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UN-GGCE Investment Prioritization and Risk Rubric
Work Assignment 1b
Version: 7.3
Date: 22 September 2026 (rubric method dated June 2026; revised from February 2026)
Prepared by: Ben Wortley, Lead Consultant — UN-GGCE
Reference: Terms of Reference 2 (ToR2) — Work Assignment 1
Major revisions:
- v3.8 — Replaced the domain-average target for Principles 3, 4, and 6 with a per-capability floor check (every required capability at or above Level 2).
- v3.9b — Added "How Horizon 2 and Horizon 3 Get Set," describing the Technical Product Working Group consultation model used to validate findings and set Horizon 2/3 targets.
- v4.6 — Removed domain averages as a reported figure entirely; Horizon 1 findings are floor-check verdicts only, with progress toward Horizon 2/3 carried by the Capability Evidence Trail (confirmed / asserted / considered / queued).
- v4.8 — Harmonised Horizon terminology and timeframes with Work Assignment 1.
- v5.5 — Removed the summary findings table from this document; Work Assignment 2 is now the sole source for cross-product findings.
- v6.5 — Raised Principle 1's Minimum Capability Target from Tier Risk Score ≤7 to ≤9, calibrated to this assessment's own average PPTD Gap so that a tier with genuine but imperfect redundancy (Step Criticality 3) isn't automatically failed by Horizon 1's near-term floor. Pass rate across the 25 assessed tiers rises from 7 to 13; no product's overall Horizon 1 status changes, since every product also fails Principles 3, 4, 5, and 6 regardless.
- v6.6 — Raised the target again, from ≤9 to ≤10, after modelling what Horizon 1's planned remediation (capability floor uplift plus formalising existing informal backup relationships into mandated ones) actually does to each product's worst tier: several land within hundredths of ≤9, close enough that the pass/fail call turns on a PPTD averaging-convention choice rather than a real difference in redundancy. ≤10 gives a fully remediated tier a genuine margin instead of a coin flip, without changing what "remediated" means. Pass rate across the 25 assessed tiers rises from 13 to 14 tiers (only ICRF Tier 2, 9.94, newly clears) — no product's worst tier is that one, so no product's overall Horizon 1 status changes.
- v7.0 — Re-anchored the scoring method itself on
ROBUSTNESS_TESTING_PROCEDURE_v1.6's real Annex A (checked section by section, not assumed), following the same 16 September 2026 call that re-anchored WA1's six principles. Three corrections, not a relabelling: (1) Principle 1 is no longer tested by a risk score at all — Annex A.6/B.2 state plainly that inferring geographic distribution from a maturity-gap calculation breaches the procedure's own control, so P1 now uses the real four-check geographic test (Coverage / Concentration / Separation / Sustainment). (2) The gap formula corrects toRequired − Current, floored at zero, binding (largest) dimension gap, never a mean (Annex A.4) — replacing the retired5 − averageceiling measure. (3) N/A dimensions are now excluded from the average, not scored 0 (Annex A.2), and every score reports its dimensionality. Because a true Function Risk Score needs a TPWG-ratified Required PPTD level that hasn't been elicited yet for any product (no equivalent provisional default exists for it in v1.6, unlike the Level 2 default for floor checks), this version introduces an asserted interim Required level — scaled to each function's already-ratified Criticality, reusing this document's own Evidence Trail vocabulary rather than inventing new machinery — clearly labelled as provisional pending real Technical Product Working Group elicitation. "Tier" is replaced by "Function" throughout, matching Work Assignment 1/2's terminology and Annex A.11's own cross-walk. "Value stream" (prose) becomes "workflow," matching Work Assignment 2's v4.0 convention. The full 25-function cross-product ranking under the corrected method is Work Assignment 3's job, not reproduced here — this document defines the method and works one illustrative example through it in full. - v7.1 — Updated two references to the Work Assignment 1 Appendix, which was renamed from "EGV Data Levels and Supply Chain Tiers" to "EGV Data Levels and Supply Chain Functions" (v2.0) to match the Tier→Function conversion completed across Work Assignment 2 and its five annexes; the appendix itself previously still taught the retired universal five-tier model as current.
- v7.3 — Replaced the raw
outputs/capability_model_change_submission.mdfilename reference (Principle 6's monitoring-gap note) with a working link to the hosted portal (un-ggce.merchantsofmalta.com). - v7.2 — Corrected a reading-order inconsistency the user caught: Companion Documents instructed new readers to read the Work Assignment 1 Appendix first, ahead of Work Assignment 1 — Guiding Principles itself, despite the Appendix being named as Work Assignment 1's own supplementary reference. Swapped the order and moved the "read first" instruction onto Work Assignment 1.
Versions not listed above applied editorial and terminology consistency fixes only; no other changes to definitions, scores, or findings.
Audience
This document serves two readerships: (1) UN-GGCE leadership and technical counterparts already familiar with this engagement; and (2) UN-GGCE staff and Member State stakeholders new to this specific analysis. Readers new to the engagement should read this Purpose & Reading Guide; the sections that follow provide the full method underlying its conclusions.
Purpose & Reading Guide
This rubric is part of Work Assignment 1 of the UN-GGCE Global Geodesy Supply Chain Assessment (Terms of Reference 2). Its purpose is to give Member States and UN-GGCE leadership a consistent, evidence-based way to compare investment options across five specific geodetic products, demonstrating, as clearly and consistently as possible through one common framework, where the supply chain's risk appears to concentrate, so that investment decisions Member States make are as well informed as possible.
In line with the State of Geodesy 2026 report, its 58-capability model is a qualitative, first-attempt description of the supply chain — expert judgement rather than quantitative measurement, with confidence levels that are themselves qualitative. This rubric treats a low score the same way: as an indicator of where risk may be concentrated and worth investigating further.
The underlying capability data this rubric scores is organised by function (numbered F1...Fn per product, per ROBUSTNESS_TESTING_PROCEDURE_v1.6 Annex A.11's terminology cross-walk — the term "tier" used in earlier drafts is retired) — a discrete institutional step in a product's workflow, such as raw data acquisition or final product combination (see the Work Assignment 1 Appendix — EGV Data Levels and Supply Chain Functions — for the full framework).
Every principle below checks the same underlying capability data against a target threshold — but the right kind of check differs by what a principle is actually checking, and none of the six is more "correct" than the others; they're different tools for different jobs:
- Principle 1 (Geographic Distribution) is a structural, geographic question — not a maturity question.
ROBUSTNESS_TESTING_PROCEDURE_v1.6Annex A.6/B.2 are explicit that inferring geographic distribution from a capability-maturity gap breaches the procedure's own control against exactly that inference. P1 is checked directly against the geographic configuration a function actually has, through four checks (Coverage, Concentration, Separation, Sustainment) — see Principle 1's Measure, below. - Principle 2 (Political Resilience) is a structural fact: how many independent jurisdictions actually host a function. A count is the natural fit for that question.
- Principles 3, 4, 5, and 6 — covering governance, technical interoperability, function-level capability maturity, and transparency — check whether every capability a product needs has reached at least a basic, workable level. For these four, this rubric recommends a floor check — confirming every required capability clears a minimum bar — because an average can let a handful of strong capabilities obscure one that's still barely established. That's a deliberate methodological choice suited to what these four principles check. (The specific bar is set out below, in The Six Minimum Capability Targets.)
What "Robust" Means Here
"Robust" is UN-GGCE's established term for the top of its maturity scale — State of Geodesy 2026 Level 5 ("Strategic"), and the fully-resourced target architecture set out in the Zero Draft of a Robust Global Geodesy Supply Chain (15 April 2026). This rubric operationalises the first phase, Horizon 1: Basic Supply Chain (also referred to as Minimum Capability) — the achievable near-term standard Member States can be asked to meet now, with a view to reaching "robust" in later phases. See Work Assignment 1 for the full three-horizon framing (Basic → Reliable → Robust), and JDP Phase Sequencing below for how these horizons drive investment order.
Companion Documents
- Work Assignment 1 — Guiding Principles: read first if new to the engagement; establishes the six Guiding Principles this rubric operationalises into a scoring method.
- Work Assignment 1 Appendix — EGV Data Levels and Supply Chain Functions: explains how geodetic product workflows are structured into data levels and functions; read alongside Work Assignment 1 or immediately after.
- Work Assignment 2 — Critical Product Mapping Report: maps each of the five critical geodetic product workflows to named functions, capabilities, organisations and information artifacts — the structural basis this rubric's method is applied to.
- Work Assignment 3 — Risk Assessment and Gap Analysis: applies this rubric's corrected method at full scale across all five products' functions.
- State of Geodesy 2026[^sog2026]: the capability maturity baseline (PPTD scores, 58-capability model) this rubric's scores are drawn from.
- Zero Draft of a Robust Global Geodesy Supply Chain (15 April 2026): UN-GGCE's reference architecture for the Horizon 3 "Robust" destination this rubric's Horizon 1 targets are a step toward.
Key Terms and Abbreviations
| Abbreviation | Full term |
|---|---|
| ACC | Analysis Centre Coordinator |
| DORIS | Doppler Orbitography and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite (a positioning technique) |
| EGV | Essential Geodetic Variable |
| EOP | Earth Orientation Parameters |
| GGOS | Global Geodetic Observing System — IAG's coordinating body for the geodetic techniques below |
| GGSC | Global Geodesy Supply Chain — the subject of this assessment |
| GNSS | Global Navigation Satellite Systems |
| IAG | International Association of Geodesy — the scientific body GGOS and the technique services below sit under |
| ICRF | International Celestial Reference Frame |
| IDS | International DORIS Service |
| IERS | International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service |
| IGS | International GNSS Service |
| ILRS | International Laser Ranging Service |
| ITRF | International Terrestrial Reference Frame — the specific realization of the ITRS below |
| ITRS | International Terrestrial Reference System |
| IVS | International VLBI Service |
| JDP | 1st Joint Development Plan for Global Geodesy |
| MOU | Memorandum of Understanding |
| PPTD | People, Process, Technology, Data — the four dimensions every capability is scored against; explained in full below |
| SLA | Service Level Agreement |
| SLR | Satellite Laser Ranging |
| SPOCC | Satellite orbit combination software (GFZ/Potsdam) |
| VLBI | Very Long Baseline Interferometry |
The Six Minimum Capability Targets
Every principle below has a recommended target for Horizon 1. Clearing all six suggests the areas of highest assessed risk have reached a basic, workable maturity level — the achievable near-term floor, well short of "robust" (see above). None of the six is multiplied into another; each is read independently, side by side, as its own input to the investment case.
| Principle | Minimum Capability Target |
|---|---|
| 1. Geographic Distribution | All four geographic checks (Coverage, Concentration, Separation, Sustainment) pass, at every function |
| 2. Political Resilience | Critical function hosted in 2 or more independent political jurisdictions, at every function |
| 3. Centralised Accountability | Every required capability in the Governance & Strategy domain at or above Level 2, in every applicable dimension |
| 4. Technical Interoperability | Every required capability in the Data Management or Data Products and Software domains at or above Level 2, in every applicable dimension |
| 5. Minimum Capability Maturity | Every required capability at or above Level 2, in every applicable dimension, at every function |
| 6. Transparency, Monitoring and Performance Assurance | Every required capability in the Engagement & Collaboration domain, and any monitoring/performance-assurance capability wherever it sits, at or above Level 2, in every applicable dimension |
Principle 1 no longer produces a numeric threshold: ROBUSTNESS_TESTING_PROCEDURE_v1.6 Annex A.6/B.2 retired the risk-score-based P1 test specifically because it inferred geographic distribution from capability maturity, which the procedure's own controls forbid. Principle 2 keeps its own dedicated mechanic — a jurisdiction count. The other four (Principles 3, 4, 5, 6) all use the same floor-check approach — every required capability at or above Level 2, in every applicable dimension — applied to different capability sets: Principle 5 to the capabilities tied to a specific function, Principles 3, 4, and 6 to the capabilities in a specific domain (Governance & Strategy; Data Management + Data Products and Software; Engagement & Collaboration, plus monitoring capabilities wherever they sit) regardless of which function they're linked to. The rest of this document explains exactly how each check is made, working through one real example — Satellite Orbits F3, the highest-risk function in the current assessment — as each concept is introduced.
Horizon 1 has one verdict per principle. For Principles 3, 4, 5, and 6 — the floor-check principles — that verdict is per-capability: a required capability either clears Level 2 or it doesn't. Principle 1's four-check test and Principle 2's jurisdiction count are both already pass/fail by construction, so neither needs a companion average either. An average can only describe where a group of capabilities sits on the whole; it can't tell a Member State whether the specific capability blocking a specific product is actually fixed. Progress toward Horizon 2 and Horizon 3 is carried in the Capability Evidence Trail (confirmed / asserted / considered / queued, explained in Work Assignment 1) as an asserted view of where each capability stands, until the Technical Product Working Groups run their own workshops and set the actual Horizon 2 and Horizon 3 targets. Work Assignment 3 reports one PASS/FAIL verdict per product per principle, applying this rubric's method at full scale.
Status of these findings: every PASS/FAIL verdict in this rubric and in Work Assignment 3 is computed from the State of Geodesy 2026 baseline as currently mapped onto each product's function structure — it is a starting position for Technical Product Working Group review. The Technical Product Working Groups (one per product, drawn from IGS, IVS, ILRS, IDS, and IERS — see JDP Phase Sequencing below) will confirm or challenge which capabilities actually apply and rate their current maturity directly; their input can change these verdicts. Treat every finding in this document as provisional until that review has happened.
How Capability Maturity Is Scored (PPTD)
Four of the six measures above (Principles 1, 3, 4, 5, 6) are built from the same underlying data: the People, Process, Technology, Data (PPTD) framework.
Every capability the supply chain depends on — from "Ground-Based Asset Management" to "Risk Management" — is scored on a 1-to-5 scale across four dimensions:
| Dimension | What it measures |
|---|---|
| People | Workforce capacity, succession planning, knowledge transfer |
| Process | Formal governance, SLAs, MOUs, documented procedures |
| Technology | Infrastructure lifecycle, hardware and software currency |
| Data | FAIR compliance, interoperability, archiving |
1 means the dimension is barely established; 5 means it's fully optimised. This PPTD framework was built during the consultancy phase before this one (Terms of Reference 1, "ToR1," March–September 2025), and the scores themselves come from the published State of Geodesy 2026[^sog2026] baseline assessment that ToR1 produced — this rubric doesn't generate them, it uses them.
What each level actually means. The State of Geodesy 2026 names each level differently per dimension — there's no single universal label — but they follow the same underlying progression:
| Level | People | Process | Technology | Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Undefined | Ad-hoc | Basic | Siloed |
| 2 | Managed | Repeatable | Available | Aware |
| 3 | Defined | Defined | Standardised | Standardised |
| 4 | Capable | Managed | Managed | Governed |
| 5 | Empowered | Optimised | Strategic | Strategic |
In plain terms, across all four dimensions:
- Level 1 — the function is essentially not established. No committed funding, no defined roles, no documentation, no standards; whatever happens is ad-hoc and depends entirely on whoever's involved.
- Level 2 — something exists, but informally and inconsistently. Funding is in-kind rather than committed; processes are followed sometimes, by some people; usable only by specialists who already know how it works.
- Level 3 — formalised for the important parts, but partial and unevenly enforced. Documentation exists centrally; roles are defined for key functions; monitoring and enforcement remain inconsistent.
- Level 4 — consistently applied and measured. Long-term funding, clear accountability, quantitatively monitored adherence, usable beyond specialists.
- Level 5 — proactive and optimising. Continuously improved, strategically resourced, built for future needs.
This is the practical basis for where this rubric sets its Level 2 floor (Principles 3, 4, 5, and 6, below): Level 2 is the point at which a function can honestly be said to exist, even if informally. Below that, there's nothing to build on; above it, the remaining gap is about quality and consistency.
A capability's overall maturity is the average of its applicable dimension scores. Where a dimension genuinely doesn't apply to a capability — "Risk Management," for example, has no meaningful Technology or Data component — that dimension is marked N/A and excluded from the average, per ROBUSTNESS_TESTING_PROCEDURE_v1.6 Annex A.2 — corrected from an earlier convention that scored N/A dimensions 0 and averaged them in anyway, which structurally capped a two-dimension capability below a four-dimension one regardless of how well the two applicable dimensions actually performed. Dimensionality — the number of applicable dimensions, 1 to 4 — is reported alongside every score for exactly this reason: a reader has to know how many dimensions a score is built from before comparing it to another capability's.
Gap — how far a capability's current maturity sits from what its function actually needs — is defined against the required level for that function, not against the top of the scale. See Function Risk Score, below, for the corrected gap calculation and why it changed.
Worked example — Risk Management at Satellite Orbits F3: this capability scores People 1.0, Process 1.0. Technology and Data are N/A — Risk Management has no meaningful technology or data component — so they're excluded from the average rather than scored 0.
Average = (1.0 + 1.0) ÷ 2 = 1.00, dimensionality 2 of 4.
Under the earlier convention this scored 0.50, not because the capability performed any worse, but because two inapplicable dimensions were averaged in at zero. The corrected figure — 1.00 — is what the two dimensions that actually apply to Risk Management say about it.
How Structural Risk Is Scored (Criticality)
Independent of maturity, every function has a Criticality — how replaceable it is, regardless of how well it currently performs (ROBUSTNESS_TESTING_PROCEDURE_v1.6 Annex A.3, renamed here from the earlier "Step Criticality"; the 1–5 scale and its worked definitions are unchanged). Criticality feeds the Function Risk Score (investment sequencing, below) — it no longer feeds Principle 1, which is now tested directly against geographic configuration (see Principle 1's Measure, below):
| Score | Definition | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | Single point of failure — no substitute pathway exists globally; failure terminates product delivery | ACC/SPOCC (Satellite Orbits F3) |
| 4 | Dominant path — one primary institution; alternatives exist but aren't operationally ready | ITRS Combination Centre at IGN (ITRF F3) |
| 3 | Important but substitutable — meaningful redundancy across multiple institutions | IGS Analysis Centres (12+ independent centres) |
| 2 | Supported — multiple parallel, fully operational institutions | Global Data Centres (CDDIS, IGN, SIO) |
| 1 | Redundant — loss is easily mitigated; many alternatives available | Individual GNSS stations in high-density regions |
Continuing the worked example: Satellite Orbits F3 (the ACC/SPOCC combination step) scores 5 — no backup ACC exists globally, no governed failover protocol exists, and the ACC's transition from Geoscience Australia/MIT co-leadership to Geoscience Australia/NASA GSFC co-leadership (full operational capability expected late 2025) reintroduces U.S. federal political risk. The prior structure — Geoscience Australia (Australian) and MIT (a private U.S. university, not a federal body) — sat entirely outside U.S. federal jurisdiction and remained operationally unaffected by the 2018–2019 U.S. government shutdown (35 days); NASA GSFC is itself a U.S. federal facility.
Asserted Required Level (interim, pending TPWG ratification)
Both Principle 5's floor check and the Function Risk Score (below) measure a gap — how far current maturity sits from what a function actually needs. For the floor checks, ROBUSTNESS_TESTING_PROCEDURE_v1.6 Annex A.8 sets an explicit interim answer: Level 2, "provisional default until reviewed." For the Function Risk Score, Annex A.4 needs a genuine Required PPTD per dimension — and, checked directly against Sections 11 and 18.2, there is no equivalent provisional default for it anywhere in v1.6: Required PPTD is defined only as "TPWG-ratified... Track B, Chair sign-off." No Technical Product Working Group has run that elicitation yet for any of the five products, so a true, TPWG-confirmed Function Risk Score cannot currently be produced.
Rather than leave the Function Risk Score unusable until Track B runs, or quietly fall back to the old ceiling-based proxy under the new formula's name, this rubric introduces an asserted interim Required level — reusing the Capability Evidence Trail vocabulary (confirmed / asserted / considered / queued, Work Assignment 1) this document already uses for exactly this kind of interim call, and scaling it to each function's already-ratified Criticality: the more structurally irreplaceable a function, the higher the bar it must clear before a shortfall is tolerable.
| Criticality | Asserted Required Level (all applicable dimensions) |
|---|---|
| 5 (Single point of failure) | Level 4 (Capable / Managed / Managed / Governed) |
| 4 (Dominant path) | Level 3 (Defined / Defined / Standardised / Standardised) |
| 3 (Important but substitutable) | Level 3 |
| 2 (Supported) | Level 2 (Managed / Repeatable / Available / Aware) |
| 1 (Redundant) | Level 2 |
Every figure produced from this table is labelled "Asserted Required Level — interim, pending TPWG Track B ratification" wherever it appears, and is never presented as a confirmed finding. It stands in place of a real TPWG determination only until one exists.
Principle 1's Measure: the Four-Check Geographic Test
Geographic distribution is checked directly, function by function, against four questions (ROBUSTNESS_TESTING_PROCEDURE_v1.6 Annex A.6) — not inferred from capability maturity, which the procedure's own controls forbid (Annex B.2). Principle 1 is MET only if all four checks pass; any check that can't be evaluated is recorded as an evidence gap rather than forced to a pass or fail.
| Check | Question |
|---|---|
| 1. Coverage | Does the current geographic configuration meet what's actually required for this function to deliver the product? |
| 2. Concentration | What share of operational capacity sits in a single region or site, and would losing it take the product below requirement? |
| 3. Separation | Are the nominally distributed elements genuinely separated, or do they share a failure mode? |
| 4. Sustainment | Are the distributed elements underpinned by durable, funded commitments — or is the distribution nominal? |
Worked example — Satellite Orbits F3 (ACC/SPOCC): using the evidence already published in Work Assignment 2's Satellite Orbits section —
- Coverage — fails. The ACC itself is nominally co-led across two jurisdictions (Geoscience Australia, NASA GSFC), but SPOCC — the actual combination software that performs F3's critical function — exists in only one (GFZ, Germany). The required configuration (an operationally-ready alternative in a second jurisdiction) isn't met by the sub-function that actually matters.
- Concentration — fails. 100% of SPOCC's operational capacity sits at one facility. No demonstrated alternative exists; loss of that facility halts orbit/clock combination for the entire product.
- Separation — not applicable. With only one operational site for the function that matters, there's no second site to test for a shared failure mode; Concentration's fail already governs.
- Sustainment — fails. The ACC's leadership transition (Geoscience Australia/NASA GSFC co-lead, full capability expected late 2025) funds continuity of the ACC's oversight role, but no equivalent documented, funded mandate exists for establishing a second SPOCC-capable combination facility.
Principle 1: NOT MET. The verdict doesn't change from what the retired risk-score threshold already concluded for this function — Satellite Orbits F3 was, and remains, the clearest Principle 1 failure in the assessment — but the reasoning is now a direct test of geographic configuration, not an inference from capability maturity.
Function Risk Score (investment sequencing only)
ROBUSTNESS_TESTING_PROCEDURE_v1.6 Annex A.1 is explicit about what's preserved from the earlier rubric: "a maturity-gap × criticality construction as a continuous, risk-informed ranking tool — retained for investment sequencing, but no longer used as a test of any principle." This section is that construction, corrected per Annex A.4 — it ranks functions for sequencing; it does not, and cannot, test Principle 1.
Dimension gap (d) = max(0, Asserted Required(d) − Current(d)), for each applicable dimension of each capability at a function. Binding dimension gap = the single largest dimension gap across all the function's required capabilities — never an average, and never limited to one capability, so the actual weakest point drives the score. Function Risk Score = Binding dimension gap × Criticality (range 0–20).
Completing the worked example — all five capabilities required at Satellite Orbits F3, Asserted Required Level 4 (Criticality 5, per the table above):
| Capability | People | Process | Technology | Data | Dimensionality | Binding gap (vs. Required 4) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Risk Management | 1.0 | 1.0 | N/A | N/A | 2 of 4 | 3 (People, Process) |
| Knowledge Management | 1.0 | 2.0 | 1.0 | 1.0 | 4 of 4 | 3 (People, Technology, Data) |
| Disaster Recovery and Supply Chain Continuity | 2.0 | 2.0 | 1.0 | 0.0 | 4 of 4 | 4 (Data) |
| Performance Management | 2.0 | 2.0 | N/A | N/A | 2 of 4 | 2 (People, Process) |
| Geodetic Data Products | 2.0 | 3.0 | 3.0 | 3.0 | 4 of 4 | 2 (People) |
Binding dimension gap across the function = 4 (Disaster Recovery and Supply Chain Continuity's Data dimension — 0.0 current against an asserted Required of 4). Criticality = 5 (established above).
Function Risk Score = 4 × 5 = 20
For sequencing investment, scores are classified against the real corrected bands (ROBUSTNESS_TESTING_PROCEDURE_v1.6 Annex A.9 — provisional, pending product-specific thresholds from Section 6.3):
| Score | Classification (provisional) | Indicative use |
|---|---|---|
| 16–20 | Critical | Flag for immediate Working Group attention |
| 10–15 | High | Near-term priority for review |
| 5–9 | Significant | Planned review within the JDP cycle |
| 0–4 | Minor | Monitor |
20 falls at the top of the Critical band. Under the retired ceiling-based method this function scored 18.25 of 25 — High. The corrected method moves it into Critical, not because the underlying evidence changed, but because the binding-gap-across-capabilities approach surfaces Disaster Recovery and Supply Chain Continuity's Data dimension (0.0, no longer masked by averaging against Risk Management's own low score elsewhere), and because the asserted Required Level (4, reflecting Criticality 5) sets a materially higher bar than the old ceiling-based comparison implied for capabilities already scoring reasonably. The qualitative conclusion is unchanged — this is still, by a clear margin, the highest-priority function in the assessment — the corrected method states it more precisely, and slightly more severely.
This score is for investment sequencing only. It does not test Principle 1 (see above) and is not a substitute for TPWG ratification — every figure derived from it carries the "Asserted Required Level, interim" label until real Track B elicitation replaces it. The full cross-product ranking, applying this same method to all functions across all five products, is maintained in Work Assignment 3.
Principle 2's Measure: Political Resilience — Jurisdiction Count
Jurisdiction Count best represents Political Resilience: political risk is a question of which sovereign authorities control a function, so Principle 2 is checked as a structural count, function by function, of how many independent political jurisdictions host the critical function.
At Satellite Orbits F3, the ACC itself is co-led across two jurisdictions (Geoscience Australia and NASA GSFC, USA) — but the actual combination software, SPOCC, runs in a single jurisdiction (GFZ, Germany). The Minimum Capability Target (2+ jurisdictions) is written against the function as a whole; where the sub-function that actually matters most operationally sits in one country, that's flagged explicitly here.
Political risk takes two different forms across workflows, depending on what a product's supply chain actually requires:
Coordination risk — where multiple governing bodies with no unified mandate must align to produce a combined product. No single shutdown terminates production, but degradation of any contributing service degrades the product:
| Workflow | Techniques required | Governing bodies | Coordination risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF) | GNSS, VLBI, SLR, DORIS | IGS, IVS, ILRS, IDS + IAG/GGOS | High |
| Earth Orientation Parameters (EOP) | VLBI (primary), GNSS, SLR, DORIS | IERS + four services | High |
| Global Gravity Field | SLR, GRACE-FO, ground networks | IGeS, BGI, NASA, GFZ + national agencies | High |
Concentration risk — where a critical function sits with a single institution in a single jurisdiction, with no backup and no formal mandate requiring continuity:
| Workflow | Concentration point | Jurisdiction | Concentration risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Satellite Orbits | ACC/SPOCC combination | US federal (NASA GSFC) / Germany (GFZ) | Critical |
| International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF) | IVS correlators (two sites) | EU/NATO jurisdiction | High |
| ITRF | ITRS Product Centre (IGN/Altamimi team) | France | High |
These need different responses. Coordination failures are addressed by mandate and SLAs — governance instruments that impose obligation across multiple bodies. Concentration failures require building new institutions in different jurisdictions — investment and diplomatic action that takes years.
Principles 3, 4, and 6 ask a different kind of question from Principles 1 and 2 — about a product's governance and stakeholder-engagement practices as a whole, drawn from the same PPTD-scored capability data across the State of Geodesy 2026's wider 58-capability, six-domain model. Each uses the exact same floor check Principle 5 uses below — every required capability at or above Level 2, in every applicable dimension — just applied across every capability a product requires in the relevant domain. Principle 5 sits numerically between Principle 4 and Principle 6 below, using this same mechanism scoped to function-linked capabilities — it's kept in its correct sequential position, with a pointer back to this method where needed. Every Level 2 floor referenced in Principles 3–6 is the provisional default per ROBUSTNESS_TESTING_PROCEDURE_v1.6 Annex A.8, standing in until the relevant Technical Product Working Group ratifies a product- and function-specific floor.
Principle 3's Measure: Centralised Accountability — Governance & Strategy Floor Check
Recommended target: every required capability in the Governance & Strategy domain sits at or above Level 2, in every applicable dimension (Level 2 provisional default per Annex A.8, pending TPWG review). The Governance and Strategy domain best represents the Centralised Accountability principle in ensuring each product has a documented mandate, policy framework, and all the capabilities needed for planning and performance management. Checked capability-by-capability, dimension-by-dimension, the same way Principle 5 is checked below: a domain with several strong capabilities can otherwise mask one or two that are barely established.
The State of Geodesy 2026 assessed fourteen capabilities in this domain, and it is the lowest-scoring domain in the entire report. Mandate, Strategic Planning, and Funding and Investment all sit at Level 1 — below this floor on their face, before any dimension-level check is even needed. Risk Management (average 1.00 across its two applicable dimensions — People and Process, per the corrected N/A-exclusion convention above) is tied with several other capabilities for the joint-lowest score recorded anywhere in the assessment, a cluster concentrated entirely in governance and strategic-management functions:
| Capability | State of Geodesy finding | Floor check | Implication for supply chain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mandate | Level 1 — no international body holds authority over GGSC continuity | Fails — Level 1 across applicable dimensions | No entity can compel corrective action when a critical function fails |
| Strategic Planning | Level 1 — no coordinated long-term investment plan across services | Fails — Level 1 across applicable dimensions | Investment is reactive and fragmented; no shared view of priority |
| Funding and Investment | Level 1 — no sustained, independent funding model | Fails — Level 1 across applicable dimensions | No sustained, independent funding model for any critical-path function |
| Risk Management | Lowest score in the entire assessment (avg 1.00, 2 applicable dimensions) | Fails — People and Process both at 1.0 | No systematic identification or management of supply chain risks |
| Disaster Recovery and Supply Chain Continuity | Low | Fails — at least one applicable dimension below 2 | No tested continuity plans exist for critical-path combination functions |
| Legal Framework | Low — no binding international instruments | Fails — at least one applicable dimension below 2 | Supply chain operations rest on voluntary contribution |
Governance & Strategy fails this floor check for every product currently assessed — the same capabilities (Mandate, Strategic Planning, Funding and Investment) are required across all five, and none of the five products has a product-specific departure strong enough to clear them.
Principle 4's Measure: Technical Interoperability — Data Management + Data Products and Software Floor Check
Recommended target: every required capability in the Data Management and Data Products and Software domains sits at or above Level 2, in every applicable dimension (Level 2 provisional default per Annex A.8, pending TPWG review) — the same check as Principle 3, above, applied to this pair of domains instead. These two domains together best represent the Technical Interoperability principle: they hold the data-handling and software capabilities that determine whether one institution's output can actually be used by the next. Checked against the capability-level data (all 24 capabilities across both domains): Data Quality Management and Geodetic Software and Tools both carry a Technology dimension of 1.0 — the same automated-monitoring and tooling gap that recurs across more than a dozen other capabilities throughout this assessment — and both are required capabilities in every one of the five products' F1 and F2 respectively. Principle 4 fails this floor check for all five products, the same as Principles 3 and 6.
Principle 5's Measure: Minimum Capability Maturity — the Floor Check
Principle 5 is the catch-all floor check (Annex A.8): where Principles 3, 4, and 6 check every capability in a specific domain, Principle 5 checks every capability actually required by a function, across all domains — so no capability required by a critical function escapes testing because no principle names its domain. It's checked capability-by-capability, dimension-by-dimension, for the same reason as the other floor checks: an average across several capabilities can hide one that's still barely established.
Recommended target: every required capability sits at or above Level 2 in every applicable dimension, at every function (Level 2 provisional default per Annex A.8, pending TPWG review). This is checked capability-by-capability, dimension-by-dimension. A function can pass Principle 1's geographic test while still failing Principle 5 — the two test structurally different things, one geographic configuration, the other capability maturity, and neither implies the other.
At Satellite Orbits F3, four of the five required capabilities have at least one applicable dimension below Level 2 (Risk Management, Knowledge Management, Disaster Recovery and Supply Chain Continuity, Performance Management) — this function fails Principle 5, independently of its Principle 1 finding above.
Principle 6's Measure: Transparency, Monitoring and Performance Assurance — Floor Check
Recommended target: every required capability in the Engagement & Collaboration domain, plus any monitoring or performance-assurance capability wherever it sits in the capability set, is at or above Level 2, in every applicable dimension (Level 2 provisional default per Annex A.8, pending TPWG review) — matching WA1's updated Principle 6 title and ROBUSTNESS_TESTING_PROCEDURE_v1.6 Annex A.8's own domain-coverage correction, which widened P6 beyond Engagement & Collaboration alone specifically because monitoring capability doesn't live in that domain. The Engagement & Collaboration domain holds the public reporting, outreach, and stakeholder-collaboration capabilities through which supply chain performance becomes visible to Member States and the public; the monitoring half of this principle asks whether anyone can see a problem happening in near-real-time, before it surfaces as a product failure.
That monitoring half currently has no capability to test against. Checked against the full 58-capability label list, there is no match for real-time or continuous technical monitoring anywhere in the model — Network Operations, System Testing and Validation, and Performance Management were each checked individually and cover network resourcing, periodic calibration, and organisational performance respectively, not continuous operational monitoring (Capability Model Change Submission, submission B.2). This is a structural gap in Principle 6's testability, not a scored failure — it's flagged here rather than silently absorbed into the Engagement & Collaboration check alone.
Within Engagement & Collaboration itself: Network Operations (Asset & Infrastructure Management) scores Technology 1.0 — tied with more than a dozen other capability-dimension scores across the assessment, and by itself enough to fail this floor check wherever Network Operations is a required capability. This reflects the absence of automated monitoring of the physical observation network at the acquisition and archiving functions. Further along the chain, the equivalent deficit sits in Risk Management and Performance Management, both already established as Level-1-or-below failures under Principle 3 above: there is no systematic monitoring of whether analysis centres are contributing on schedule, whether combination products are published to specification, or whether distribution endpoints meet any defined service level.
This gap has real operational consequences: the supply chain currently cannot detect its own failures in real time — IGS Technical Reports for 2024 and 2025 have not been published, and the operational impact of recent disruptions only becomes visible retrospectively. Checked against the capability-level data: Engagement & Collaboration fails this floor check for all five products, the same as Governance & Strategy. Two capabilities account for it — Outreach and Public Awareness (People and Process both at Level 1) and Curriculum Development and Educational Program Delivery (Data dimension at 0) — and neither has a product-specific departure on record strong enough to clear them.
JDP Phase Sequencing
Investment is sequenced by horizon — the three horizons set out in Work Assignment 1 (Basic → Reliable → Robust) are what "near-term," "medium-term," and "long-term" actually mean here:
- Horizon 1 (Near-Term): any function or product that fails one or more of the six Minimum Capability Targets — regardless of which principle it fails. A function can land in Horizon 1 by failing Principle 3's governance target even where its Function Risk Score alone looks moderate.
- Horizon 2 (Medium-Term): functions and products that clear all six Minimum Capability Targets and are working toward the Reliable Supply Chain thresholds (formalised governance, monitored SLAs, tested recovery capability). Those thresholds are set through the Technical Product Working Group consultation described below, and sequenced into the Implementation Roadmap (Work Assignment 5) once landed; until then, this band is qualitative.
- Horizon 3 (Long-Term / Robust): the long-term build-out against the Zero Draft's own figures — targets set through the same consultation process, also sequenced in Work Assignment 5.
Within Horizon 1, functions are ranked by Function Risk Score, highest first — this is the most decision-relevant ordering inside the group that already needs near-term action, per the corrected method above. This document works one function through that method in full (Satellite Orbits F3 — Function Risk Score 20, Critical); it does not reproduce the full 25-function cross-product ranking, which now depends on applying the asserted-Required judgment consistently across every function in every product's capability set. That full ranking is maintained in Work Assignment 3, which applies this rubric's method at full scale and reports the complete Horizon 1 list — every function failing any of the six Minimum Capability Targets — alongside the full six-principle assessment for all five products.
Functions not yet assessed for Criticality should be treated as lower bounds. Unassigned functions default to Criticality = 1 pending consultation with IAG and the technique service coordinators.
How Horizon 2 and Horizon 3 Get Set: Technical Product Working Groups
The Minimum Capability Targets in this rubric are Horizon 1 only, by design. Horizon 2 (Reliable) and Horizon 3 (Robust) are set by the people who run each product, through a structured consultation process led by the Technical Product Working Groups described below.
One working group per product — Satellite Orbits, ITRF, EOP, ICRF, and Global Gravity Field — drawn from the relevant technical services (IGS, IVS, ILRS, IDS, IERS). Each group runs a two-stage review:
- Stage 1 — Self-Evaluation / Scoring Workshop: the working group confirms or challenges which capabilities actually apply to their product, rates current maturity per PPTD dimension directly, and defines the PPTD score required to reach Horizon 1, Horizon 2, and Horizon 3 for each capability. This is the review that turns this rubric's asserted baseline (see the caveat above) into a validated one — and it is also where the Horizon 2 and Horizon 3 numeric targets actually come from.
- Stage 2 — Workflow & Bottleneck Review Workshop: the group's scores are mapped onto the product's workflow diagram to identify where current capability falls short of Horizon 1 or Horizon 2, translating gaps directly into investment recommendations.
Recovery Factor — Considered and Deprioritised
An earlier three-factor model was developed and evaluated during preparation of this rubric: Function Risk Score = Binding gap × Criticality × Recovery Factor, where the Recovery Factor started at 1.00 and incremented for each unmet governance-track principle at a function, capped at 1.50. Applied to Satellite Orbits F3 with all four principles unmet, this would have pushed the corrected Function Risk Score materially above the 0–20 scale's own ceiling — itself a sign the multiplier doesn't fit the corrected scale cleanly, on top of the three reasons below.
Deprioritised for three reasons:
- It compounds a speculative judgment on top of published evidence. Asserting which principles a given function falls short of requires expert judgment calls that haven't yet been validated through consultation with IAG and the technique service coordinators.
- Principle 6 (Transparency, Monitoring and Performance Assurance) is a prerequisite for computing recovery capacity empirically — a function with no monitoring is assumed to recover more slowly, but that assumption can't be tested until monitoring actually exists.
- Presenting Principles 2, 3, 4, and 6 as separate findings (above) is more informative to policy makers than collapsing them into a single multiplier — different failures call for different responses, and a single number obscures that.
Reintroduction path: once (a) principle-gap assessments are validated through consultation with IAG and the technique service coordinators (IGS, IVS, ILRS, IDS); (b) monitoring infrastructure exists, enabling Principle 6 to be assessed empirically; and (c) enough event graph history exists to replace structural proxies with observed MTBF/MTBR (Mean Time Between Failure / Mean Time Between Recovery) metrics from the GGSC event log.
Appendix: Research Foundations
- State of Geodesy 2026[^sog2026] — Capability maturity baseline
- Global Geodesy Needs Assessment (2024)[^needs-assessment] — 500+ stakeholders, 110 countries
- 1st Joint Development Plan for Global Geodesy[^jdp]
- Hidden Risk Report (2024)[^hidden-risk]
- FAIR Data Principles: go-fair.org[^fair]
- London Economics (2023): Economic impact of GNSS disruption[^london-econ]
Next
Work Assignment 2 — Critical Product Mapping Report maps each of the five EGV product workflows to named functions, capabilities, organisations and information artifacts — the structural basis these six Minimum Capability Targets are checked against. Work Assignment 3 — Risk Assessment and Gap Analysis applies this rubric's corrected method (Function Risk Score, asserted Required levels, the Principle 1 four-check test) at full scale across all five products' functions, and reports the complete Horizon 1 ranking.
[^sog2026]: United Nations Global Geodetic Centre of Excellence, 2026, State of Geodesy 2026: A Baseline Maturity Assessment, https://www.un.org/globalgeospatial/sites/default/files/2026-05/stateofgeodesy.pdf
[^needs-assessment]: United Nations Global Geodetic Centre of Excellence, 2024, Global Geodesy Needs Assessment, https://ggim.un.org/UNGGCE/documents/20240509-Global_Geodesy_Needs_Assessment.pdf
[^jdp]: United Nations Global Geodetic Centre of Excellence, 2024, 1st Joint Development Plan for Global Geodesy, https://ggim.un.org/UNGGCE/documents/Version_1.0_1st_Joint_Development_Plan_for_Global_Geodesy_EN.pdf
[^hidden-risk]: United Nations Global Geodetic Centre of Excellence, 2024, Hidden Risk Report v1.1, https://ggim.un.org/UNGGCE/documents/20240620-Hidden_Risk_Report.pdf
[^fair]: GO FAIR, FAIR Principles, https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/
[^london-econ]: London Economics / UK Government, 2023, The Economic Impact on the UK of a Disruption to GNSS, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-economic-impact-on-the-uk-of-a-disruption-to-gnss