World Meteorological Organization

Under the guidance of the Standing committee on Earth Observing Systems and Monitoring Networks (SC-ON) of the Infrastructure Commission (INFCOM) of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and in consultation with the Expert Team on Earth Observing Systems Design and Evolution (ET-EOSDE) of SC-ON, coordinated and supported by the WMO Integrated Global Observing System (WIGOS) division of the WMO Secretariat, the WIGOS Vision 2050 Team shall undertake tasks including consulting the various relevant communities, to develop a comprehensive, realistic and inspirational vision for the global observing systems for the 2050 timeframe. The scope of the vision, the role of the drafting team and the deliverables are described below: 

Scope: 

1- The vision should aim at the state of the WIGOS global observing system, in the 2050 timeframe. 

2- The WIGOS 2050 vision should aim at describing observations serving the users (or applications) relevant to WMO scope. It should generally be responsive to the application areas defined in the WMO RRR process. 

3- The audience of the vision includes Space agencies/satellite operators, national and international agencies in charge of in-situ, ground, ocean- and air-based observing systems networks, private and public actors, in the business of designing and deploying observing systems in general. The Vision could also inform the data system and applications of potential future capabilities of the observing system. Therefore, engaging these communities during the drafting process, to fully understand their plans is important. 

4- The vision should be inclusive of Space- and Surface-based components. Surface is used generically to mean both in-situ and remote sensing, air-based, ground-based, ocean-based, near-space based, and if relevant for the purpose of the vision, should also include potential non-traditional components such as IoT, citizen data, etc. 

5- The observing systems targeted in this vision are those measuring the Earth system, as defined in WMO. It should include Earth System domains (atmosphere, hydrology, cryosphere, ocean, terrestrial/land surface and space weather) to serve application areas (weather, climate, water and related environmental services) as defined in the expanded WMO World Weather Watch Programme description. When relevant and deemed appropriate, connecting the geophysical Earth system components with other Human/socio-economic factors. 

6- The vision should be aspirational and essentially answer what the WIGOS will be in 2050. The vision should account for the evolution of observing systems to respond to needs and requirements, current and future, and to the evolution of technology and capabilities, current and future. It should not however be too constraining in the aspect of architecture to allow enough necessary flexibility to observing systems owners. The WIGOS 2050 vision should aim to inspire future designs of global observing systems (both individual missions capabilities and composite architectures). 

7- The vision document should recommend high-level strategies to WMO members and other stakeholders, on how to engage the relevant communities and their respective organizations/bodies including their roles in contributing to achieve the vision (for example on how to approach integration of surface and space-based components). 

8- The vision should identify and describe the impacts of the Earth System on society, and hence the need for a robust observing system.  It should go beyond what we know we can do now, envisioning what we might be able to do in the future. Potential sources for informing this foresight could include IPCC, UNFCCC, UNOOSA, etc. 

9- The suggested major drivers should include, but not exclusively, (1) requirements evolution, (2) technology evolution, (3) observing systems plans and capabilities (and the integration of many different observing implementation communities), (4) expected evolution of public/private sectors in this field, (5) as well as other drivers as deemed relevant by the drafting team. 

10- The drafting of the vision should consider, along with the public sector, the emerging commercial/private/philanthropies sectors (observing systems providers). Especially in terms of envisioning their roles and contributions to the development and the achievement of the vision. This should be coordinated with ET-EOSDE on the evolvement of the High Level Guidance for the Vision for WIGOS 2040 document. 

11- The vision should account for the evolution of data processing techniques (such as AI/ML), to the extent that new processing methods might improve the validity and utility of observations, if deemed relevant by the team. It should account for how these techniques are transforming the data and the impact of data. It should not however be a vision about computing techniques (AI/ML) themselves. 

12- The vision should account for the operational missions and/or research missions (and how these might evolve in the future). 

13- The vision should be an integrated vision (for space- and surface-based components). It should for example describe how do we envision this integration: Does the integration refer to complementarity of the capabilities, including their redundancy, or does it refer to mutually beneficial visions: for example for offering calibration mechanisms or spatial resolution enhancement, for satellite data. How this integration is envisioned should be informed by the team’s deliberations. 

14- The drafting of the vision should be reviewed. Reviewers should include data producers, satellite and ground-based observations technology experts, groups that define requirements for operational and research purposes covering up to climate timescales, representatives from the Earth System domains and other stakeholders. The final review should conform to WMO’s internal review and formal approval process.  


Drafting Team Role and Deliverables: 

1- The vision team, in coordination with WMO secretariat, to develop a work plan for drafting WIGOS Vision 2050, including the various engagement activities. 

2- The vision team to conduct research, deliberations, various communities engagement activities, to inform the drafting of the WIGOS 2050 vision. As part of these engagement activities, the team could invite world experts to provide opinions and thoughts to further inform the vision drafting. 

3- The Vision team, with support from WMO secretariat, will set up meetings (virtual and in person) as well as an inclusive workshop to deliberate, inform and consolidate the WIGOS 2050 vision drafting. 

4- The vision team to develop a WMO report “Vision for the WMO Integrated Observing System in 2050” to be presented to WMO INFCOM in 2026, after review by stakeholders and relevant entities. 

5- The vision team to prepare relevant documents and give relevant presentations to WMO WIGOS branch and to ET-EOSDE and other relevant expert teams, summarizing the results from the above activities. 

Drafting Team Composition: 

The drafting team should have a balanced representation of the various communities that (1) own, design, and operate observing systems -space component-, (2) own, design, and operate observing systems -in-situ/ground/ocean/air-based component-,(3) technologists who are actively working on advancing observing systems capabilities through new and improved instrumentation and applications of advances in technology-, (4) major users of earth observations, including NWP but also inclusive of other Applications categories considered major users of Earth observations, (5) representatives of various regions/countries with various levels of advanced capabilities in the observing systems design and evolution, (6) represent non-traditional Observing systems networks (near-space platforms, IoT, unmanned platforms, etc). (7) international and/or regional orgs in charge of coordinating earth observations. Note that a member of the team could represent multiple communities simultaneously. Note also that members should have reach back capabilities (in their institutions and communities) to better inform their contributions.