Open Geospatial Carbon Registry
Turning user evidence into technical requirements
Sitting between users and developers on a Horizon Europe project building open infrastructure for carbon-removal certification.
Context
OGCR is a Horizon Europe project developing open infrastructure for carbon-removal certification, spanning 27 partners across Europe and Canada.
Tension
Infrastructure of this kind is usually specified by the people building it. The harder question is whether what gets built matches what the people who will have to use it actually need, and that evidence has to be gathered before the technical decisions harden.
Role
Stakeholder engagement and mapping · User research: interviews, surveys, workshops · Synthesis into user requirements · Policy engagement via the OGCR Policy Working Group
Marta worked across stakeholder engagement, user research and the translation of user evidence into requirements. Her work included stakeholder mapping, interviews, surveys and workshops, policy engagement through the OGCR Policy Working Group, synthesis for the Stakeholder Analysis and User Requirements work, and dissemination and exploitation outputs that connected user needs with the technical build.
System
The methodology behind the headline numbers: 31 interviews, 35 survey responses and more than 40 workshop participants, with seven original stakeholder categories narrowed to five priority user groups. That distinction matters, because the seven categories and the five validated groups are not the same thing.
Approach
Map the stakeholders, gather evidence across three instruments rather than one, narrow categories to validated priority groups, then hand findings to the technical teams in a form they can build against.
What I Made
Synthesis feeding directly into technical direction.
More than 40 participants across the partner network.
Through the OGCR Policy Working Group.
Connecting user needs with the technical build.
Evidence
What Changed
User evidence became an input into the technical design rather than a report filed alongside it.
Reflection
I came away seeing stakeholder engagement less as consultation and more as an input into the technical design itself.