommittee on Oversight
Minority Ranking Member Suzanne Bonamici
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you witnesses for being here
today. I want to start by congratulating the Chairman for passage of
H.R. 1561, the Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2015
on the House floor yesterday. I know he shares my interest in doing all
we can to protect the American people from severe weather events, and
the legislation we worked on together will go a long way in improving
the nation's weather forecasting capabilities.
I am also pleased that we are holding today's hearing to discuss
the benefits and challenges associated with advancing the role of
commercial weather data in our National weather enterprise. Our
legislation takes an important first step toward strengthening and
improving NOAA's partnerships with the private sector. However, there
are a number of issues that NOAA and this Subcommittee need to work
through to achieve the appropriate balance. The complexity of such a
transition is why I am glad we are holding today's hearing. As
impressive as our witness panel is this morning, however any discussion
of this topic is incomplete without also hearing from NOAA. I
understand that NOAA was unable to be here today because of time
constraints, but Mr. Chairman, I trust that we can find another time to
hear directly from NOAA about their current policies and any challenges
they see with expanding the purchase and use of commercial weather
data. Nevertheless, I am looking forward to this morning's discussion.
As we are exploring a path forward for commercial weather data, it
is important for us to first understand the history of the partnership
between NOAA and the private sector. It is a long and fruitful
partnership. Currently, NOAA procures the nation's geostationary and
polar satellites through contracts with the private sector. This
government owned, commercially operated structure has served us well.
It has provided critical observational data that is the backbone of our
numerical weather prediction and is based on the premise that
government information is a valuable resource and a public good.
Therefore, the data gathered by these satellites, and used by NOAA, is
made available to the public.
The preservation of full and open access to core data products is
essential and has enabled the growth of the whole weather enterprise-
public and private. Policies that enable the sharing of data and
information with the research community, our international partners,
and commercial entities, has brought the weather industry to where it
is today. This billion dollar industry owes much of its success to
these open data policies and I'm concerned about whether and how the
industry will continue to grow if we dramatically alter these open
access policies.
NOAA also has a history of incorporating commercial weather data
into its products and services. For example, we will hear today from a
company that provides real-time lightning data to NOAA, which is
essential for its severe weather warnings and forecasts. All of these
external data sources are valuable, but they supplement observations
from government satellites, they do not replace them.
If we are moving toward a model where the government is solely a
purchaser, and not a provider, of weather data then there are a number
of unique challenges and important questions that must be addressed to
ensure the stability, credibility, and reliability of the nation's
weather forecasting capabilities.
Specifically, can NOAA freely share the data it purchases?
If not, what would that mean for maintaining our international
obligations?
If NOAA maintains its policy of free and unrestricted use of data
it purchases, will it be forced to purchase data at a premium that will
outweigh the anticipated cost savings?
I could go on, but these are the kinds of questions NOAA has been
wrestling with while developing policies and practices for purchasing
commercial data over the years. I know they are still working hard to
addresses these questions and others and again, Mr. Chairman I want to
emphasize that we need NOAA to be a part of these discussions going
forward.
I know everyone involved in the weather enterprise from NOAA to its
industry partners to our talented researchers are all working toward
the same goal of advancing our ability to forecast the weather, save
lives, and improve our economy in the process. As we identify ways for
NOAA to work more closely with industry to incorporate commercial
weather data into its models, products, and services, we must be
mindful of the risks.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and again thank you to our witnesses for
being here this morning. I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairman Bridenstine. I'd like to thank the Ranking Member
for her opening statement.
Just for a matter of record, we agreed to this hearing on
May 1, 20 days ago. On May 4, 16 days ago, we did invite NOAA.
They indicated that that wasn't sufficient time to be here and
testify.
So I'd like to introduce our witnesses now. Our first
witness is Dr. Scott Pace, Director of George Washington
University's Space Policy Institute. Before joining the
university, Dr. Pace was Associate Administrator for Program
Analysis and Evaluation at NASA. In addition, he served as the
Assistant Director for Space and Aeronautics in the White House
Office of Science and Technology Policy. Dr. Pace received his
bachelor's degree in physics from Harvey Mudd College, master's
degrees in aeronautics and astronautics and technology and
policy from MIT, and his Ph.D. in policy analysis from RAND
Graduate School. Thank you for being here, Dr. Pace.
Mr. Scott Sternberg is our next witness, President of
Vaisala Inc. At Vaisala, Mr. Sternberg is responsible for the
regional governance of the company's U.S.-based operations.
Before joining Vaisala, Mr. Sternberg specialized in providing
advanced digital imaging solutions to scientific applications
at Roper Industries Photometrics. Mr. Sternberg serves on the
Board of Trustees for the University Corporation of Atmospheric
Research, or UCAR, and as Chairman of the Board of Directors
for CO-LABS. Mr. Sternberg received his bachelor's degree in
physics from the State University of New York College at
Cortland and his master's degree in physics and spectroscopy
from Colorado State University.
Ms. Nicole Robinson is our next witness, Chair of the
Hosted Payload Alliance. Ms. Robinson also serves as the
Corporate Vice President of Government Market Solutions Center
at SES Government Solutions and on the Board of the Washington
Space Business Roundtable. In 2012 she was the recipient of the
Future Leaders Award by the Society of Satellite Professionals
International. Ms. Robinson received her bachelor's degree in
communications from Radford University and her MBA from Liberty
University. In addition, she's a graduate of the Senior
Executives and National and International Security Program at
Harvard University.
Dr. Bill Gail is our next witness, Cofounder and Chief
Technology Officer of the Global Weather Corporation. Prior to
joining GWC, Dr. Gail served as President of the American
Meteorological Society. He has worked over two decades in the
fields of meteorology services, satellite meteorology, and
location-aware software. In addition, he recently served as the
U.S. National Academy of Sciences, NAS, Research Council
Committee reviewing the National Weather Service modernization
program. Dr. Gail received his bachelor's degree in physics and
his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University.
Dr. Thomas Bogdan is our final witness, President of the
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, UCAR. Dr.
Bogdan leads UCAR in its mission of providing science in
service to society through innovative partnerships with more
than 100 member colleges and universities in the UCAR
consortium. Before joining UCAR, Dr. Bogdan served as Director
of NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Program where he helped
transition the first numerical space weather prediction model
into operations. Prior to joining NOAA, Dr. Bogdan served as
the National Science Foundation's Program Director for Solar
Terrestrial Physics. Dr. Bogdan received his bachelor's degree
in physics and mathematics from the State University of New
York at Buffalo and his master's and Ph.D. in physics from the
University of Chicago. Needless to say, we have a bunch of
smart people today.
In order to allow time for discussion, please limit your
testimony to five minutes.
I would ask unanimous consent--we have the gentleman from
Colorado here. I'd ask unanimous consent--he's not on the
Subcommittee but maybe today we could have you as an honorary
member of the Subcommittee because of your interest in this
topic. With unanimous consent, we'll have the gentleman from
Colorado join us on this committee.
Ms. Bonamici. I have no objection, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Bridenstine. No objection.
In order to allow time for discussion, please limit your
testimony to five minutes. Your entire written statement will
be made a part of the record.
I now recognize Dr. Pace for five minutes to present his
testimony.
TESTIMONY OF DR. SCOTT PACE, DIRECTOR,
SPACE POLICY INSTITUTE,
GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
Dr. Pace. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thanks to the
Ranking Member and the Members of the Committee for the
opportunity to discuss the important topic of weather data
policies and the challenges facing NOAA in the utilization of
commercial remote sensing data.
From 1990 to 1993 I was a civil servant in the U.S.
Department of Commerce working in the Office of Space Commerce
and the Office of the Deputy Secretary. I believe the Office
continues to have an important role to play in promoting the
growth of the U.S. commercial space activity and I was
personally glad to see the support for approval of H.R. 2263,
the Office of Space Commerce Act.
While at Commerce, I had the privilege of working on Title
II of the Land Remote Sensing Policy Act with Barry Beringer,
the former Chief Counsel of the House Committee on Science.
Title II reformed the U.S. Commercial Remote Sensing Licensing
process and removed a number of regulatory barriers to space-
based commercial remote sensing. This reform helped foster a
more dynamic U.S. industry that is globally competitive today
and created the new options that I think we're looking at for
NOAA today.
NOAA is facing both opportunities and challenges in taking
advantage of an increasingly sophisticated, innovative
commercial remote sensing industry to meet its mission needs.
Industry capabilities are greater than ever before but so are
the budget pressures and expectations being placed on NOAA to
meet the nation's need for weather forecasting and warning.
I'm currently a member of the NOAA Advisory Committee on
Commercial Remote Sensing known as ACCRES. Our committee has
noted these global trends and in particular the increasing
promise of small satellite constellations and unmanned air
vehicles to provide innovative services. Securing benefits from
private data sources requires both a shift in the agency's
mindset and appropriate resources for its implementation, both
financial and human capital.
ACCRES summarized its concern in a February 2015 letter to
the Secretary of Commerce on Commercial Remote Sensing and I've
included that in my written testimony for your consideration.
The Commercial Remote Sensing Act of 2015, H.R. 2261, I
believe, is a constructive step in addressing the challenges
faced by NOAA in meeting its regulatory responsibilities. The
agency needs to both streamline its processes and receive
additional resources to meet a growing workload. NOAA also
needs the active cooperation of other agencies, notably the
Departments of State and Defense in more quickly adjudicating
license applications. Delays and uncertainties in licensing new
technical capabilities are impeding the ability of U.S. firms
to innovate and puts them at risk of following, not leading,
their global competitors.
I would point out that commercial remote sensing data
really isn't an option until you get the license, until you get
the satellites on orbit.
NOAA is facing important risks internationally as well. The
United States has been the leader in openly sharing
environmental data from civil scientific satellites with
researchers worldwide. This practice is not as widely followed
as the scientific community would like with many of our
partners. Access to international environmental data sets for
climate change research is uneven in some countries hoping to
monetize the data in a commercial-like manner. Some foreign
firms--forms of public-private partnerships created in response
to their own domestic budget constraints also encourage
restrictions that constrain scientific research in an effort to
gain revenue.
Another source of risk affecting public and private remote
sensing alike is radiofrequency interference, in particular,
commercial demand for spectrum to support terrestrial mobile
broadband services has increased pressures on many bands used
for space services and scientific applications. Sensitive GPS
radio occultation measurements use receivers with a very wide
front ends to acquire weak signals, accurate measurements would
be impaired if high-powered communication networks were to be
deployed in the bands adjacent to GPS.
NOAA can and should be a leader in fostering the
competitiveness of U.S. commercial remote sensing industry
through its regulatory role. It can and should be a leader in
promoting scientific cooperation and data sharing in accordance
with international data sharing principles of the Group on
Earth Observations.
NOAA is at the center of a rapidly changing global
environment in which it can leverage private sector
capabilities to meet public needs. In order to succeed,
however, NOAA needs to proactively shape the rules and
practices of this environment and not merely respond to it. And
I commend this hearing for starting the conversation to balance
some of the data policy issues I think that we're all
struggling with.
Thank you for your attention and I'm happy to answer any
questions you might have.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Pace follows:]
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Chairman Bridenstine. Thank you, Dr. Pace. I'd like to now
recognize Mr. Sternberg for five minutes.
TESTIMONY OF MR. SCOTT STERNBERG,
PRESIDENT, VAISALA INC.
Mr. Sternberg. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Bonamici, and
the Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity
to speak with you today.
I am Scott Sternberg. I serve as the President of a company
called Vaisala Inc. We're a global company of 1,600
professionals of which 450 are located here in the United
States. We deliver weather observation product systems and
services with a specific focus on scientific accuracy,
precision, and reliability. And I think it's worth also noting
that we focus on the ground-based segment of our observation
networks.
I have basically three points that I'd like to make today:
first, to share some real-world experiences regarding the
provisioning of commercial weather data to the federal
government, specifically in the context of the National
Lightning Detection Network; second, to emphasize the
importance of data quality for improved forecast; and finally,
to stress the benefits of what I call contractual clarity.
At Vaisala we have an 80-year history in environmental
sensing and data provisioning. One of Vaisala's first customers
was MIT when in 1936 Vaisala delivered radiosondes, devices
that are carried on weather balloons to measure the vertical
atmosphere. Today, our sensors and technology are employed in
many federal observation networks, including the Nexrad radar
network, upper-air sounding stations, the ASOS platform along
both the roadways and runways of America's transportation
network and descending into severe storms to aid in the
prediction of hurricanes. Our products and services enable our
customers to better understand present, future, and to reduce
uncertainty, but most importantly, it's to make informed
decisions.
As a country, we're faced with the need to mitigate the
impacts of extreme weather. This is demonstrated by Hurricane
Sandy in 2012; the Colorado floods of 2013; the Moore,
Oklahoma, tornado outbreak in the same year; and the Western
drought, which is ongoing. These events alone are responsible
for more than $70 billion in losses and over 190 fatalities.
A fundamental element of our ability to reduce impacts of
severe weather is the availability and use of reliable and
accurate weather data. Our success is dependent upon a balanced
approach, which includes ground-based observations, aerial
measurements, and satellite-derived data. To regain our
preeminence in weather forecast, a subject that this
Subcommittee has recently addressed with the Weather Research
and Forecasting Innovation Act, we need concerted efforts from
the entire weather enterprise, the public, private, and
academic sectors.
One area where this has been demonstrated successfully is
in lightning detection and lightning data delivery. Vaisala
designed, deployed, owns, operates, and maintains the National
Lightning Detection Network, or the NLDN. It's the longest
continuously operating lightning network in the world. The NLDN
has been providing precision real-time continental-scale
lightning data since 1989 and continues to be the foundational
data set for the federal government.
The NLDN successfully demonstrates how the private,
academic, and government sectors came together to achieve a
common goal. Today's NLDN represents countless contributions
from each of the sectors over its 30-year history.
As a customer, the federal government uses NLDN raw data
for inputs for severe weather forecasting. In addition,
academic research uses the growing archive of the nearly 25
million cloud-to-ground lightning strikes that occur every year
to better understand the role of atmospheric electricity in
severe storms.
Much of the success of the lightning data model is based on
a contractual arrangement that has created a balance wherein
the federal government's use of lightning data is clearly
defined, enabling Vaisala to successfully pursue lightning-
related business in other markets. Through informed
negotiation, internal controls, and appropriate data licensing
and redistribution policies, the economic value of the
commercial data is maintained while serving the public
interest. This contractual clarity has allowed Vaisala to
generate revenue that has in turn been reinvested to deliver
continual improvements in the sensor technology and signal
processing within the network.
Finally, rigorous quality control reinforced by scientific
peer-reviewed validation studies assures users that they're
receiving the highest-quality data available. This is vital not
only due to the fact that the output of any numerical model
strictly depends on the inputted raw data but also because
lives and livelihoods are at stake.
The weather enterprise has changed substantially over the
last few decades with the creation of over 350 U.S. commercial
weather companies generating approximately $3 billion of
revenue each year. In the right instances, the private sector
should look to--the public sector should look to the private
sector companies for products and services as a way to increase
efficiency and effectiveness of their operations while at the
same time reducing costs. However, as the NLDN has
demonstrated, both the government and the private sectors need
to recognize their mutual dependence on each other to move
forward.
Thank you for this opportunity and I'd be willing to answer
any questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Sternberg follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Bridenstine. Thank you for your testimony.
I'd like to now recognize Ms. Robinson for five minutes.
TESTIMONY OF MS. NICOLE ROBINSON,
CHAIR, HOSTED PAYLOAD ALLIANCE
Ms. Robinson. Thank you. Chairman Bridenstine, Ranking
Member Bonamici, and members of the committee, as Chair of the
Hosted Payload Alliance, it's my honor to participate in
today's proceedings while representing our diverse and
accomplished group of Hosted Payload Alliance members. I was
pleased to submit to the committee my written testimony, as
well as the database of current commercially hosted government
payloads on contract today, and I thank you for the opportunity
to offer these brief summarized remarks.
During your February hearing on America's weather
satellites in weather forecasting, Chairman Bridenstine, you
urged that we should ``look to augment our satellite systems
through commercial means, just as the Department of Defense and
NASA have done,'' and ``we must look outside the box for new
methods of providing essential weather data.'' The Hosted
Payload Alliance has heard your call for commercial integration
and stands ready to assist and enable NOAA efforts to
incorporate new and responsive acquisition practices to further
weather-sensing capabilities.
The Hosted Payload Alliance, already with a history of
demonstrated success on orbit, and with other payloads on
contract, is ready to institutionalize this ``out-of-the-box''
approach. This hearing helps that effort.
A hosted payload is a portion of a satellite, such as a
sensor, instrument, or a set of communication transponders that
are owned by an organization or agency other than that of the
primary satellite operator. The hosted portion of the satellite
operates independent of the main spacecraft but shares the
satellite's power supply, transponders, and in some cases, the
ground systems.
The concept of a hosted payload is not entirely new, as
many U.S. Government-designed and built satellites have for
years been developed with hosting in mind. However, what is
relatively new is the concept of using commercially available
space, weight, and power to host government-developed payloads,
instruments, or transponders. Commercially hosted payloads
enable government organizations to make use of a commercial
satellite platform in order to save costs and create a more
distributed architecture for space assets.
Choosing, in essence, to piggyback a hosted payload on a
commercial satellite has many benefits. I'll summarize here,
and my written statement provides additional depth into each of
these sections.
Shorter time to space. Roughly 20 commercial satellites are
launched to geosynchronous Earth orbit each year. Each one
presents an opportunity to add additional capability.
Lower cost. Placing a hosted payload on a commercial
satellite costs a fraction of the amount of building,
launching, and operating an entire satellite by itself.
A more resilient architecture. Posted payloads enable more
resilient space architecture by distributing assets over
multiple platforms and locations.
Increased access to space. With roughly five satellite
launches every quarter, the commercial satellite industry
provides a multitude of opportunities for frequent access to
orbit.
Operational options. Hosted payloads have multiple options
to use existing satellite operations facilities with shared
command and control of the hosted payload through the life of
the host satellite, or a completely dedicated and separate
system operated by the hosted payload owner.
NOAA has stated their goal of future architecture is to
``evolve to a more responsive architecture that leverages a
suite of capabilities including rapid, less costly missions and
direct purchases of services and data to ensure long-term
economic viability.'' Using hosted payloads on commercial
satellites is a pivotal tool for the government and NOAA
specifically to leverage emerging technologies to gain
affordable access to additional space capabilities and critical
enablers in constrained fiscal environment.
The hosted payload model has clearly demonstrated the
timeliness, responsiveness, and cost efficiency of integration
between the government and commercial industry. Pointing to a
couple of examples, with the Commercially Hosted Infrared
Payload program, known as CHIRP, a successful DOD program that
achieved its objective in an initiative that provide capability
for an estimated 15 percent of the cost to build, launch, and
operate a comparable DOD satellite.
In another real-world example, a hosted payload has saved
the Australian Defense Force on the order of $150 million in
satellite communication costs versus traditional, monolithic
acquisition practices. In the civilian applications arena,
multiple Wide Area Augmentation System, or WAAS-hosted
payloads, have enabled the FAA to achieve enhanced GPS accuracy
for safer and more efficient air traffic control.
Finally, the members of the Hosted Payload Alliance value
the opportunity to promote the values of our alliance to the
Subcommittee. We appreciate your most recent legislative
support, H.R. 1561, voted out of the House just last night. The
language supporting consideration of hosted payloads is
significant and we're thankful for your continued support of
our collective effort to contribute. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Robinson follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Bridenstine. Thank you, Ms. Robinson.
Dr. Gail, you're recognized for five minutes.
TESTIMONY OF DR. BILL GAIL, CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER,
GLOBAL WEATHER CORPORATION
Dr. Gail. Chairman Bridenstine, Ranking Member Bonamici,
and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, it's a privilege
to be here testifying today. I will be speaking to you from my
personal perspective but I wear two hats: first, as a voice of
the weather community in my role as past President of the
American Meteorological Society, and second, as a member of
that community building my own startup company, Global Weather
Corporation.
Let me first commend you for the attention you're giving to
the broad topic of NOAA data sources and particularly the role
of commercial satellite data. Through the satellite data issue
is itself important, you have been wise to broaden the
discussion. The reason is that the world moves ever more
rapidly around us. Weather is quickly becoming part of the
emerging information economy. The services we provide will need
to change. They will become more highly customized matched to
each user's needs, and delivered when and where users need it.
We will no longer produce one forecast for the entire United
States but instead one or more for each individual business.
Now, what does this mean for NOAA's data sources? Picture a
train headed down the tracks. This train represents all of the
data sources from satellites to balloons, which NOAA presently
uses to monitor weather and run forecast models. Now imagine a
second train that is rapidly catching the first traveling on a
recently laid parallel track. It represents the emerging breed
of external data sources epitomized by the Googles of the
world, as well as innovative providers within our weather
field.
Such new data is vast and daunting, weather observations
from automobiles, mobile phones, social networks, and a myriad
of other sources never before available. Like it or not, these
parallel tracks cannot remain separate for long. They
inevitably reach a junction. The trains will collide or,
through a bit of effort on the part of NOAA, they could be
hitched together instead. Successfully hitching them would
ensure NOAA of the ongoing value of its traditional data and
leverage the vast amount of new weather-related data from
emerging sources.
Now, how do these trains get hitched? I believe NOAA
already has the means. On its output side, NOAA has long relied
on an elaborate services ecosystem. It is built on partnerships
ranging from emergency managers to commercial companies. These
partners extend NOAA's data and provide value-added services to
end-users all at no cost to NOAA. This has been highly
successful and is the envy of the world. It is estimated that
nearly 90 percent of the weather information reaching the
public is supplied through this ecosystem rather than directly
by NOAA.
Now, when it comes to the input side--in other words, data
used by NOAA--the ecosystem is much less mature. My
recommendation is that NOAA should focus on raising the data
ecosystem to a level of maturity comparable to its highly
successful services ecosystem. Through such an ecosystem, NOAA
could extend the breadth and depth of the data they acquire
even within limited budgets as costs are often shared by
others. Such a data ecosystem would promote desirable
characteristics of flexibility and robustness, enhancing NOAA's
resilience to data loss scenarios and improving its technical
performance.
Now, building this data ecosystem raises many practical
issues. You've seen this with the issue of commercial satellite
sounding data before this Subcommittee. My written testimony
describes many of the challenges and suggests some solutions.
Among them is the challenge of protecting our core principle of
open data. It has served this community well but needs to be
extended so that important data sources are not made
inaccessible. Resolving it properly is also critical to our
international partners and to ensuring continuity of the data
we receive from them.
Succeeding with this vision will require innovation and
partnerships as much as in technology. Our two trains will not
hitch properly if we rely only on traditional mechanisms such
as data buys. The new information world is characterized by
business relationships that were unheard of when the data buy
paradigm was first developed. NOAA has excellent experience
creating innovative partnerships on the services side such as
through their Weather-Ready Nation Initiative. It should seek
to do so on the data side as well.
Weather legislation isn't considered within Congress often.
In deliberating the evolution of data sources used by NOAA, I
urge you to take a decadal-scale view. The legislation you pass
needs to stay relevant despite the enormous advances expected
within information technology over that timescale. In this
context, providing NOAA with the resources needed to develop a
true data ecosystem will pay off to the nation many times over.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Gail follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Bridenstine. Thank you, Dr. Gail.
Dr. Bogdan, you're recognized for five minutes.
TESTIMONY OF DR. THOMAS BOGDAN, PRESIDENT,
UNIVERSITY CORPORATION FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH
Dr. Bogdan. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Bonamici, and
Members of the Subcommittee, and Mr. Perlmutter, thank you for
the opportunity to testify today. My name is Thomas Bogdan and
I serve as the President of the University Corporation for
Atmospheric Research, or UCAR.
UCAR is a consortium of 105 member universities granting
degrees in atmospheric and related earth sciences. UCAR's
primary activity is managing the National Center for
Atmospheric Research, or NCAR, and UCAR's Community Programs on
behalf of the National Science Foundation.
NCAR is a federally funded research and development center
with over 500 scientists and engineers conducting weather and
atmospheric research, plus staff that manages supercomputers,
research aircraft, and instruments to observe the atmosphere.
Staff at NCAR and our member universities conduct research that
leads to more accurate, timely, and useful weather forecasts,
forecasts that our government, the private sector, and the
public rely on.
As noted by the Chairman, data from multiple sources are
essential if we are to maintain an up-to-date information
system that will enable us to predict the weather and other
environmental changes accurately. This is particularly
important when we are dealing with costly weather events like
tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, snowstorms, or extended periods
of drought. The essential data come from a variety of sources,
including the federal government, our universities,
international partners, the transportation industries, and
commercially owned and operated sources.
And today's sources for data and observations are really
only the beginning. The technology in our vehicles and cell
phones holds tremendous potential for crowdsourcing a wealth of
local data. In my written testimony I give examples of how this
is already in use.
With increasing amounts of open access to data, the power
to process it, we have the capability to dramatically increase
the accuracy of forecasts and expand the warning time for
severe storms. NOAA and the private sector are investing in
critical data acquisition. NOAA has begun dramatically
increasing public access to these data, which will further
expand scientific advancement and empower the ingenuity of the
private sector to develop new economic opportunities.
The value of big data was demonstrated very clearly during
Hurricane Sandy. Three days out, forecasters predicted to
within 10 miles where landfall would occur. Twenty years ago,
forecasters might not have been able to predict that unusual
left hook that the storm took into the New Jersey coast. We
know that thousands of lives were saved by the powerful
combination of access to vast amounts of data, sophisticated
software, and the computing power to run it, and a trained
workforce to skillfully analyze it. And we know it's that same
combination that will advance science and drive innovation
going forward.
In closing, let me suggest three overarching principles for
this Subcommittee to consider as it works through public policy
for commercial weather data. First, atmospheric data must be of
high quality, consistently generated, and remain in the public
domain to meet the societal goals of resilience and the
protection of lives and livelihood. The accelerated innovation
and technical advances that the private sector can provide
further serves this public interest.
Second, public access to data is essential for science to
advance. Data openly available to the scientific community
provide opportunities for widespread review and analysis that
in turn drive innovative science and economic opportunities.
Third, we must ensure the benefits we receive through the
reciprocal sharing of data and the insights with our
international colleagues in Europe and elsewhere. This
information is truly vital to the nation's public and private
forecasters.
Over the last two decades, our collective ability to
capture vital data and then process, interpret, and share it
has transformed our understanding of the natural world and
opened new economic horizons. To improve forecasts, protect the
public, and advance the economy, we need to continue to make
data available for public and private scientific research.
I appreciate very much the opportunity to participate in
this hearing and would be glad to answer any questions. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Bogdan follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Bridenstine. Thank you, Dr. Bogdan.
I'd like to thank all the witnesses for their testimonies.
Members are reminded that committee rules limit questioning
to five minutes.
I'd like to now recognize myself for five minutes of
questions.
I'd like to start with Dr. Pace. As I read your testimony,
one thing stuck out to me and there was a sentence, a paragraph
in here that says, ``while at Commerce, we had debates over
whether NOAA should explore the purchase of wind profile
information and perhaps be an 'anchor tenant' for newly
emerging firms. We did not pursue this course as NOAA's limited
budget was already committed to existing programs with well-
known requirements. Funds were not available for experiments,
even ones''--this is the important point--``even ones that
offered long-term cost savings.''
So we had a testimony--Ms. Robinson mentioned it--we had a
testimony a few months ago and my question was could we take a
portion of what we are appropriating to NOAA and maybe fence it
off for commercial data buys? And of course they were committed
to existing programs of records. They were committed to, you
know, not shifting any money to the commercial data buys. In
your professional judgment, is there a time--you were dealing
with this, it looks like, back in 1990 to 1993. The same issue
back then is the same issue that we heard testimony on this
committee regarding just a few months ago.
Is it your assessment that, number one, should we attempt
to fence off some money for commercial data buys? And I guess
number two on a larger scale, when we provide information for
free to the world through WMO 40, is that a blanket kind of
policy or should that be taken on a case-by-case basis? And
I'll turn it over to you to answer those questions.
Dr. Pace. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Yes. I mean the--to be fair to NOAA, we were looking at a
new entrepreneurial venture that did not have a long track
record, had some very promising technical characteristics that
we thought could be an experiment. NOAA, also rightly, saw its
top priority as doing its existing mission and not necessarily
in promoting the private sector industry. It saw its primary
mission as, you know, doing the Nation's weather.
The argument really turned over what degree of risk the
agency should take over what time horizon. From a near-term
perspective, I think they were correct in saying, hey, we want
every dollar to go toward our existing program of record. Our
perspective, being in a bit of a different position, was that
they needed to diversify their portfolio a bit and spend a
small amount of money on longer-term or innovative experiments
like this to give themselves options in the future. You know,
there's an old saying that the urgent drives out the important.
And their urgent issues there with weather satellite program I
think really didn't give them, they thought, flexibility to do
longer-term experiments.
Now, whether that particular experiment would have worked
out or not I'm not really prepared to judge. But from a policy
matter I thought they should have a more diverse portfolio even
while the bulk of their efforts went into executing programs of
record.
Chairman Bridenstine. Knowing what you know now about kind
of how this industry has now developed, going back to 1993,
would you have suggested fencing off a portion of those funds
for maybe commercial data buys?
Dr. Pace. I don't know that I would have taken money away
from an existing program but I would try to have maybe worked
with the White House and Congress to put together an
experimental fund----
Chairman Bridenstine. Got it.
Dr. Pace. --to say this is something that's not part of
NOAA's primary mission because it's really part of commerce
looking to promote innovation and that NOAA would be really the
technical expert to define requirements and what the agency--
and what would benefit the government, so being stewards of the
public interest. But I would take it from a--maybe a larger
perspective of promoting innovation more generally rather than
just the NOAA mission.
Chairman Bridenstine. And according to your testimony here,
potential long-term cost savings.
Dr. Pace. Right. Well, an example of that is we had
arguments over Landsat.
Chairman Bridenstine. Sure.
Dr. Pace. And one of the issues in dealing with Landsat was
incorporating new and advanced technologies. And part of our
argument at the time was that we should have adopted some new
technologies which are now showing up of course in small
satellites to lower the cost of ownership of Landsat over the
longer term. But again, a judgment was made that holding down
near-term risk was more important than longer-term risks of
cost growth. So again, that's an issue at NASA we also dealt
with. It's a very, very common one.
Chairman Bridenstine. Okay. I'm going to turn it over here
in one second, but Dr. Bogdan, just real quick, you manage
UCAR, which of course oversees and manages the COSMIC program,
the partnership with Taiwan for GPS radio occultation. In order
to do that mission, I would imagine NOAA had to produce
standards and specifications for the data that is provided to
feed the data assimilation systems in the numerical weather
models.
My question for you is real simple. How difficult is it to
make those specifications available to the public if they are
providing it to you already?
Dr. Bogdan. I don't see any difficulty from our perspective
in making that information available.
Chairman Bridenstine. Okay. Well, my five minutes is
expired and I'll turn it over to the Ranking Member, Ms.
Bonamici, for five minutes.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
And I agree; this is a very impressive panel and I want to
thank you, Mr. Chairman, and the staff on both sides of the
aisle for working together to bring really the true experts. So
thank you for being here.
Dr. Gail, welcome back to the committee. Thank you for all
your assistance with the Weather Forecasting Innovation bill.
So, Dr. Gail and Dr. Bogdan, you both highlight in your
testimonies the importance of maintaining free and open access
to weather data and you talk about the benefits it provides to
our economy and scientific advancement. And the current weather
industry really stands as an example, I think, to the value of
this policy.
So I'd like both of you to talk about how might a change,
if there's more restrictive policy, how would that affect
scientific and economic opportunities? What are the
international implications if the United States is no longer
able to freely share weather data without restriction? And what
would be the effect on the industry? Because numerous
commercial products and services have been developed as a
result of NOAA data, how would this affect the industry if the
weather data was not available freely and openly? So both of
you could address that and then I have another question as
well.
Dr. Gail. Yes, thank you. I think the future is one of a
mixed answer where we do want to maintain the goal of free and
open data to the extent possible because that foundational data
does really enable broad innovation throughout the private
sector and throughout the industry as a whole, including the
academic and government sectors. I believe it's different
elsewhere in the world. I think we're a shining example because
of that we have a very robust industry as a result.
This is not an all-or-nothing situation, and so one of the
issues right now looking to the future is that we may lack data
that we could otherwise use if we are completely constrained to
a free and open policy. So we have to look--I believe the
overarching goal is the public welfare here. So how do we best
serve the public? And in the end it may be some aspect of a
mixed policy.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you. Dr. Bogdan?
Dr. Bogdan. When your data isn't out there and available,
people can't look at it. One of the most amazing aspects of
crowdsourcing today is with free and open data, anyone on the
planet can look at that data and tell you how good it is, how
bad it is, where it has blemishes, and what else it can be used
for. And so I think we benefit so much from everyone being able
to look at it.
On the second point, the atmospheric sciences community has
a long history of sharing data because weather really respects
no political boundaries. And so sharing data with our
international partners openly and freely has been a cornerstone
of how we have worked together across borders to protect the
lives and livelihood. If we do not share our data openly, then
there is always the option that our international friends and
partners may choose not to share their data openly with us.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you. And I know we look forward to
working with all of you to get that balance right. Sometimes
the technology changes faster than the policy.
So weather is, as we discussed, a global phenomenon, and
while interconnected, affects everyone differently. And I'm
really excited about the potential that you, Dr. Gail, talked
about to more personalized forecasts. My constituents in Oregon
might be interested in knowing the wave heights from marine
weather forecasts that serve our commercial fishers and the
good people in Oklahoma might be equally interested in soil
moisture readings for their local farmers.
So I know the private sector has demonstrated an ability to
react to these niche weather markets by taking NOAA data and
adding value to it for the benefit of specific end-users. And
during the consideration of H.R. 1561, I did offer an amendment
to advance NOAA's partnerships in this space. I look forward to
continuing to work on that.
Dr. Gail, how has NOAA contributed to sector-specific
forecasts and how can they improve their support of private
industries that provide these focused forecasts and products?
Dr. Gail. Yeah, one of the interesting trends that we are
facing is the sectorization of the forecast. So as I mentioned
in my testimony, we're moving from a--sort of a one-size-fits-
all forecast to a forecast for each particular sector and
multiple forecasts within a particular sector. NOAA provides
the foundational data for all of that. The private sector is
really best at doing that customization, that sector-specific
activity because it requires knowing each end-user's needs
quite well rather than a broad set of users.
So it is in the end, I believe, a really tremendous
partnership of foundational data, foundational services being
provided by NOAA and then this sector-based customization that
is provided by value-added providers, private sector and other
organizations as well.
Ms. Bonamici. Terrific, thank you. And I have another
question, which I'll submit for the record because my time is
expired. I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Bridenstine. And we might be able to do additional
questions, maybe a second round as well.
Regarding this balance that I think we're all trying to
strike here, I'd like to--Dr. Gail, you brought up I think an
important point about the two trains. You have a government
train and a commercial train and they're both going the same
direction but maybe one's going faster than the other. If the
government train required the commercial train to give all of
its rides away for free, would the commercial train even exist?
That's the question. And I think that's the balance that we
have to strike. If we're trying to serve the global public
good, we've got to have a market, and if we destroy that market
before it even created, then that global public good would not
exist.
I'd like to recognize my friend from Alabama, Mr. Palmer,
for five minutes.
Mr. Palmer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to the
witnesses.
Dr. Bogdan, in your testimony you say that atmospheric data
must be high-quality, consistently generated, and remain in the
public domain to meet societal goals of resilience and the
protection of lives and livelihood. Let me ask you, what is
currently being done to ensure that the data used to make
reductions is high quality and how can we improve this area
going forward?
Dr. Bogdan. There's a considerable amount of validation and
verification that takes place with data at various levels. That
starts, for instance, with NOAA, the data to come in from their
satellites. It also starts with data that comes in from private
sources as well. The careful screening of that data allows us
to understand how it can be used and where it can be used. With
crowdsourcing data, we have the ability to use many data points
in a given area to understand the validity of certain data
pieces that are there.
Mr. Palmer. What if the data that the private company
collects is a higher quality--better than the government data?
Is there any issue there?
Dr. Bogdan. The academic world loves to work with data of
all varieties and we like to work with high-quality data. And
we really don't have a strong opinion as to where the data
comes from. But the fact that our students, our post docs, our
grad students can access those data and use them to understand
more about the systems and in fact even help the individuals
that have generated those data to understand their quality I
think is a plus for everyone.
Mr. Palmer. Just--and a general observation from your
experience, have you found commercial data to be equal in
quality to the government data or in many cases superior to
that data?
Dr. Bogdan. I personally don't have experience of that.
Mr. Palmer. Do you have any knowledge----
Dr. Bogdan. No, I don't.
Mr. Palmer. --that relates to that? All right.
You also said that public access to data is essential for
science to advance data openly available to the scientific
community provide opportunities for widespread review and
analysis that drive innovative science and economic
opportunities. Are there ways to provide access to atmospheric
data while also fostering a commercial weather industry?
Dr. Bogdan. I believe there is, absolutely.
Mr. Palmer. Do you--are there ways to ensure that it's
widely disseminated while also ensuring that the commercial
entities have an economic incentive to collect it?
Dr. Bogdan. I think there are many ways to do that and
that's why when this Subcommittee and others think about what
the right policies are, it's important to have the public, the
private, and the academic sectors at the table so that each
side can bring forward their issues and their impacts. I think
we can find many creative ways to create a business around the
collection of data and also have that crowdsourced and used by
universities as well.
Mr. Palmer. One last question for you, and that's in the
context of that answer in collaborations with international
partners. Could you elaborate just briefly on those
partnerships?
Dr. Bogdan. Through the World Meteorological Organization
of which Laura Furgione is the permanent representative from
the United States, there have been policies for many years
about exchange of data between various met agencies. We rely on
incredible data from EUMETSAT in Europe for our weather
forecasting capabilities in the same way that they rely on our
GOES data and our NPOESS data. So we have been exchanging these
data all the way down to ground-based data as well that come in
from various Mesonet networks.
Mr. Palmer. Ms. Robinson, the Hosted Payload Alliance has
numerous contracts and it's involved in other federal agencies.
How many contracts do your companies hold with NOAA?
Ms. Robinson. Zero.
Mr. Palmer. Zero. Is there a hesitation from NOAA on using
the services of hosted payloads?
Ms. Robinson. In fact, they recently highlighted--NOAA
highlighted hosted payloads as a key ingredient in their future
space architecture program so we're quite encouraged to see
that. And certainly as the Hosted Payload Alliance endeavor to
furthering engage NOAA and help them to realize the benefits
that commercially hosted government payloads can bring to the
agency.
Mr. Palmer. So you see it as a possibility to leverage the
commercial space sector's responsiveness and efficiencies while
still ensuring that the government's weather sectors needs for
mission reliability and operational utility are met?
Ms. Robinson. Yes indeed, and actually there are vehicles
in place that NOAA has expressed interest in, including the
U.S. Air Force, HoPS Hosted Payload Solutions contracting
vehicle. So it is our sense from the Hosted Payload Alliance
that they are indeed--NOAA is indeed pursuing ways to further
leverage hosted payloads as a means of accessing space.
Mr. Palmer. My time is expired. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Bridenstine. The gentleman yields back.
I'd like to recognize the gentleman from California, Mr.
Takano, for five minutes.
Mr. Takano. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Gail, you mentioned, you know, the idea that if we
are--that we might be limited in our opportunities if we are
constrained to a free and open data policy. Can you elaborate
on that a little more?
Dr. Gail. Yeah. And again, the principle of free and open
data is really a sound one, but increasingly, there are data
sets that are associated with weather, maybe directly or
indirectly such as pressure sensors on mobile phones, that may
or may not be freely available to the government to use for
weather prediction purposes. And without getting too specific
about which ones are free and which ones are not free, at some
level it would be a shame to not have access to all of that
data to help improve our forecast capability. So I can
certainly anticipate data sets that might not be free. So how
do you make use of those subject to the general goal of free
and open data whenever possible?
And so there are nuances here in this discussion that I
think are going to be challenging to resolve; there's no
question about it. But the goal is to have access to all of the
data possible to improve weather forecasts.
Mr. Takano. But let's examine that--this line of thinking a
little more. Let's just hypothetically talk about--I mean this
is a--sort of a crowdsourced bit of information, right? We have
data--pressure data that comes from millions of cell phones.
How is that--is that a--in your mind a completely privately
sourced information? Obviously, the millions of users are all
part of the public but would that be possible without sort of
the public airwaves or--I mean it's probably a privately owned
spectrum but I mean do they--does the company--the cell phone
company own that spectrum absolutely? Is it on lease from the
government?
I mean I don't--I'm not an expert on this on this sort of
law but I'm just saying that there's--there seems to be a lot
of public assets involved in that and might not the public sort
of claim, well, that sort of information really is in the
commons? How can the cell phone company or communications
company assert that they have sort of the right to some sort of
profit off of it?
I mean they make money off of--there's a certain--they
certainly make a lot of money off of the service they're
providing but why couldn't we sort of say that this sort of
crowdsourced information is in--for the benefit of the public
and even globally, humanity, that we could set that global
principle internationally that certain functions of millions of
these cell phones, whether it's in Zimbabwe or Arkansas or
wherever, that ought to be in the commons.
And I mean it shouldn't be that much of a--I mean how
expensive would that be to, you know--I mean I could see them
saying, well, this is more government regulation; you're asking
us to provide pressure information for free. But another
perspective is that, well, you're using the airwaves, I mean,
there's only a limited amount of spectrum, you're in a sense
leasing and renting this on a long-term basis, and this is for
the public benefit. Do you have a response to that?
Dr. Gail. And I'm certainly no expert on intellectual
property in that particular arena.
Perhaps a better example--because I understand the point
you're making. Perhaps a better example is the data that comes
off of vehicles, off of commercial vehicles and consumer
automobiles that comes out of some fairly sophisticated systems
inside the vehicles often controlled by the manufacturer or by
other parties related to that. And I think when you get into
data like that, you're going to find that particular argument
about being a public good maybe a little more difficult to
make.
Mr. Takano. Okay. Well, I just--I wanted to kind of--I
don't have a--this is a new area of inquiry for me and I--but I
think we need to ask these questions. I mean I would have
questions--that very specific example you're giving, you know,
it involves public highways and certain--you know, there's a
certain interplay of how public investment has made that
information relevant but I can also see that there's been
private investment in that software development and the
particular devices. It's a very interesting, you know, area of
inquiry for us to make the proper and fair public policy.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Bridenstine. I'd like to thank the gentleman from
California.
I'd like to recognize that the--the Ranking Member of the
Full Science Committee, Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson, is here from
Texas, and I'll recognize you in five minutes after our--we'll
go to our side and then back to your side and you will be next
in order.
I'd like to recognize the Vice Chairman of the Subcommittee
on the Environment, Mr. Westerman from Arkansas.
Mr. Westerman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you,
panel, for being here to discuss public safety, a very
important topic.
Last week, a series of devastating tornadoes ripped through
my Congressional District in southwest Arkansas. It resulted in
the loss of two young parents' lives as they were shielding
their 18-month-old daughter during the storm. I toured that
disaster zone and was struck by just how dependent we are on
these early warning systems. I know from talking to several of
the residents there, there was one cell that passed over. Most
people took cover and then the sirens went off again. And from
looking at the devastation, you know, we were fortunate to not
have more loss of life with the property damage.
But in your testimony you say that a fundamental element
associated with our ability to reduce the impacts of these
extreme weather events is the availability and use of reliable
accurate weather. And you then say that in order for our nation
to regain its preeminence in weather assessments and
forecasting it is going to require well-defined and concerted
efforts from the entire weather enterprise, in other words,
public, private, and academic sectors, a topic we've all been
talking about.
So my question to the entire panel is how can Congress
better facilitate these efforts for these multiple agencies and
enterprises to work cohesively together?
Dr. Pace, if you want to start on that one.
Dr. Pace. Thank you. It's a very important topic and I
think one of the items that I brought up in a couple different
settings is the foundational importance of the spectrum that
both public and private systems depend on. I was struck
recently by a briefing by the Aerospace Corporation, which was
looking at the Emergency Managers Weather Information Network.
There is--above that band are wireless communication standards
for long-term evolution, LTE, that we all know and enjoy. It's
a critical--but the Emergency Managers Weather Information
Network is a critical NOAA broadcast that's relied upon by
thousands of first responders nationwide for critical and
severe weather warnings and it also triggers local tornado
warnings, as you experienced. And one of the risks or concerns
that I think folks in NOAA and the public safety side have is
that very powerful LTE emissions next door pose a risk to the
reliability and safety of the bands that NOAA uses.
There are other risks in the same general area. There are
systems that use river and stream-gauge data to create flood
warnings downstream that are--have a very critical public
safety function. And so one of the things we try to bring up is
that in the President's June 2010 Broadband Initiative Memo, he
said specifically that any changes in spectrum need to take
into account that we ensure no loss of critical existing
planned federal, state, local, and tribal government
capabilities.
And so as we're focusing on this commercial remote sensing
issue, which I think is vitally important, foundationally we
also need to look to make sure that the public safety spectrum
that we rely on today is protected because if we don't, we will
have disasters.
Mr. Westerman. All right. Would anybody else like to
briefly address that?
Ms. Robinson. I would if I could, sir.
In terms of the hosted payload community and what Congress
might be able to do to help further facilitate leveraging
commercial industry in order to get access to space more
rapidly and more cost efficiently, I would suggest that H.R.
1561 is certainly a step in that right direction, specifically
the endorsement of hosted payloads in the section that refers
to specifically to placement of weather satellite instruments
on co-hosted government or private payloads. It speaks to a
broader initiative that would be of greater benefit across
departments and agencies to make the use of commercially hosted
government payloads a more regular means of accessing space and
seeing this means of accessing space as part of the broader
architecture and planning for it accordingly, budgeting for it
accordingly as well rather than just a one-off mission,
planning for it in advance, programming for it, and making it
part of that future architecture.
Mr. Westerman. Yes, sir.
Dr. Bogdan. Just a quick comment, sir. The Office of the
Federal Coordinator for Meteorology has been around for a
number of years to try to coordinate activities in the federal
sector. What we really need is a venue to bring together the
public, private, and academic sectors who are very eager and
willing to work together to leverage their unique capabilities
to help us with extending lead times for forecasts.
Mr. Westerman. Okay. I think I'm--yield back, Mr. Chair.
I'll maybe have some questions later if possible.
Chairman Bridenstine. You bet. The gentleman yields back.
The gentlewoman from Texas, Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson, is
recognized for five minutes.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I apologize for being late. I had a markup in another
Committee. And I'd like unanimous consent just to put my
remarks in the record.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson follows:]
Prepared Statement of Full Committee
Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to extend a warm welcome and
thank you to our witnesses for being here today to discuss the
potential for increased use of commercial weather data by NOAA.
As many of you know, this Committee has long been invested in the
successful development and maintenance of NOAA's observing
capabilities. This data, especially, the satellite data, is critical to
NOAA's mission to protect lives and property through accurate and
timely weather forecasts and warnings.
While NOAA seems to have its satellite programs back on track, a
history of mismanagement and cost overruns have caused many to question
the future of the nation's observing capabilities and the possibility
of increasing our reliance on the private sector to meet NOAA's space-
based data needs.
This is an appropriate discussion to have and I am pleased that we
will be examining that topic more closely today. That being said, I
have a number of questions and concerns about how such an arrangement
might work.
In particular, NOAA currently treats its data as a public good,
sharing it freely with academia, the private sector, and our
international partners. Any restrictions on the use and long-term
availability of this critical data could have a number of unintended
consequences such as stifling innovation not only in the development of
our weather and climate models, but in the advancement of research and
technology more broadly. This Committee has heard over and over again
how data collected for one purpose has resulted in an unforeseen
breakthrough in another area. Advancing the use of commercial weather
data cannot come at the expense of advancing research.
Additionally, I remain concerned about how the increased reliance
on commercial entities may impact our international obligations and
partnerships. Observing the Earth and its changes is a truly global
enterprise and we all benefit from deep and long-lasting international
engagement and data sharing. Anything with the potential to harm such
arrangements must be dealt with from the beginning.
And finally, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to reiterate a comment
expressed by my colleague, Ms. Bonamici, about the importance of
hearing directly from NOAA regarding their plans to strengthen public-
private partnerships in this area and the challenges associated with
expanding those efforts. I hope will have the opportunity to hear from
NOAA in at a future hearing.
Thank you and I yield back the balance of my time.
Ms. Johnson. I know that NOAA currently treats its data as
a public good sharing it freely with academia, the private
sector, and our international partners. Any restrictions on the
use of the long-term availability of this critical data could
be a number of unintended consequences such as stifling
innovation not only in the development of our weather and
climate models but in the advancement of research and
technology more broadly.
The Committee has heard over and over again how data
collected for one purpose has resulted in an unforeseen
breakthrough in another area, so advancing the use of
commercial weather data cannot come at the expense of advancing
research.
With that, I'd like to ask, do we believe that the
Department of Defense provides the best model for NOAA to
follow or is there a more appropriate analogy for NOAA's data
needs?
I guess I'll direct that to Dr. Gail and then whomever
else.
Dr. Gail. It's been many years since I've actually worked
with the Department of Defense so I don't feel like I can
really address that. They may; I just don't know.
Ms. Johnson. Anyone else? Yes.
Dr. Pace. Thank you. I think that's an excellent question
because there's experience that the Defense Department has had
with the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. One of the
things that happened when we created back when I was in
Commerce with the Commercial Remote Sensing reforms is that DOD
was a very big purchaser of privately produced data and there
was both a private market for that data and there was a
government market for that data. And NGA is a great purchaser
of it.
It in no way replaces or gets rid of the need for
government-owned defense systems. It is absolutely a
supplement, a compliment, I think that in fact commercial data
is easier for NGA to share with our friends and allies. So
they're coming at it from the other direction.
In the case of NOAA, they share their government data
widely and freely but they probably need to shift their
portfolio a bit to allow for commercial data that is not
treated the same as foundational science data. NGA has come at
it from the other direction being a big purchaser and they've,
I think, benefited from innovation by the private sector while
still serving national security functions. So I think a
conversation between NOAA and NGA might be helpful.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much.
In the 2001 National Academies' report titled ``Resolving
Conflicts Arising from the Privatization of Environmental
Data,'' the Academies recommended that avoiding market
conditions that give anyone firm significant monopoly power is
a critical consideration when transferring government data
collection to the private sector. Can you please comment on the
recommendations and ways to ensure competition and development
of commercial satellite data?
Either one. Okay.
Dr. Pace. I think one of the things that probably NOAA and
really any agency contemplated that needs to do is they're
looking at making what in the private sector you call a make-
or-buy decision. Is it better to make their own data with their
own system or should they buy that data from others? And in
doing so, they have to decide what risks they want to allocate
between, you know, who the provider is and what they expect to
happen if that provider fails to perform as expected and what
fallback options exist.
Most critically, no one needs to gain and retain, I think,
in-house expertise to ensure it can do due diligence and
oversight of public funds when it goes out and purchases from
the private sector. Again, when I was at NASA and we looked at
doing commercial cargo and buying that, we were thinking about,
yes, this may work, this may save money, we think this is a
good idea, but we have fallback options. If that's delayed or
doesn't work, what do we do next?
And so I think that part of the way you avoid getting
captured into a monopoly situation is you always think about
what's your fallback option, what rights do you have if the
company falters while at the same time wanting to take
advantage of the innovation and efficiencies that the private
sector can bring.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you. Anyone else?
Dr. Gail. Sure. I'll add to that because I think you've
touched on a very important point here, which is the
distinction between a commercial data market where that data
exists independent of whether NOAA is a buyer or not or a
relatively captive market, either a project to specifically
specify the kind of data that is to be procured. And those two
are very different scenarios that have to be addressed
separately.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much. My time is expired.
Chairman Bridenstine. The gentlewoman yields back.
The gentleman from California, Mr. Bera, is recognized for
five minutes.
Mr. Bera. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to the
Ranking Member for this hearing.
Yeah, when I think about my region, which is northern
California and the Sacramento region, available commercial
weather data is incredibly important to us. Obviously, we're in
the midst of a catastrophic drought right now, but, you know,
when I talk to our climate scientists and so forth, with
climate change many of them actually predict that we will have
wetter winters but we'll have tropical rivers coming through
that, you know, instead of getting the snowpack that we
historically have had, precipitation will come down as rain.
And as--you know, in our region we've got this dual risk of
mitigating very real flood risks and we've had devastating
floods in the region but then also the drought that were living
through right now. And having that commercial data is
incredibly important to us to managing how we capture that
water, store that water, and when we do releases or when we
choose to hold onto additional water.
I am in general principle someone who believes with
scientific data, the more open that data is, the better off you
are. The more folks that can analyze that data, the better off
you are. And also, I'm a firm believer in the public-private
partnership, the fact that there are certain things that the
federal government really has to do in terms of some of the
advancements in some of the funding of research. But there are
clearly things that, you know, the private sector, academia,
and others can do as well in terms of the innovation.
So Dr. Brogan--or Bogdan, you touched on one area is, you
know, what would an organization look like that's better
navigated not just the federal side but then also the access to
data and, you know, between the private sector, the public
sector, and academia?
Dr. Bogdan. I think you make a really important point about
drought and the fact that our weather forecasts now need to
begin looking out to seasonal, to interannual timescales. And
this is an area in particular where I believe the private-
public partnership belong with academia is going to yield
tremendous advances. The ocean is the planet's memory on these
timescales and so the atmospheric sciences community has really
reached out and embraced the ocean community and we're working
together to try to understand how we can take various sorts of
data to give better, resilient forecasts so that city planners,
water managers can understand what is likely to be coming down
the line.
We need a place where I think groups can get together and
know that the decisions they make will be important and will
have impacts. And that clearly is where time is spent when
outcomes can be guaranteed from those things. And here is a
place again where I really see the importance of all sources of
data, stream gauges, reservoir levels. The data we're going to
need to solve the sort of problems that you're seeing in
northern California will not be just the traditional sources.
Mr. Bera. And it is my hope that as you're collecting all
that data from multiple sources, from individual cell phones,
et cetera, that it is going into a big data set that again from
my perspective you would hope that would be kind of an open
source, that commercial entities might go in there, look at the
data, evaluate that data, come out with predictions, et cetera,
which I think it's perfectly fine then to sell that analytics
to NOAA. But once NOAA purchases it, it is, you know, my sense
that I would--as a federal entity, that you would hope that
that data then is available to farmers and others, that if
there is information that is coming out that is of public
benefit and public good, you would want to make that available
to the public.
I don't know, Dr. Gail, if you'd want to comment, or Dr.
Pace.
Dr. Gail. This is a great discussion. I do not see an
inherent conflict between the principles of free and open data
and commercial data sources. I think there are lots of
individual issues that need to be worked out and challenges,
but they're not inherently in conflict.
Mr. Bera. Right.
Dr. Pace, if you want to----
Dr. Pace. Yeah, I think it matters kind of where you are on
a case-by-case basis of where you are in the value chain. I
mean the raw data that may be of great interest to scientists
who want the raw data to be able to trace it back and
understand it, that's not necessarily what the customer wants.
That's not necessarily what the person watching the evening
news wants. They want information, not data.
And so part of the role can be to have open data widely
available. Really the commercial is in the value-added, doing
something more with it.
And in that regard I know sometimes--Mr. Chairman made a
question that I didn't answer regarding the World
Meteorological Organization. There's a thing called Resolution
40, which talks about free and open exchange of data. But in
that it's very, very specific to certain kinds of data. There
is no mention of crowdsourced data, you know, in WMO Resolution
40. There are certainly principles in there and there is
certainly encouragement for sharing data, as you might imagine
the meteorological and science community doing.
But as innovation has come along, I think we'll have to
look at these international commitments, make sure we're
meeting those international commitments absolutely because we
want other countries to meet them. But at the same time to
think about tailoring our own data policies to encourage that
private innovation and get this kind of mixture that we want,
and I think particularly in the value-added end is where the
most promise lies.
Mr. Bera. Right. And I see my time is expired.
Chairman Bridenstine. The gentleman yields back.
I'd like to now recognize the gentleman from Colorado, Mr.
Perlmutter, for the next five minutes.
Mr. Perlmutter. Thanks, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
allowing me to participate in today's hearing. This is very
interesting. I want to thank the panel for being here. I want
to welcome my friends from Colorado for being here as well.
So stepping back for a second to us as policymakers up
here, I mean I've got to look at what our foundational for me
and the decisions that I make. So protecting lives, preserving
property, I think advancing science especially on this
committee, doing all of that, using tax revenues in the most
efficient and focused way possible, and then listening to the
testimony, your all testimony, there's really three pieces.
It's capturing data, analyzing data, and disseminating data. So
whether it's information, as you said, Dr. Pace, you know, to
me, turning on the weather and trying to figure out is it going
to be raining in Colorado, which it's been raining for 3 weeks
straight and then we expect another 10 days, which is, you
know, really unusual for us. But that's how I, you know, have
to plan my day.
So what I want to see, and I'd open it up to the panel--and
I'd start with you, Mr. Sternberg, since you haven't had much
of an opportunity to answer things--I don't think there's
anybody on the dais up here on our committee that really
objects to a partnership among academia, the private sector,
and the public sector to get to those three foundational things
for us, protecting lives, preserving property, advancing
science. How do you see this all playing out?
Mr. Sternberg. Well, Congressman, thank you for recognizing
me here.
It's an excellent question, and I think some of the topics
that have already been discussed are highly relevant. The
separation in my mind is exactly what you described, the
generation of data and the generation of information, and who
is responsible for those segments of the enterprise. So, for
instance, in the context of what I'm familiar with with the
lightning provision, my organization generates that data and
sends that to the federal government for use.
Mr. Perlmutter. You capture it----
Mr. Sternberg. We--
Mr. Perlmutter. --and then----
Mr. Sternberg. Right.
Mr. Perlmutter. --analyze it and send it to the federal
government?
Mr. Sternberg. Absolutely. So we capitalize the assets that
are the sensors and all of the equipment that is required,
maintain that system, and evolve it over time to create a
competitive data set. And it's competitive in the sense that it
serves commercial markets, as well as the needs of the federal
government. And so the distinction there is that I think the
committee needs to understand that if there's--the section of
delivering services to the community at large is what has built
the weather enterprise. This $3 billion enterprise effectively
has taken publicly available data and added value, as Dr. Pace
had said, and providing that in the form of a myriad of
services from deicing to cell phones for soccer fields and so
on and so forth.
Mr. Perlmutter. Thank you. Ms. Robinson, so it seems to me
just from your testimony you all are more in capturing data. Is
that--am I mistaken?
Ms. Robinson. Well, I think in terms of hosted payloads,
when you talk about those three foundational pillars,
protecting lives, protecting property, and advancing
technology, that third pillar really helps to accomplish the
first two. So leveraging commercial satellites and that
frequent access to space, as I've mentioned, we have on the
order of 20 commercial satellite launches every year. So
leveraging the space and capability on those commercial
satellites to host an instrument, a weather instrument, other
types of technologies that can promote that advancement, the
technological advancement ultimately does save time, money, and
lives.
Mr. Perlmutter. Okay. Thank you. So, Dr. Bogdan, I had a
chance to meet with one of your colleagues, Mr. Rader. I think
that's how--I said that right, didn't I? And as I understood
the way he explained it, so we have NPOESS and JPSS and GOES
satellites that accumulate a lot of data that then we make open
to universities, to UCAR, and we're very happy to have NCAR in
our State of Colorado. We're very proud of that laboratory.
That big mass of data then is made available to the private
sector and to academia, is it not?
Dr. Bogdan. That is correct.
Mr. Perlmutter. And then private sector puts its secret
sauce, its super algorithm--I don't know what it might be--to
come up with these niche things. Is the question whether the
federal government should have to pay to buy that back? Is that
one of the questions we're grappling with?
Dr. Bogdan. I think in some sense it is a question that we
are grappling with here and the value-added component is
something that I think we do look to the private sector to
bring, the specific niche-type products and services.
Our academic community interestingly plays in all three of
those areas you mentioned. They acquire data. Our universities
are located within communities and they work within those
communities to gather data. They analyze those data in Ph.D.
theses and then they also disseminate it. There are many of my
universities that actually sell products and services to local
organizations. So they sit in all parts of that.
Trying to understand what is in the public good, and I
think that has come up here many times, and separating it from
what is in some sense a high-level, elite if you want niche-
type product is something where we have to really look
carefully on a case-by-case basis and decide what that is.
Mr. Perlmutter. Thank you, and I yield back, Mr. Chair.
Chairman Bridenstine. The gentleman yields back.
And without objection, I would just like to follow up real
quick with Mr. Sternberg.
You mentioned that you sell data to NOAA. Does your
agreement with NOAA permit them to give that data away to
anyone for free?
Mr. Sternberg. So the arrangement is such that it protects
the economic value of the data in certain commercial profit-
generating sectors in the marketplace.
Chairman Bridenstine. Will you hold that thought for one
second? I want to come back to that but I've got one more
person I need to recognize before.
Mr. Sternberg. Certainly.
Chairman Bridenstine. I'd like to recognize the gentleman
from Illinois, Mr. Foster, for five minutes.
Mr. Foster. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let's--one sort of big picture question I have is that
there are a number of ways that we invest money. You know, you
can invest in additional space-based or ground-based data
collection facilities, supercomputing facilities, university
and lab salaries. And all of--and so this overall optimization
should be subject to a rough return-on-investment analysis to
see if we are spending our money in the right place. You know,
has that ever been done? What are the difficulties that come up
when you attempt such an analysis? Anyone?
Dr. Bogdan. It's something that we've wanted to do in our
community for a long, long time. The difficulty and why we've
not achieved it to date is the many ways in which weather,
climate impact our economy, and they can show up all the way
from routing of aircraft into impacts on trucking into property
values. And so trying to really understand the economic impact
on the one side, which is critical to the return-on-investment
arguments I think have proved hard for us to do because of the
many ways in which we connect. Understanding the impact of a
tornadic outbreak of lives and livelihood, those are statistics
that in some sense are more easy to come by but they're not the
whole story of how weather impacts our economy.
Janet Yellen about a year or so ago, head of the Federal
Reserve, was talking about the sluggish economy we had in the
winter quarter and coining a quote which I like very much that
the weather was a ``headwind on our economy'' during that
period. So it's something we would like to do and have been
talking about trying to do as a community.
In terms of optimizing among the resources that are spent,
the resources spent by the federal government and the private
sector are both large and ways in which to optimize those
require some capacity to get everyone at the table and start to
think about it. The Federal Coordinator for Meteorology is
again that agent within the federal government that looks
across portfolios.
Mr. Foster. So have there ever been--you say there haven't
really been efforts to do this?
Dr. Bogdan. There have not. There have been incomplete
efforts. Looking at certain parts of our economy, impacts, for
instance, of hurricanes, extreme events, NOAA has put together
a lot of wonderful data on what those costs are to the Nation.
But there are more costs that are somewhat larger that are hard
to get a hold of that really pervade day-to-day activities.
Weather outbreaks that cause and traffic to snarl up, what are
the costs in time, productivity, and so on. Those are large.
Mr. Foster. Yeah. Also when you talk about intensifying the
sensor network around the country, first, you know, from a
return-on-investment point of view, put those in established
cities and where there are people there for obvious economic
reasons, which gets into interesting political questions but--
which I will not embellish here.
So is this something where, for example, a National
Academies study or something like that would be appropriate or
do you have the internal facilities to do this and simply
haven't exercised them yet?
Dr. Bogdan. No, I think we lack an organization with the
authority and breadth to do that. The National Academies have
had studies on many activities generally related to research
activities and decadal surveys that come up, but we need to be
looking both in the public, private, and academic sectors here,
and that's something that I think is broader than our National
Academies.
Mr. Foster. Okay. Yeah, well, if you have any specific
suggestions on the way forward because that sounds like a very
high-payoff activity to just optimally deploy. You know, it's
not obvious to me whether we're spending more money on
university salaries to develop better algorithms instead of
faster computers, for example, would be the sort of trade-off
you might encounter.
And let's see. I have 59 seconds here. Let's see. Do you
encounter a lot of difficulties with classified equipment both
in the United States and abroad where you know that there are
these capabilities to, I don't know, for example, measure the
heights of reservoirs, things like that, that--and then don't
really have the ability to publicly make that data available? I
mean is that a common problem that you have?
Dr. Bogdan. Our organization does not do any classified
work. I think it is clear that there is important classified
information out there that can be helpful.
Mr. Foster. Okay. And have there been efforts to try to,
you know, strip off some fraction of the classified equipment's
output that would be useful or do you really have an absolute
wall between those two?
Dr. Bogdan. We maintain that wall.
Mr. Foster. Okay. And other countries as well?
Dr. Bogdan. I do not know.
Mr. Foster. Okay. All right. Because that could be a very
high-payoff activity for the world as a whole because, you
know, often, because of cybersecurity problems, you know, a lot
is known about other countries in our stuff already. We're
not--these aren't really secret capabilities anymore and making
them public could be worthwhile.
Anyway--but thanks so much. I yield back.
Chairman Bridenstine. The gentleman yields back.
Without objection, we'll go into a second round of
questions.
And kind of where I'd like to start is with you, Mr.
Sternberg. You mentioned that in order to have an agreement
with NOAA you actually have to protect the value of the data
you're providing them, and that's embedded in your agreement.
Can you share with us how that works?
Mr. Sternberg. Yes. And maybe in reference to your very
first question to this panel back in the same time frame where
the discussion that Dr. Pace brought up regarding the wind
profiles, 1992 the National Weather Service began adjusting
data from the National Light and Detection Network, so at about
the same time frame there was a recognition that private
sector-generated data was important to the mission of NOAA.
And so the nature of the arrangement is such where, you
know, I'm fascinated with the discussion about open and
available data because I ask the question to whom? It's
certainly the case that--when we distribute data to the federal
government, NOAA and all the other agencies, is widely used
within the confines of the federal government for academic
research and through partnership arrangements that in that
particular case with NOAA, that they've set up so they can
engage and transmit that data for their mission. And so many
ways it is serving a much broader, widely used purpose, which
is in the spirit of these open data sets.
In addition to that, there are academic research
arrangements that are facilitated through a number of channels
within our company in particular to send the data to the
academic institutions for research purposes. Where we draw the
line is that obviously NOAA should not be in the position to
transmit data to companies that are then utilizing the data for
profit because then you sort of have a down-the-chain effect
there. And so NOAA has been I would say very good at
recognizing that they're not in that business.
And so, for instance, one example is in the private--in the
public utility space. The requirements for public utilities
when it comes to mitigating their transmission lines against
lightning is a very unique and boutique market. And as you can
imagine, the lightning information holds a specific commercial
value for that particular area. And so for the general
forecasting purposes, NOAA does an excellent job providing that
lightning information for those applications and those
forecasts. But when we're making decisions or the power utility
business is making decisions on where to run their lines and
how to ground those towers and how to mitigate those strikes
against lightning, that's a very different conversation that I
argue is in the hands of the private sector.
Chairman Bridenstine. Dr. Pace, my understanding is that
when it comes to ground-sensing instruments and even aviation-
sensing instruments, the data that is provided to NOAA from
those instruments is treated differently than data that is
provide from satellites. Are you familiar with this and can you
explain what the difference is?
Dr. Pace. Well, of course I have to demur and say that NOAA
is really the more expert one to answer this. What I would say
is that satellite data is often treated differently because of
its space heritage than ground-based systems, and this is
something we're running into on the commercial licensing and
regulatory side, that as we impose more restrictions because
it's from space than we would impose on the same sensor if it
was on an aircraft or on the ground. So that's a regulatory
distinction which is a problem.
With regard to the World Meteorological Organization, they
do specify that certain kinds of data from aircraft or upper
atmosphere sounding networks and so forth should be in the
public domain but they're very specific about what those things
are. So there is a general principle of sharing, but when it
comes to actual obligations by the United States, it's much
more narrow and specific.
And it allows for flexibility, as Mr. Sternberg has
described, for creative meshing. For example, there was the
commercial remote sensing of ocean temperature, ocean color,
and it turns out that data is very scientifically interesting
but it's commercial value is really in the first few days or a
few weeks where it's of value to, say, a fishing fleet. So
making data that's very near real-time as commercial only, then
after it ages out a little bit, make that available to the
broader scientific community, that's a compromise that I think
worked fairly well. So, again, case-by-case analysis.
Chairman Bridenstine. And last point, you mentioned remote
sensing inside the Department of Defense. Can you share with
us, once we went to commercial data buys within the Department
of Defense and all of a sudden--what happened after that? Did
we get more or less imagery? Were the revisit times more or
less? Was the imagery more useful or less useful? Can you share
your opinion on that?
Dr. Pace. Well, the actual details are probably not
shareable in a public domain, but what I would say is that
there was great interest and enthusiasm and support for buying
commercial remote sensing imagery. And of course it waxes and
wanes depending on what defense obligations are. So, for
example, in the aftermath of the wind-down of combat operations
in CENTCOM, there's been relatively less that's been purchased.
But one of the primary benefits that people had from it was
one, you offloaded other more higher priority national systems
that could go focus on things that only they could do; and two,
you had data that because it was derived from a commercially
licensed system could be more easily shared with our coalition
partners. So it actually facilitated cooperation and data
sharing in ways that government systems had a hard time doing.
So it's kind of the opposite problem of NOAA.
Chairman Bridenstine. So if a government agency were to be
interested in purchasing commercial data, it would free that
agency to focus on things really that the government is better
at doing and allow the commercial industry to focus on things
that commercial industry can do?
Dr. Pace. Right. And that is part of what I mentioned about
sort of a make-or-buy decision. Now, one of the considerations
in that is if the government does something that maybe
discourages data sharing, you know, you could be less well off
so it needs to be--have a very careful analysis. And as my
colleagues here have said, this is where a discussion of--not
only between NOAA and the State Department and NASA are
important, there ought to be industry input to the Department
of Commerce so they can make a more informed judgment about how
to craft a data policy going forward. And so I think the more
we think about that, the better off we'll be.
Chairman Bridenstine. I am past my time.
I'd like to recognize the gentleman from California, Mr.
Takano, for five minutes.
Mr. Takano. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Pace, did I hear you correctly, you--there was--I
wasn't attending fully earlier in the hearing about a
discussion on public safety spectrum and the need to preserve
it. That caught my attention and if you could sort of revisit
that a little more and explain to me your concern about
preserving public safety spectrum and why it's so important.
Dr. Pace. Sure. Well, the primary thing is there is, as is
well known, a--quite a demand for more mobile broadband
spectrum. You know, we all use it, we all have--carry phones
and so forth on it.
Mr. Takano. Enormous commercial, economic pressure.
Dr. Pace. Absolutely, enormous commercial, economic
pressure and for understandable reasons. And some of the areas
of the spectrum where that pressure is most acute are in areas
where we have GPS operating, where we have meteorological aids
operating, where we have remote-sensing systems operating. And
so space signals are very, very weak, and so if you have any
sort of interference, it's fairly easy to do. If you have a
very, very powerful next-door neighbor like a high-powered
communication system, that can affect you.
And so among the systems, there is a recent auction of
spectrum--and apologies for this--1695 to 1710 megahertz--
sorry, I wasn't going to do that. But in that auction some
fairly powerful communication systems are being allowed to go
there, so as we move forward, adjacent systems operating such
as the Emergency Managers Weather Information Network are at
some risk. There's some Aerospace Corporation study that's
public that I can make available if you would like. And the
EMWIN is a NOAA system which provides support to first
responders for critical and severe weather warnings, and some
of the systems even trigger automatic local tornado sirens
directly from the satellite broadcast without human
intervention. Okay. That's very timely. But if there is
interference to that or if the reliability level drops, then
those warnings aren't going to be as effective. So I'm not
saying this is an immediate crisis but this is something that I
think, you know, NOAA and as public safety people we need to
pay attention to.
Other systems in the nearby band deal with radio
transmissions for stream gauges that do flood warnings, so
there's a lot of infrastructure that uses public spectrum for
safety purposes, and that as we're looking at this intense
commercial pressure, we have a public-private sector set of
interests that we have to balance and make sure we get right.
Mr. Takano. Are you aware of shortwave spectrum? I was
having a conversation with someone about shortwave, that
there's new technology to utilize shortwave radio spectrum that
was previously not so useful.
Dr. Pace. At--
Mr. Takano. Are you familiar with this topic at all?
Dr. Pace. No. I can speculate but I don't have direct
knowledge.
Mr. Takano. Okay. So you're talking about a need to guard
what spectrum we have. I'm not familiar completely what the
spectrum was so that once that spectrum is sold off and
auctioned off to private users, it pretty much is gone, is that
right?
Dr. Pace. No, not necessarily. Some of the spectrum is
shared. There are conditions that are placed on the spectrum.
So NOAA, for example, has spectrum managers who watch these
issues. They report up through their chain of command at NOAA.
NOAA is in part of the Department of Commerce. Within the
Department of Commerce is the National Telecom and Information
Agency, which really represent all federal agencies and then
speaks to the FCC. The FCC is an independent commission,
doesn't report to the President, and so there is a dialogue
that occurs between FCC and NTIA. And NTIA's job is to
represent the interests of the federal agencies to craft, you
know, technically balanced solutions that protect those range
of interests. So it's a bit of a complex process but, you know,
NOAA is represented in there. But again, sometimes some of
these smaller details can get overlooked.
Mr. Takano. Real quickly, anybody can jump in, where is any
particular--where we're at risk in the current context of
significant monopoly power sort of interceding into the issues
that we're discussing today? In other words we want to avoid
market conditions that give any firm significant monopoly
power. Where might that monopoly power arise and where should
this committee be especially worried? If there's anybody that
has any thoughts on that.
Go ahead, Dr. Pace.
Dr. Pace. My apologies. People can interrupt me.
I think the chances of monopoly power, absent a government
mandate or regulation creating monopoly power, are really quite
small.
Mr. Takano. Okay.
Dr. Pace. And the reason for that is because space is
increasingly globalized, and if somebody attempted in the
United States to create a monopoly power, I can assure you
there'd be people overseas who would seek to challenge that and
offer something else.
So I think the real trick here is to making sure that we
regulate in a way that promotes our firms, that we protect
foundational spectrum underneath which we all depend, that we
use government power to be a good customer and good purchaser
in the public interest, and that we promote open data sharing
of foundational scientific data to really make sure that the
U.S. interests are advanced. So I don't think the chance of
monopoly power in this area is that great because I think that
really the world is much bigger than just the U.S. domestic
market.
Mr. Takano. Great. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
Chairman Bridenstine. Thank you. And I would like to maybe
second that notion that the monopoly power that's of concern to
me is the current government monopoly of space-based weather
data. The goal here is to create a competitive market that's
not a government monopoly.
I'd like to recognize the Vice Chairman of the committee,
Mr. Westerman from Arkansas.
Mr. Westerman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And Mr. Sternberg, in your opinion, is collaborating with
NOAA an easy process?
Mr. Sternberg. I would say yes, it is. And specifically,
through what is now the Weather-Ready Nation Ambassador
Program, I think that's been an excellent program that NOAA has
recognized that they can't do it all themselves, and through
this ambassador program, it provides the private sector an
opportunity, as well as the community at large and the entire
enterprise somewhat of a seat at the table to openly discuss
the issues that we're talking about today. So I would
compliment them in that particular initiative to do that.
I would also compliment them in the manner in our
experience from the cooperative research and development
programs that they've facilitated, and this is an opportunity
for the private sector to truly partner as opposed to a
contractual arrangement with the scientists within NOAA and
other private sectors in academia to really develop on a long-
term basis certain search programs.
Mr. Westerman. So have they ever changed the terms of your
contract in regards to the openness of data?
Mr. Sternberg. So, you know, typically these contracts are
multiple years in scope that are then appropriated from year to
year. So there's a natural discussion throughout what has now
been about 20 years, if you will, contractual arrangements with
NOAA and other federal agencies. So the topic comes up
obviously in the normal contract cycle, as does the performance
enhancements and the evolution of any observation network.
Mr. Westerman. And shifting gears a little bit, can you
characterize how a commercial model for lighting data has
impacted the price, quality, and rate of innovation in the data
that Vaisala uses or provides?
Mr. Sternberg. Yes. So, you know, part of the--part of my
written statement talks a little bit about how when there's a
viable commercial market for a data set, not only does the
organization that's feeding that data set allow to take those
profits and reinvest those into advancements within the network
to create higher-level data or higher levels of performance.
Over the history of the NLDN, over 30 years, there's just been
some outstanding reinvestments that have gone into the network.
There's both the commercial organizations that are bringing
that data in, as well as the federal government get that
uplift. And that is truly a win-win situation.
The best example has been that NOAA back a number of years
ago was interested in lightning data outside of the coast, off
of the landmass specifically to look at the Atlantic hurricane
basin. And so the technology was not there at the time to
really do that and through reinvestments over time and
collaborations between the academic and public sector, we were
able to advance that science to what is now a global
visualization of lightning over the oceanic and the landmass
regions. So that's a perfect example of how that commercial
sector stability and profits can be reinvested in a partnership
arrangement with the public sector to really satisfy the needs
of both parties.
Mr. Westerman. Okay. And, Dr. Bogdan, it's my understanding
that other agencies around the world in the Europe and the U.K.
do not operate under the same system of fully open data and in
fact are hybrids of public and private companies. How do they
make this issue of open data work?
Dr. Bogdan. There are different groups that actually charge
around the world for weather products that they put out. The
European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, for
instance, does not make their model outputs available. That
must be purchased. They also--organizations will purchase
different amounts of data.
What tends to separate the data that is shared from the
data that is not tends to be its global nature. Everyone needs
global data to understand where they live in the larger weather
patterns that are going on. You might consider very localized
data that could be dealing with soil moisture in several
counties in Arkansas, for instance. The importance of that data
to a European weather model is nowhere near as important as
global GPS radio occultation might be to it. So often the
decision to keep certain data private versus public has to do
with the locality and whether it scales globally or not.
Mr. Westerman. And I thought soil moisture in Arkansas was
important to everyone, but with that, I'll yield back, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Bridenstine. The gentleman yields back.
The Ranking Member from Oregon, Ms. Bonamici, is recognized
for five minutes.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I
apologize. I have a--had another hearing going on at the same
time, so I really appreciate the second round of questions. And
thank you to our great panel for sticking with us, and again,
thank you for the opportunity.
So for years we've been using this current system where
NOAA maintains and operates a suite of observing satellites and
purchases a supplemental ad hoc data to enhance their
forecasting products. But as NOAA continues to expand its
procurement of commercial data and expands its public-private
partnerships, we may run the risk of ceding critical
observational capabilities to the private sector.
So I want to ask each of you, are there essential
observational capabilities that should always be operated by
the government or conversely, do you envision a system where
the United States does not maintain satellites and exclusively
purchases from private companies? What do you think, each of
you?
Dr. Bogdan. Let me start. I think that again we have to
look at these things on a case-by-case basis, so it's hard,
unfortunately, to draw on generalizations. But if there is one,
I think it is that when we have global data sets, data sets
that span the entire planet, then all of us live underneath
those data sets and one can understand that there's generally a
strong argument for that to be in the public good to be out
there.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you. Anybody else?
Dr. Pace?
Dr. Pace. And generally I agree with that perspective on
global data sets. However, I would point out that there are
certain foundational data sets that are already talked about,
you know, in the WMO that serve the models. And so new
innovations that come along I think we should be able to think
anew about what to do with them.
So again, I'm a fan of GPS radio occultation data. It uses
receiver systems that NASA helped develop, which I'm sort of
proud of. But whether or not GPS occultation data can be a
privately provided innovation, whether it's a data product from
it that is what's commercial, whether it may be makes its way
into the foundational data the WMO, you know, covers as a
mandate, I think that's something that ought to be debated and
it's probably an interagency discussion to include state, NOAA,
NASA and have some industry input, as well as the members of
this committee.
So I think we want to make sure we don't mess up our
foundational systems, the programs of record in GOES and POES,
but then as we have an opportunity to add new innovations, we
should think about what's the best way going forward to making
sure that's really, really robust, and is there really a
commercial market for this--
Ms. Bonamici. Right.
Dr. Pace. --or is this still really fundamentally the
government is really the only major customer?
Ms. Bonamici. I appreciate your expertise.
Mr. Sternberg.
Mr. Sternberg. Yeah, I just also wanted to comment that
certainly as it's relevant to a satellite observing system,
it's equally as relevant to surface observations and aerial
observations, and so the same discussion that we're having in
this context should also be extended to surface and aerial
observations.
Ms. Bonamici. I appreciate that.
Dr. Gail or Ms. Robinson? Dr. Gail?
Ms. Robinson. Thank you.
I think as we've seen in a myriad of departments and
agencies and their means of accessing space-based capabilities,
there are certain capabilities that should continue to be
provided by those departments and agencies, but where the
government can rely on the commercial industry, we should. I've
heard Chairman Bridenstine on a number of occasions quote the
government ought not be doing what commercial industry can be
doing for them, and I think that's absolutely the case.
And when it comes to commercially provided hosted payload
capabilities, it does offer a degree of resiliency, as well as
frequency to orbit with the robust launch pipeline. And when
you look at the cost of some of these large time-intensive
government satellite systems and then the benefits that can be
provided by commercial hosts, it's pretty staggering to see how
quickly you can get on orbit at a fraction of the price with a
level of reliability that--
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you.
Ms. Robinson. --is known to be acceptable.
Ms. Bonamici. Dr. Gail?
Dr. Gail. So I think you've asked a question for which
there probably is no answer, could the future be entirely
commercial? And it's possible. So now really is the time to be
building those principles to understand what should guide us in
that evolution, which should be retained within the government,
and what can be commercial. And I don't think we know what
those principles are completely yet.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you. And real quickly, following up on
the gentleman from Arkansas's question about international
collaboration and differences, Dr. Bogdan, are you familiar
with the COSMIC-2 program funded by Taiwan? It's expected to
provide very useful ground-based radio occultation data at
costs that are dramatically below the conventional NOAA
satellite program. Do you--what role is UCAR playing in this
program and what role do you see the private sector playing in
this area going forward?
Dr. Bogdan. UCAR has hosted the COSMIC Program Office and
we work closely with Taiwan and our U.S. partners, NOAA, the
Department of Defense, and NASA, and also the National Science
Foundation on that. We process the data initially and then move
it out quickly to the National Weather Service.
It's been estimated that with the new COSMIC-2 program
there'll be about 13,000 occultations per day over the planet.
Studies have shown that we can actually profit from up to
130,000 occultations a day. And so we see that there is a lot
of room for other providers of GPS radio occultation data
before the models that benefit from them are saturated with
those data.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you so much. My time is expired. Thank
you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Bridenstine. I'd like to thank the Ranking Member
for her questions. She yields back.
I appreciate the reference from Ms. Robinson. I do believe
that the government ought not do what the commercial sector can
to the extent that we have a robust, competitive market that
drives down costs and increases innovation. I don't think we
need to replace a government monopoly with a commercial
monopoly, but thank you for that reference. I think you
captured it well.
I'd like to recognize the gentleman from Colorado, Mr.
Perlmutter, for five minutes.
Mr. Perlmutter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So my question
is--and I'll start with you, Dr. Bogdan, and then to you, Dr.
Gail, since I want to talk to the guys from Colorado. See,
that's why they put male this committee, because I just talk
about Colorado all the time.
So big data, all right, and Mr. Sternberg talked about he
captures this data, analyzes it, sells some of it--or sells it
to the--to us, the United States. There may be some strings
attached in his contract. So a lot of what we're talking
about--I'm a lawyer--sounds very contractual to me and, you
know, how do you cut the deal between the two? What strings are
attached? What aren't attached? You know, who is it--you know,
do we do it commercially or not?
But now there's all this data and we have--you have the
ability at NCAR, we have the ability among the laboratories to
analyze a lot of this data. A lot of it we don't really--you
know, we look at a lot of it. There may be something five years
from now that helps us pinpoint something. I mean this is
evolving every day.
Is--who is capturing this--who is archiving this data and
who has access to the library? Or is that something we've been
thinking about?
Let's start with you, Dr. Bogdan.
Dr. Bogdan. It is something we've been thinking about for a
long, long time because we are literally drowning in data. And
it's important to note that data does not necessarily equal
information. It does not necessarily equal understanding. Some
data are very redundant. We capture those data I think each in
our own separate ways. We curate a lot of data at the National
Center for Atmospheric Research but so does NOAA at its data
centers, the National Climate Data Center in Asheville, our
National Geophysical Data Center in the Skaggs Building on
Broadway and Boulder. NASA has increasingly asked its PIs to
take the critical data from their mission and curate it.
I think the future will be those data will be living in the
cloud along with virtually everything else we do and that they
will have their own proprietors and owners and people that keep
up with it. But there is a hidden cost to maintaining data and
we're going to have to think in the long-term about those costs
and who bears those costs for those data. So it's a very
pressing question and one that I think we're all struggling
with but understand the importance of getting the right answer.
Mr. Perlmutter. Dr. Gail?
Dr. Gail. Yeah, this is a question that's present in a lot
of people's minds these days, and there are two separate
initiatives right now, separate but related initiatives, one
within NOAA to bring their data out more readily into the
public domain working in partnership with a number of large
private sector companies, and a separate initiative at the
Department of Commerce level with a committee that's been
formed to look at how to get Department of Commerce data and
all of its value out more easily into the public. And so those
are things that are being worked on right now because of
recognition of exactly what you said.
Mr. Perlmutter. Okay. Mr. Sternberg, in your--with your
company and its relationship with NOAA--and I may have not
heard this correctly--is there some limitation in terms of
NOAA's use or its ability to disseminate the data that it gets
from you under your contracts?
Mr. Sternberg. Specifically in the context of the lightning
data, the last thing that we want to do is throttle innovation
with our data. And so the arrangements are typically written
such that there is an opportunity for any--for federal
agencies, NOAA in particular, to share that information within
their partnerships or their programs as they see fit towards
their mission. And so----
Mr. Perlmutter. But would there be a limitation though to
make it free and open to, you know, somebody down the block
who's not a federal--you know, isn't in a federal agency?
Mr. Perlmutter. Yes, and there is a limitation and they're
entirely to protect certain commercial markets for that
product.
Okay. So--but again, this is a contract that you've reached
with NOAA----
Mr. Sternberg. That's correct.
Mr. Perlmutter. --so you're able to set the parameters.
They can say yes, no, or maybe if they want to enter into a
contract with you or not?
Mr. Sternberg. Yes. I would call it more of a balance
because, you know, if the--back in 1992 there wasn't a lot of
this happening and so this has evolved over time, and yes, in a
contractual RFP-type of context but moreover in terms of a
balance of the recognition that a private sector organization
can equally lead the development and the investments going into
a network that creates this data set. So I just want to stress
that that is a balance. It is correct but it is----
Mr. Perlmutter. No, and I'm not----
Mr. Sternberg. --but it's also a----
Mr. Perlmutter. --complaining about it.
Mr. Sternberg. Yeah.
Mr. Perlmutter. I'm just saying it's--you know, I'm just a
lawyer and I--that just sounds like a contract for me and
you've got certain provisions that are important to you and
your company and your ability to sell, you know, within the
private sector as well. You have other customers.
Mr. Sternberg. Correct.
Mr. Perlmutter. And you want to protect those customers.
NOAA doesn't have to do a deal with you.
Mr. Sternberg. That's right.
Mr. Perlmutter. And they say, no, we're not going to go
along with that or yes--yeah, we'll live with that.
Mr. Sternberg. Um-hum.
Mr. Perlmutter. So I just appreciate that. Thank you for
your testimony.
Mr. Sternberg. One other point though I just wanted to say
is that it is possible to procure the exclusive data rights for
free distribution however the government would see fit, so that
is an opportunity that any Federal agency would have. Of
course, that is again a contractual and a financial negotiation
at that point.
Mr. Perlmutter. Okay.
Mr. Sternberg. So it's not eliminated by the contract; that
is open to any agency depending on what their goals and
objectives would be with that data set.
Mr. Perlmutter. Okay. Thank you. I yield back.
Chairman Bridenstine. I thank the gentleman from Colorado
for your attendance today. One point I'd like to make before we
close here is, Dr. Bogdan, you said 13,000 radio occultations
per day is what we currently get with COSMIC-2?
Dr. Bogdan. That's what we will be getting----
Chairman Bridenstine. We will get.
Dr. Bogdan. --with COSMIC-2.
Chairman Bridenstine. Okay. And you're saying we can get up
to 130,000 occultations per day before we hit diminishing
marginal returns?
Dr. Bogdan. That is what the studies show.
Chairman Bridenstine. That's pretty amazing. And I think
what's important here, earlier you were talking about the
difference between global data sets and regional data sets and
that being differentiated between what's given away for free
and what there's a market for. When you get up to 130,000
occultations per day, the fidelity gets down to the point where
global data sets actually are very impactful at a local,
regional level. And so this is a balance that we're going to
have to figure out how to address so that we can create the
market to get those 130,000 data sets, 130,000 radio
occultations per day.
I have one last thing. As I mentioned in my opening
statement, last night the House passed H.R. 1561, the Weather
Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2015. I want to make
sure before we close that everybody understands that this would
not be possible without the Ranking Member, Ms. Bonamici from
Oregon, for her hard work to make this a very bipartisan
effort, and that's critically important.
Our committee received enormous support for our weather
legislation, including companies from the evolving private
weather sector. I'd ask unanimous consent to enter into the
record letters of support for our bill and for this hearing in
fact from Geo Optics, Planet IQ, Spire Global, Tempus Global
Data, Panasonic Avionics Corporation. And without objection, so
ordered.
[The information appears in Appendix II]
Ms. Bonamici. I have no objection, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Bridenstine. Roger that.
I thank the witnesses for their valuable testimony today.
It was a highly enlightening panel. I thank the Members for
their questions.
The record will remain open for two weeks and additional
comments and written questions from Members will be permitted
for the next two weeks. This hearing is adjourned. Thank you
for attending.
[Whereupon, at 12:05 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
Appendix I
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Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Responses by Dr. Scott Pace
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Responses by Mr. Scott Sternberg
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Responses by Ms. Nicole Robinson
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Responses by Dr. Thomas Bogdan
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Appendix II
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Additional Material for the Record
Letters submitted by Chairman Jim Bridenstine
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
[all]