Finance executives are tasked with maximizing financial return while minimizing financial risk to maintain the long-term financial health of their organizations. For a financial executive, the key criteria when considering a new strategy or technology often include how it can enable effective risk mitigation, financial performance and regulatory compliance. EO can offer a range of economic benefits for organizations, including: –Improved financial forecasting: EO provides valuable data that can enable a financial leader to forecast macroeconomic market trends more accurately, enabling more informed financial planning and investment strategies. Demand signals that manifest through physical characteristics – such as the number of cars in a particular retail store’s parking lot or the number of ships in a particular port – can often be better understood using EO, leading to data- driven financial planning decisions. –Increasingly effective risk mitigation: Financial executives can use EO data to assess how extreme weather events, like floods and wildfires, might affect their assets. The United Nations estimates that $44 trillion of economic value generation is moderately or highly dependent on nature and its services and, as a result, exposed to risks from nature loss.9 Given this dependency, the loss of natural ecosystems and biodiversity poses substantial risks, including those pertaining to resource scarcity, ecosystem service disruption, regulation and reputation. Financial executives can leverage EO to gain an improved understanding of these risks and support the development and implementation of strategies to mitigate their financial exposure.2.2 EO for finance executives Technology executives play a critical role in ensuring that an organization’s technology infrastructure is forward-thinking, efficient and aligned with strategic business goals. This responsibility includes managing the integration of new applications into the overall information architecture and technology strategy. EO can enhance an organization’s existing technology suite to better enable broader strategic goals with: –Timely insights: Unlike data-gathering methods that may rely on manual reporting or site visits that can take days or weeks to update, EO provides timely access to critical information, allowing for faster interventions. Moreover, many EO platforms – complemented by burgeoning AI capabilities – now offer pre-analysed, ready-to- use insights, allowing organizations to reduce the time-consuming process of data analysis. This equips business units with actionable intelligence on demand, improving their ability to respond to emerging challenges and opportunities. –Improved data quality: EO data enriches the depth and accuracy of insights by providing an additional layer of information that complements existing systems without overhauling them. It provides more context for decision-making, especially when combined with internal company datasets, such as operational, supply chain or sales data. Additionally, EO can serve as a secondary source of corroboration for ground-level observation and reports. By cross-referencing EO data with existing datasets, organizations can validate findings so that decisions are based on reliable, accurate and traceable information. This view enables business units to make more informed, data- driven decisions that account for multiple variables and contexts. –Monitoring of environmental footprint: Today, achieving environmental, social and governance (ESG) targets and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is a high priority within organizations, and according to Gartner’s 2022 sustainability survey, 90% of executive leaders agree that technology is essential to improving sustainability.10 However, accurately tracking an organization’s technology footprint remains a challenge. EO can help by providing comprehensive, up-to- date insights, including for high-energy and high-usage technologies (such as AI). This enables technology executives to monitor their environmental footprint more effectively, manage resource consumption and align with ESG goals to ultimately support sustainable business growth and compliance.2.3 EO for technology executives The Executive’s Playbook on Earth Observation: Strategic Insights for a Changing Planet 17

The Executive%E2%80%99s Playbook on Earth Observation