The cross-cutting assessments studies were undertaken under the strand 2 activities of the Initial Period. They constituted the basis and the technical justification of the proposals for the Implementation Period of GMES.

As first function, they were assembling, developing and synthesising the documentation and expertise coming from different sources:

• The lessons learned from the thematic projects,
• The inputs from Member States national projects,
• The state of the art knowledge coming from former EC initiatives under 4th and 5th Framework Programmes and Joint Research Centre activities.
• The inputs from the ESA GMES Services Element consolidation phase together with inputs from the Data User Programme and Earth Observation Market Development programme,
• The GMES Forum,

Cross-cutting studies were also building upon and further developed the INSPIRE position papers issued during the autumn of 2002 on closely related issues.

Their second function was to provide a transversal regards across thematic projects taking into account users requirements and giving advises for actions to be carried out by the stakeholders on the following issues:

• Analysis and structuring of users requirements,
• Scientific issues linked to gaps in knowledge, models and technology;
• Technical issues include the adequacy of monitoring networks and systems, data quality and coherence, like continuity over time, comparability across space and thematics; data standards; data processing and archiving; space and in-situ data integration;
• Identification and prioritisation of the policy requirement driving the definition of required information products, like, among others: indicators, maps, warnings etc.
• Data policies, which includes accessibility, management, cost for ex.
• Organisational, institutional funding and policy issues; consultation and co-operation between data producers and information users.
• Societal and economic aspects.