Maximizing Societal Benefit Across Multiple Hyperspectral Earth Observation Missions: A User Needs Approach

Imaging spectroscopy is a powerful tool used to support diverse Earth science and applications objectives, ranging from understanding and mitigating widespread impacts of climate change to management of water at farm-scale. Community studies, such as those deployed by NASA's Surface Biology and Geology and ESA's Copernicus Hyperspectral Imaging Mission for the Environment, have offered new and tangible insights into user needs that are then incorporated into overall mission planning and design. These technologies and tools will be key to develop and consolidate downstream services for users and resource management, given the current pressures on the environment posed by climate change and population growth. This process has highlighted the degree to which planned mission capabilities are responsive to community needs. In this study, we analyze user requirements belonging to the Italian Copernicus User Forum and to the user pool of NASA's Surface Biology and Geology community for the synergic use of hyperspectral imaging technology, providing a reference for the development of earth observation services and the consolidation of existing ones. In addition, potential cross-mission coordination is analyzed to highlight key benefits-(a) addressing shared community needs around products requiring more frequent temporal revisit and (b) shared resources and community expertise around algorithm development. This paper discusses the critical role of early engagement with users to establish a community of practice ready to work with high spatial resolution imaging spectroscopy data sets. The main outcome is a guide for the synergetic use of hyperspectral mission and data together with the identification of the main gaps between user needs and satellite capabilities influencing the development of key national and trans-national downstream services.In this research we have analyzed needs of users to understand how to develop and improve earth observation downstream services. Hyperspectral imaging provides information across the electromagnetic spectrum in more detail than multispectral imaging, allowing more specific analysis and accurate identification of materials and substances. The users in this study belong to the Italian Copernicus User Forum and to the NASA Surface Biology and Geology community which provided requirements respectively for ESA's Copernicus Hyperspectral Imaging Mission for the Environment and NASA's Surface Biology and Geology. This work identifies common users and examines the advantages of potential synergy between these hyperspectral satellites for responding to their needs. This analysis shows that the synergy would bring significant advantages in terms of improved revisit time and represents an opportunity to address shared community needs around product and algorithm development.Current users' needs for hyperspectral earth observation data suggest future investment in improving spatial and temporal resolutionCoordination between missions can fill this gap especially improving temporal revisitShared community and resources can facilitate the improvement of products from these missions and their use across different sectors