developing monitoring and decision support systems, in order to ensure that the right data are obtained, analyzed, and disseminated in useful ways, at useful time scales, and to the right people. Most workshop participants said that the effective application of remotely sensed data in decisions about human welfare could be improved only if the remotely sensed observations currently made continue to be collected and are enhanced by new observations. Data collected over the long term are vital to understanding and characterizing longer-period environmental cycles.

Because of the highly technical nature of the topic, the workshop committee decided that a different venue would be more appropriate to address the specific technical issues in integrating disparate data types into decision support systems that address human welfare, although most participants believed that this topic is vital for improving the effectiveness of decision support systems. The committee includes a bibliography of resources on this topic as Appendix B.

The workshop underscored the large, unrealized potential of remotely sensed data to a range of human welfare issues that, if developed, could parallel the significant advances in the use of remotely sensed data in the Earth sciences and global climate research in the past several decades.