Global Earth Observations (GEO) may be instrumental to achieve sustainable development, but to date there have been no integrated assessments of their economic, social and environmental benefits. Methodology applied to the GEO-BENE project in order to assess benefits of GEO in nine defined Societal Benefits Areas (SBAs) assumes use of various quantitative and qualitative methods and data. While the particular, detailed models and data used for that purpose focus usually on one specific SBA, or specific countries or regions, there was a need for an integrated and global overview. This was a reason why the System Dynamics modeling and simulation methodology was followed to develop a FeliX (Full of Economic-Environment Linkages and Integration dX/dt) system dynamics model. The FeliX model tries to represent strongly interlinked Earth system and socio-economic system components forming a complex dynamic system. It consists of nine sectors, namely Economy, Energy, Emissions, Carbon Cycle, Climate & Environment, Population, Technology, Land Use, Energy and the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). All model sectors are highly interrelated and bring the global perspective to the GEO benefits assessment.
In order to bring some of the GEO benefits assessment public there was developed a simulator based on the FeliX model equipped with a user friendly interface. Anyone interested in measuring and analyzing benefits of Global Earth Observation is able to run a number of representative GEO related scenarios on their own and test the assumptions they have against results of the FeliX model. The simulator incorporates six basic GEO scenarios - Energy Scenario, Disaster Scenario, Health Scenario, Climate Scenario, Agriculture Scenario, and Water Scenario (Weather, Ecosystem and Biodiversity societal benefit areas are jointly considered under these scenarios). Each of these scenarios can be activated separately or jointly with other scenarios.
In order to run the scenarios:
- Click the link to download the simulator.
- Run the simulator.
- Read about the project and scenarios on ‘GEO-BENE’ tab of the simulator.
- Press ‘Start’ button (the model starts in 1900 and runs through 110 years of history).
- At year 2010 check which scenario (or scenarios) shall be run (the scenarios can be activated on ‘Energy’, ‘Land’, ‘Population’, ‘Environment’ and ‘Economy’ tabs of the simulator).
- Press ‘Next’ button and observe the changes on the graphs (double click the variable names to display additional graphs).
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