This may be of general interest. A colleague of mine was looking for studies that demonstrate the costs and benefits of standardization. He found this interesting
study from NASA entitled “Geospatial Interoperability Return on Investment Study”. See http://www.ec-gis.org/sdi//ws/costbenefit2006/reference/ROI_Study.pdf. This suggests that we would gain efficiency by trying to create some interoperability standards across IPY.

-m.