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UN-GGCE Investment Prioritization and Risk Rubric
Work Assignment 1b
Version: 3.2
Date: July 2026 (rubric method dated June 2026; revised from February 2026)
Prepared by: UN-GGCE Technical Writing Team
Reference: Terms of Reference 2 (ToR2) — Work Assignment 1
Supersedes: Version 3.1 (July 2026), Version 3.0 (June 2026 — two-track model), Version 2.0 (June 2026 — three-factor model), Version 1.0 (February 2026)
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; Parts A–F 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). It defines how the assessment converts capability maturity data and supply chain structure into risk scores and investment priorities, so that the recommendations in later work assignments rest on a consistent, defendable method rather than expert judgement alone.
Companion Documents
- Work Assignment 1 Appendix — EGV Data Levels and Supply Chain Tiers: read first if new to the engagement; explains how geodetic product workflows are structured into data levels and supply chain tiers, which this rubric scores.
- Work Assignment 1 — Guiding Principles: establishes the six Guiding Principles this rubric operationalises into a scoring method.
- Work Assignment 2 — Critical Product Mapping Report: applies this rubric's operational track to the five critical geodetic product workflows.
- Work Assignment 3 — Risk Assessment and Gap Analysis: applies this rubric's full method, including the governance risk track, to produce risk findings and investment priorities.
Key Terms and Abbreviations
| Abbreviation | Full term |
|---|---|
| ACC | Analysis Centre Coordinator |
| EGV | Essential Geodetic Variable |
| EOP | Earth Orientation Parameters |
| GNSS | Global Navigation Satellite Systems |
| ICRF | International Celestial Reference Frame |
| ITRF | International Terrestrial Reference Frame |
| JDP | 1st Joint Development Plan for Global Geodesy |
| PPTD | People, Process, Technology, Data |
| SLR | Satellite Laser Ranging |
| SPOCC | Satellite orbit combination software (GFZ/Potsdam) |
| VLBI | Very Long Baseline Interferometry |
Executive Summary
This rubric operationalises the six Guiding Architectural Principles from Work Assignment 1 as a consistent, objective scoring framework. It operates on two tracks. The operational risk track scores every step in the five critical Essential Geodetic Variable (EGV) supply chain workflows on two dimensions — how mature the capabilities at that step are, and how critical the step is to product delivery. The governance risk track assesses cross-cutting supply chain governance failures that cannot be attributed to any single workflow step but constrain the entire supply chain.
The rubric has six parts: the operational scoring method (Parts A–B), the tier risk score and worked example (Part C), the governance risk track (Part D), a principle-level summary for policy makers (Part E), and JDP phase sequencing (Part F).
Conceptual Framework
The rubric is grounded in two standard asset management concepts for the operational track, plus a separate governance assessment:
Asset Reliability — How likely is this asset to fail? Captured by the PPTD Gap (Part A). Low capability maturity is a structural predictor of failure under normal operating conditions. A combination centre with a People score of 1 and no documented succession plan is demonstrably more likely to fail than one with a People score of 4.
Asset Criticality — How much does it matter if this asset fails? Captured by Step Criticality (Part B). This measures structural redundancy: whether alternative pathways exist in the global supply chain if this step is disrupted. A single point of failure with no backup scores 5; a redundant network of parallel institutions scores 1.
Supply Chain Governance — Does the governance structure allow the supply chain to function, be monitored, and be restored? Assessed in the separate governance risk track (Part D). Cross-cutting governance failures — absent mandate, no SLAs, political concentration, no performance monitoring — cannot be attributed to any single workflow step. They are assessed at the supply chain level and reported separately. Gaps against Principle 2, Principle 3, Principle 4, and Principle 6 are captured here.
Where the six principles sit in the model:
| Principle | Role | Part of framework |
|---|---|---|
| Principle 1 — Geographic Distribution | Prevention: physical redundancy reduces failure probability | Step Criticality — geographic scarcity raises the criticality score |
| Principle 5 — Minimum Capability Maturity | Prevention: maturity threshold predicts failure likelihood | PPTD Gap — low maturity directly increases the gap score |
| Principle 2 — Political Resilience | Governance: political concentration limits the pool of actors who can restore the function | Governance Risk Track (Part D) |
| Principle 3 — Centralised Accountability | Governance: SLAs define whether a governed recovery obligation exists | Governance Risk Track (Part D) |
| Principle 4 — Technical Interoperability | Governance: open standards determine whether another institution can replicate the function | Governance Risk Track (Part D) |
| Principle 6 — Transparency | Governance: monitoring enables detection of failure and evidence of recovery capacity | Governance Risk Track (Part D) |
Principle 1 and Principle 5 are embedded in the operational track (Parts A–C). Principle 2, Principle 3, Principle 4, and Principle 6 are assessed in the governance risk track (Part D).
Part A: Capability Maturity Gap (PPTD) — Reliability Proxy
The People, Process, Technology, Data (PPTD) capability maturity framework was developed during the first UN-GGCE consultancy engagement (Terms of Reference 1) and applied at full scale in the State of Geodesy 2026[^sog2026], whose published results provide the maturity baseline used throughout this rubric. Capabilities are assessed across four dimensions on a 1–5 scale (1 = not yet established, 5 = optimised). The PPTD Gap inverts these scores — higher gap = higher investment priority.
PPTD Gap = 5 − average maturity score across four dimensions
All four dimensions are weighted equally. Where a dimension is not applicable to a capability (NA), it is scored 0.
| 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 |
Part B: Step Criticality — Asset Criticality
Step Criticality is an integer from 1 to 5 representing the structural importance of a workflow step to product delivery, independent of maturity. It captures redundancy: whether alternative pathways exist if this step fails. It implicitly captures Principle 1 (Geographic Distribution) — where geographic scarcity means no regional alternative exists, criticality is higher.
| Score | Definition | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | Single point of failure — no substitute pathway exists globally; failure terminates product delivery | IGS Analysis Centre Coordinator/SPOCC (Satellite Orbits Tier 3) |
| 4 | Dominant path — one primary institution; alternatives exist but are not operationally ready | ITRS Combination Centre at IGN (ITRF Tier 3) |
| 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 |
Part C: Tier Risk Score
Tier Risk Score = PPTD Gap × Step Criticality
Scores are classified as follows:
| Score | Classification | Investment priority |
|---|---|---|
| ≥ 20 | Critical | Immediate action required |
| 13–19.99 | High | Near-term priority investment |
| 7–12.99 | Significant | Planned investment within JDP cycle |
| 0–6.99 | Minor | Monitoring and maintenance |
Worked example — Satellite Orbits Tier 3 (ACC/SPOCC Combination):
The ACC/SPOCC combination step is the single point in the pipeline where all upstream redundancy converges into one final product. All five capabilities at this tier have People and/or Process scores of 1–2. Technology and Data dimensions scored 0 where the State of Geodesy 2026 assessment found those dimensions not applicable to a governance capability (NA = 0 per project convention):
| Capability | People | Process | Technology | Data | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Risk Management | 1.0 | 1.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.50 |
| Knowledge Management | 1.0 | 2.0 | 1.0 | 1.0 | 1.25 |
| Disaster Recovery | 2.0 | 2.0 | 1.0 | 0.0 | 1.25 |
| Performance Management | 2.0 | 2.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 1.00 |
| Geodetic Data Products | 2.0 | 3.0 | 3.0 | 3.0 | 2.75 |
Average per capability = (P + Pr + T + D) ÷ 4.
Part A — PPTD Gap: Tier PPTD average = 1.35 (mean of five capability averages above) PPTD Gap = 5 − 1.35 = 3.65
Part B — Step Criticality:5 — no backup ACC exists globally; no governed failover protocol; the ACC function is returning to NASA GSFC, reintroducing the US federal political risk that the GA/MIT structure had previously mitigated.
Tier Risk Score = 3.65 × 5 = 18.25 → High
This is the top-ranked operational risk finding across all five workflows. The full significance of this finding — including the absence of a formal SLA, US federal political concentration, proprietary SPOCC software dependency, and absence of independent performance monitoring — is captured in the governance risk track (Part D) and the principle findings table (Part E). Read together, the two tracks constitute the case for urgent action at this tier.
Part D: Governance Risk Track
The operational risk track (Parts A–C) scores functional supply chain steps. Governance failures operate differently: they are cross-cutting constraints that cannot be attributed to any single tier but determine whether the supply chain can function, be monitored, and recover from disruption. The governance risk track reports these separately.
Governance capability scores
The State of Geodesy 2026 assessed six capabilities within the Governance & Strategy domain. This is the lowest-scoring domain in the entire report (average 1.8/5). Three capabilities — Mandate and Authority, Strategic Planning, and Financial Management — scored at Level 1, the lowest possible rating. Risk Management (average 1.0) is tied with seven other capabilities across the full 58-capability assessment — Strategic Planning, Policy Formulation, Budgeting, Cost Management, Funding and Investment, Innovation Strategy Development, and Model of the Global Geodesy Supply Chain — for the joint-lowest average maturity score recorded anywhere in the State of Geodesy 2026, a cluster concentrated entirely in governance and strategic-management functions rather than technical delivery:
| Capability | State of Geodesy finding | Implication for supply chain |
|---|---|---|
| Mandate and Authority | Level 1 — no international body holds authority over GGSC continuity | No entity can compel corrective action when a critical function fails |
| Strategic Planning | Level 1 — no coordinated long-term investment plan across services | Investment is reactive and fragmented; no shared view of priority |
| Financial Management | Level 1 across all three sub-capabilities | No sustained, independent funding model for any critical-path function |
| Risk Management | Avg 1.0 — lowest score in the entire assessment | No systematic identification or management of supply chain risks |
| Disaster Recovery and Supply Chain Continuity | Avg 1.7 | No tested continuity plans exist for critical-path combination functions |
| Policy and Regulation | Low — no binding international instruments | Supply chain operations rest on voluntary contribution, not obligation |
Two types of governance risk
Governance risk is not uniform across workflows. It manifests in two distinct forms depending on the product's technique requirements:
Coordination risk applies where multiple governing bodies with no unified mandate must align to produce a combined product. The combined product is only as strong as the weakest-governed input. 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 |
| Gravity | SLR, GRACE-FO, ground networks | IGeS, BGI, NASA, GFZ + national agencies | High |
Concentration risk applies where a critical function is performed by a single institution in a single jurisdiction with no backup and no formal mandate requiring continuity. A single political or institutional event can terminate production:
| Workflow | Concentration point | Jurisdiction | Concentration risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Satellite Orbits | ACC/SPOCC combination | US federal (NASA GSFC) | Critical |
| International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF) | IVS correlators (two sites) | EU/NATO jurisdiction | High |
| ITRF | ITRS Product Centre (IGN/Altamimi team) | France | High |
These are different problems requiring 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.
Monitoring as a structural finding (Principle 6)
Network Operations (Asset & Infrastructure Management) scored Technology = 1.0 — tied with more than a dozen other capability-dimension scores across the assessment, including Data Distribution, Disaster Recovery and Supply Chain Continuity, and Knowledge Management, as well as the seven governance capabilities that score 1.0 across all four dimensions. This reflects the absence of automated monitoring of the physical observation network at T0–T1. At T2–T4, the equivalent deficit sits in Risk Management and Performance Management: there is no systematic monitoring of whether analysis centres are contributing on schedule, whether combination products are being published to specification, or whether distribution endpoints are meeting any defined service level.
This monitoring absence is not merely a transparency failure. It means the supply chain currently cannot detect its own failures in real time. IGS Technical Reports for 2024 and 2025 have not been published. The administrative impact of recent disruptions will only become visible retrospectively.
Principle 6 is a prerequisite for computing recovery capacity, not just a reporting requirement. Until monitoring infrastructure is in place, any calculation of how quickly the supply chain recovers from disruption is speculative. This is a primary reason the Recovery Factor has been deprioritised in the current version of this rubric (see below).
Recovery Factor — Considered and Deprioritised
A three-factor model was developed and evaluated during the preparation of this rubric. The formula was:
Tier Risk Score = PPTD Gap × Step Criticality × Recovery Factor
The Recovery Factor started at 1.00 and incremented for each principle gap present at a tier (Principle 2 +0.15, Principle 3 +0.15, Principle 4 +0.20, Principle 6 +0.10), capped at 1.50. Applied to Satellite Orbits Tier 3 with all four gaps present, this yielded a score of 26.25 → Critical.
Rationale for deferral:
The Recovery Factor was deprioritised for three reasons.
First, it compounds a speculative judgment on top of published evidence. The PPTD Gap and Step Criticality scores are traceable to the State of Geodesy 2026 assessment and the endorsed tier framework respectively. Asserting gaps against the principles requires explicit judgment calls about whether a given tier falls short of Principle 2, Principle 3, Principle 4, or Principle 6 — and those judgments have not yet been validated through consultation with IAG and the technique service coordinators.
Second, Principle 6 is a prerequisite for computing recovery capacity empirically. The Recovery Factor as designed is a structural proxy — it assumes that a tier with no monitoring recovers more slowly, but this assumption cannot be tested until monitoring exists. The governance risk track (Part D) identifies Principle 6 absence as a structural finding in its own right. The rubric should not present a precision that the underlying data cannot yet support.
Third, the governance risk track captures Principle 2, Principle 3, Principle 4, and Principle 6 findings in a form that is more informative to policy makers than a single multiplier. Collapsing the US political concentration risk, the SLA gap, the SPOCC software dependency, and the monitoring absence into one number obscures the distinctions between them — distinctions that lead to different policy responses.
Version 2 path: The Recovery Factor will be reintroduced once: (a) principle gap assessments have been validated through consultation with IAG and the technique service coordinators (IGS, IVS, ILRS, IDS); (b) monitoring infrastructure is established, enabling Principle 6 to be assessed empirically rather than inferred; and (c) sufficient event graph history exists to replace structural proxies with observed MTBF/MTBR metrics derived from the GGSC event log.
Part E: Findings Organised by Guiding Principle
The table below maps the current high-scoring findings to the six principles across both tracks.
| Principle | Track | Most acute current failure | Affected step(s) | Score | Policy action required |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Principle 1: Geographic Distribution | Operational | Southern hemisphere and polar observatory gaps mean the EOP and ITRF pipelines depend disproportionately on northern hemisphere sites for geometric coverage | EOP Tier 0 (7.67), ITRF Tier 0 (6.21) | Significant | Fund regional observatory hubs in Global South and polar regions (JDP Objective 1.2) |
| Principle 5: Minimum Capability Maturity | Operational | Archiving and correlation tiers score an average maturity of 2.0 across ITRF, EOP, ICRF and Gravity — the universal weak point in the supply chain, driven by Network Operations technology sub-score of 1.0 | ICRF Tier 1, EOP Tier 1, ITRF Tier 1 | High–Significant | Establish 2.5 average maturity as minimum threshold for critical-path designation; fund targeted capability building at archiving tier |
| Principle 2: Political Resilience | Governance | ACC function returning to NASA GSFC reintroduces U.S. federal political risk that the GA/MIT structure had mitigated; IVS correlator capacity concentrated at two NATO-jurisdiction sites | Satellite Orbits Tier 3 (18.25), ICRF Tier 1 (15.00) | High | Formalise international break-glass protocol with non-U.S. backup institution; fund third operational VLBI correlator outside existing jurisdictions |
| Principle 3: Centralised Accountability | Governance | No SLA, MOU, or formal mandate governs the ACC function, the ITRS Product Centre at IGN, or the IVS correlation facilities; all operate on voluntary institutional contribution | Satellite Orbits Tier 3, ITRF Tier 3, ICRF Tier 1 | High | Transition critical-path functions to formalised operational agreements with binding continuity obligations (JDP Objective 1.1) |
| Principle 4: Technical Interoperability | Governance | SPOCC software is proprietary, deployed by the ACC but architecturally dependent on GFZ; CATREF combination software at IGN is similarly locked to the Altamimi team | Satellite Orbits Tier 3, ITRF Tier 3 | High | Require open-source release or architecture escrow for all critical-path combination software as a condition of mandate renewal |
| Principle 6: Transparency and Accountability | Governance | No IGS Technical Reports published for 2024 or 2025; no independent monitoring of supply chain performance exists at any tier; recovery capacity cannot be computed until monitoring infrastructure is established | All workflows at Tier 2–Tier 4 | Structural gap — not yet scored | Mandate machine-readable annual performance reporting as a condition of all new operational agreements; fund administrative capacity at under-resourced institutions; treat Principle 6 remediation as a prerequisite for Recovery Factor computation in version 2 |
Part F: JDP Phase Sequencing
For roadmap sequencing, all workflow steps are sorted by Tier Risk Score. The distribution determines phasing:
- Top 25% of scores → Phase 1 (Immediate Action)
- Middle 50% → Phase 2 (Near-Term Investment)
- Bottom 25% → Phase 3 (Optimisation and Maintenance)
The five highest-scoring steps in the current assessment all fall within Phase 1: Satellite Orbits Tier 3 (18.25), ICRF Tier 1 (15.00), ITRF Tier 3 (13.75), EOP Tier 3 (12.75), and EOP Tier 1 (12.00). These collectively constitute the minimum viable intervention set for a resilient global geodesy supply chain.
Governance risk findings from Part D are not scored within the tier risk bands but inform Phase 1 urgency. The absence of a mandate for critical-path functions (Principle 3) and the political concentration at Satellite Orbits T3 (Principle 2) elevate the Phase 1 findings from High to urgent regardless of the numeric score. Policy makers should read the operational score and the governance track findings together before prioritising investment.
Scores for tiers not yet assessed for Step Criticality should be treated as lower bounds. Unassigned tiers default to Step Criticality = 1 pending consultation with IAG and the technique service coordinators.
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]
[^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