Estimating the Economic Benefits of Regional Ocean Observing Systems

Abstract

This report presents preliminary information about the magnitude of likely benefits that may accrue from current and expected regional observing systems. The focus is on observing systems to be deployed in the coastal waters of the United States, including both the oceans and the Great Lakes. These observing systems are being formed as a series of regional systems in areas such as the Gulf of Maine, South Atlantic, California, Gulf of Mexico, Pacific Northwest, and Gulf of Alaska. It is anticipated that all of the coastal waters of the United States eventually will be covered by such systems, which will provide nationally consistent measurement of certain parameters (the national backbone ) and also meet particular needs in each region. Output from the network of regional systems will merge to provide an integrated ocean observing system for the United States, which in turn will be a component of the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) and the Global Earth Observing System (GEOS). For more information about the network of regional observing systems see www.ocean.us. The information needed to develop detailed estimates of the economic benefits of ocean observing systems is, for the most part, unavailable at this time. Both the development of the observing systems themselves and the economic information needed to estimate benefits are presently incomplete. The analysis developed here therefore attempts to identify likely magnitude of benefits based on the levels of economic activity potentially affected by the information derived from ocean observations, and to explore the methods that can be used to develop detailed estimates for specific applications in selected regions.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Nov 01, 2004
Accession Number
ADA484010

Entities

People

  • Allan G. Pulsipher
  • Charles S. Colgan
  • Hauke L. Kite-powell
  • Katharine F. Wellman
  • Kenneth Wieand
  • Linwood Pendleton
  • Mark J. Kaiser
  • Michael Luger
  • Thomas Pelsoci

Organizations

  • Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Bayesian Networks
  • Business Administration
  • Coast Guard
  • Commerce
  • Commercial Fishing
  • Economic Impact
  • Electronic Mail
  • Environment
  • Environmental Protection
  • Local Governments
  • Ocean Observing Systems
  • Oceans
  • Oil Spills
  • Pathogenic Bacteria
  • Probability
  • Public Health
  • United States

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Economics
  • Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Modeling, Data Assimilation, and Flux Boundary Layers