In an information value chain, one or more organizations perform a set of value-adding activities for creating and distributing information products and services. They support a user in decision-making and thereby benefit the user’s purpose. The information value chain is a tool for evaluating business management and profitability. It enables explaining the ultimate “value” of a product and the components along the value chain and consequently allows businesses to optimize their processes.
The value of EO data can be assessed by analysing the contribution of the data to a specific EO information product and its effective use in decision-making. The (share of) benefit attributable to the use of the given EO data is derived from the comparison of a decision taken using the EO product to a counterfactual situation where other types of information are used instead. Often, this compares the situation before a new EO service was available to the situation afterwards. An ex-post analysis may reveal improved performances, e.g. gains in output, or productivity and/or reduced costs as compared to those occurring in absence of EO-derived information. This benefit resides with the user of the EO product and may be traced to societal and environmental benefits through impact chains.
The process of EO information production and distribution is integrated in the value chain and can be defined as the image processing chain. It comprises the value-adding activities of the organization(s) that lead up to the availability of an EO product for decision making. The nature and flow of these activities and the collaboration between organizations and among participants within organizations can be modelled with business process model and notation (BPMN). BPMN is a flowchart diagram that uses swimlanes representing different participants. Processes are assigned to participants and are connected with arrows into flow sequences. Further elements complete the choice of symbols for modelling a consistent flow, including a start event, end events, and branching options. They allow organizing the flow in parallel or iterative processes. Higher-level processes can be (de-)composed with sub-processes. Additionally, it is possible to use pools and message flows for explicitly modelling collaboration between participants (from different organizations).
In the image processing (value) chain, the sequence of processing steps begins with the acquisition of EO data, followed by steps of pre-processing and information extraction (or whatever steps are necessary) and ends with an EO information product being available to a user that uses it to make his decision. The collaborating stakeholders along the chain include EO satellite operators, EO data providers, EO information providers, and the users at the end of the value chain. The stakeholders along the processing chain each perform a dedicated subsequence of processing steps. Thereby, the stakeholders contribute their share of value to the data they deliver to the next stakeholder in the chain, ultimately arriving a the EO information product for the user. The EO data products that they hand on along the chain are often described with processing levels that provide different states of processing of EO data. They start with raw instrument data (level 0 and 1) that are followed by data converted into geophysical quantities that are geo-referenced and calibrated (level 2). Further levels are quality controlled data that has been mapped on a uniform space-time grid (level 3) and data combined with models or other instrument data (level 4). In addition, EO data providers use the term analysis ready data (ARD) that have been processed to allow direct data analysis, i.e. user processing effort is reduced to a minimum. Further, the standard EO products contain a categorizing element that is related to the image processing value chain. This categorizing element organizes the EO products along the sequences of processing, descriptive analytics, predictive analytics, prescriptive analytics, aggregation, visualization, and distribution. Thereby, the products ultimately contribute to the actionable EO information product for the use in decision-making.