Estimating the Socio-economic Impact of Earth Observing Data in Sonoma County

In 2013, NASA's Carbon Monitoring System Applications Effort funded a ROSES proposal from the University of Maryland to develop of a prototype for measuring, reporting and verification (MRV) system based on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) remote sensing and analysis capabilities to support ecomarket infrastructure in Sonoma County, California. One of the goals of the project is to identify how stakeholder needs and requirements can be integrated during the creation and implementation of MRV systems to provide effective decision support and compliance capabilities, and with better-informed policy decisions. NASA funding was pooled with that from Sonoma County, USGS, and others for the creation of multiple high resolution county wide geospatial products The project included the acquisition and processing of Q1 lidar and 6 inch, 4-band multispectral imagery for the entire county of Sonoma which the county makes available to the public for download at http://sonomavegmap.org, http://opentopography.org/, and https://coast.noaa.gov . To understand the value of the county's ortho-imagery and lidar products to users, the county initiated a survey of users in the spring of 2016. Survey questions were developed by Sonoma county, NASA , and consultants, and a link to them in SuveyMonkey was sent out to 400+ individuals signed up to receive the project's newsletters (www.sonomavegmap.org). This presentation will summarize the results and key findings of the survey.