The Economics of Space Sustainability
Delivering Economic Evidence to Guide Government Action
Earth's orbits are polluted by more than 100 million debris objects that pose a collision threat to satellites and other spacecraft. The risk of perturbing highly valuable space-based services critical to life on Earth, such as weather monitoring and disaster management, is making debris mitigation an urgent policy challenge. This book provides the latest findings from the OECD project on the economics of space sustainability, which aims to improve decision makers’ understanding of the societal value of space infrastructure and costs of space debris. It provides comprehensive evidence on the growth of space debris, presents methods to evaluate and quantify the value of the satellites at risk and discusses ways to ensure a more sustainable use of the orbital environment. It notably includes case studies from Italy, Japan and Korea on the socio-economic value of different types of space infrastructure and discusses the feasibility and optimal design of fiscal measures and voluntary environmental rating schemes to change operator behaviour. This work is informed by contributions from researchers worldwide involved in the OECD project.
The socio-economic benefits of earth observation (EO): Insights from the end users of EO services and applications in Italy
Earth observation (EO) is a strategic and fast-changing domain of the space economy that increasingly contributes to the understanding, analysis and management of different natural and societal aspects of Earth. A range of socio-economic benefits may derive from the use of EO data. This chapter aims to identify the benefits accrued by end users of EO services and applications, on which there is scarce evidence in the literature. With the objective of filling in this gap, the chapter relies on a survey distributed to the end users of EO services in Italy, a country which is active along the whole value chain of the space economy.
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