1. Projects

CONVEI: Collaborative Network for Valuing Earth Information

An image of Earth, taken from space that shows a desert climate on earth and has a satellites solar array in the foreground

Do you use or produce EO in your work?

We are actively seeking collaborators to grow this network and provide opportunities to evaluate the impact of EO information, justifying further investment in your decision-relevant science and helping identify where new capacity is needed.

Join us

The magnitude and pace of global change demands rapid assessment of the state of our planet and the life that thrives on it. As governments, business, and financial institutions are increasingly committing to goals for sustainable development, understanding how science can improve decisions and their impacts on the planet is imperative to meeting those commitments. That’s why WWF, NASA, and USGS have formed CONVEI—the Collaborative Network for Valuing Earth Information—to study the role of information in decision-making to improve both.

With the rapidly increasing development of satellite and other technologies, scientists are now able to gather increasingly sophisticated and detailed information about how the Earth’s physical, chemical, and biological (and many aspects of societal) systems behave. This information, called Earth Observations (EO), can provide real-time, globally available, and publicly accessible information for decision-makers to track current and future natural impacts and prioritize which actions to take for their localities. For example, conservation programs are using satellite data to evaluate program impacts on biodiversity, regulators are using airborne observations of methane emissions to identify point sources, land managers and emergency services are increasingly turning to EO-based wildfire forecasts to plan interventions and evacuations, and many other uses are proliferating. Importantly, EO can also democratize knowledge by providing people with direct access to powerful tools and information about the challenges their communities may face—knowledge that can be used to strengthen their influence and amplify their voice around decision-making in the places they live. 

Oku women gathered outside, with lush green hills behind them. An Oku community resource mapping exercise designed to determine which tree species the women prefer to use for their firewood.

An Oku community resource mapping exercise designed to determine which tree species the women prefer to use for their firewood. Mount Kilum, Cameroon

While EO data can be used to create myriad beneficial outcomes, greater understanding of their direct value to lives and livelihoods remain. CONVEI is forming a transdisciplinary network of academic, public, and private sector scientists and practitioners to integrate Earth sciences, social sciences, and data sciences into their socioeconomic assessment approaches. Researchers in this growing network will assess how EO is currently used to benefit society, and how using it can change perceptions, behaviors, and decisions, as well as their resulting social, economic, and ecological outcomes. Ultimately, these insights can be used to build new understanding of the role that EO can play in decision-making and guide future technological development of EO toward greater utility.

What WWF is Doing

wildfire at night

WWF is already heavily involved in the translation of EO to delivering societal benefits, as a direct user of EO products in its conservation planning and impact monitoring, as an innovator of new EO applications to solve urgent sustainability problems, and as a convener of different audiences who care about planetary stewardship. As core providers of satellite data in the United States, NASA and USGS have long funded individual projects to support the development and use of EO; they are now looking for opportunities to scale beyond the individual project level, asking where EO has the greatest potential for rapid adoption and impact. WWF’s expertise, spanning engagement in international policy forums to working with local communities around the world puts us in the unique position to address these challenges.

Launching in 2023, over the next five years, CONVEI will be developing new ways of valuing EO and their contributions to society. Different evaluation methods and different types of values will be explored, drawing from economics, machine learning, behavioral psychology, cultural anthropology, and more. Applying these methods in real world decisions, CONVEI will evaluate the societal benefits of EO in contexts such as conservation, agriculture, water resources, disasters, and health. Along with highlighting the benefits of EO information, researchers will characterize the use of EO in complex decision-making processes, identify common barriers, gaps, and other challenges in the translation of EO to decision-relevant and actionable information, and make recommendations for improving the utility of and expanding the use EO in the future. A key piece of this evaluation will focus on how the decision-making process itself can transform through the use of EO, towards more transparent, and democratic deliberation. These evaluation projects will strengthen collaborations between Earth scientists, social scientists, and decision-makers, grow the community of practice for valuing EO, and communicate that value and its potential for improvement to policy-makers and funders investing in the advancement of EO. The insights gained through this new program of work on valuing EO will catalyze the next generation of satellite information to better support society’s most pressing decisions for people and the planet.

  • CONVEI logo
  • WWF logo
  • NASA logo
  • USGS logo