2010 GGOS Planning Meeting Seventeens Meeting of the GGOS Steering Committee First Meeting of Planning Group on a GGOS Intergovernmental Committee (GIC) February 1-4, 2010 Mayfair Hotel and Spa, Coconut Grove, Florida, USA (map)

Hosted by NASA/JPL and RSMAS

Objectives of the GGOS Planning Meeting

• Articulate the major themes of GGOS with the key questions that we want to answer.
• For each theme what are the applications that we intend to serve/support with geodetic observations and products? Some examples of questions that need to be addressed are:
  • Who needs a global unified height system and for what? How will this system best be defined? Will a geoid-based system serve these applications? How are the national/regional systems going to make use of the global unified system?)
  • What aspects of geohazards are we aiming to support with products (e.g. risk assessments, early warning, disaster damage assessments, general science, etc)?
  • What does society consider useful for sea level forecasting in terms of supporting adaptation and coastal zone policies? Based on these needs, how do we come up with well-defined requirements for geodetic products and observations?
  The introductions to each theme should address the societal applications that we think we might be able to serve/support with global geodetic observations and the relevance of these to the societal applications.
• Identify the key capabilities that we need in order to answer the key questions:
  • Specify the data and interim products needed for each theme and their quality and properties required for each theme (data are the observables; interim (L-2) products are obtained from the combination of several observables, such as the reference frame or the gravity field);
  • Specify the measurements and the measurement properties (accuracy, frequency, etc.) that each theme requires;
  • Specify as best as we can the measurement infrastructure (technique(s), ground network(s), satellite constellation(s), etc.) and data infrastructure (e.g. absolute distance, orientation, range-rate, gravity, surface heights, etc.), that each theme requires;
  • Specify as best as we can additional modeling/algorithm, and analysis capabilities that we will need for each theme;
• Identify the common aspects among the infrastructure and data requirements across the themes; identify which theme is driving which requirement (most stringent conditions):
  • Identify the role of the core sites for each theme; what is required at the core network sites; and what should comprise the core network? What measurements need to be made at the core sites? How do we best make use of existing capabilities?
  • Identify new missions (planned and unplanned) that could play a fundamental role for each theme; is there a tradeoff between ground-based infrastructure and space missions?
  • Identify the studies that need to be conducted to better specify and quantify the above requirements;
  • Identify groups and individuals with relevant knowledge and experience that will lead each GGOS theme to assure the best results;
• Scope out a brief roadmap to bring the theme capabilities to fruition:
  • What benefit can we achieve with what we presently have (infrastructure, data, models, etc)? How should we proceed?
  • What steps will yield the most benefit in the near term? (What is most important to do now?)
  • What is the right strategy to implement the full infrastructure?
• Identify how the GIC Planning Group is going to help us?

Report

• Document from each Theme responding to the questions above (3 pages max).
• Report summarizing the conclusions and recommendations to the items above.