Here we provide information to some of the agenda points, that are not meant to be included on the public page.
- Hans-Peter Plag, 10 November:
Dear Colleagues,
during the Seventh Meeting of the GGOS Steering Committee in
San Francisco, December 12, 2006, we will also discuss
potential regional implementations of GGOS.
The issue of regional implementations came up for two reasons,
one being a better linkage of and support for GGOS in the main
geographical regions. The other reason is that the current
number of seven Members at Large in the GGOS Steering Committee is
in conflict with the IAG By-Laws, which only make room for
two such members. The main reasoning for the large number was
a better representation of the geographical regions in the
Steering Committee. The By-Laws specify that the chairs of
sub-projects are members of the Steering Committee. Therefore,
having regional implementations as GGOS 'sub-projects' would
ensure the representation of the regions in the Steering Committee
without increasing the number of Members at Large about the
two foreseen by the IAG By-Laws.
However, setting up a good model for regional implementations
requires careful considerations. Taking for example Europe,
we have the ECGN, EUREF, EPIGGOS, NGOS, WEGENER, CEGRN,
and maybe others I overlooked. All these organizations either
explicitly stated that they want to contribute to GGOS or
potentially could contribute. During the SC6, it was pointed out
that regional implementations can end up in a big mess.
Therefore, GGOS needs to address a number of point. For example,
do we want one regional implementation in each region, which then would
act as an umbrella for the relevant organizations in the region (which I
understand as being on the level of Europe, South, North, Latin America,
Australia, Africa, and maybe two or three Asian regions) and
also link to sub-regional groups (like NGOS, which is sub-regional in
the sense I understand region)? Or do we want to adopt the GEO approach
of Participating Organizations with these being on very different
geographical levels from global to sub-regional?
In preparation of the discussion at SC7, we would like to ask you to
prepare some ideas on regional implementations. It would be ideal
if you together, based on your experience with your regions, could
prepare a brief summary of how you see the role and function of regional
implementations in GGOS and what structure you would prefer and
recommend for GGOS to adopt. I would appreciate if you could provide
your input in written form about a week before the meeting, so that
it could be included in the meeting documents. It would also be very
good if one of you could present your input at the SC7.
Best regards
Hans-Peter Plag
for the GGOS Executive Committee
- Luiz Paulo Fortes, 22 November:
Dear Hans-Peter and colleagues,
This is a very interesting issue indeed. From my perspective, it seems to me
that a structure similar to the one that is working in IAG Commission I would
be very adequate. IAG Comm I has a Subcommission on Regional Reference Frames
(SC 1.3) which is also subdivided into the following "SubSubcommissions":
- Europe
- South and Central America
- North America
- Africa
- Asia-Pacific
- Antarctica
This structure has been working fine so far - at least from the SIRGAS point of view, with the upcoming integration of Central American countries to the project (we have a meeting in Costa Rica next week with 6 countries representatives out of 7 confirmed!). Thefefore I think GGOS could try to start functioning with a similar structure, with a general regional coordinator who would be part of the GGOS Steering Committee and would establish the links to regional coordinators for each region (that could be the 6 listed above). This similarity would work fine in South and Central America, as the contact person for reference frames in each country of the region would probably be the most appropriate person to also coordinate national efforts to develop GGOS.
In terms of organizations that could contribute to GGOS, the general regional coordinator
or each regional coordinator could play the role of establishing the link with them,
depending on the scope of the organization, i.e., if it is a organization that works
in more the one region the general regional coordinator could deal with it; if it
is a regional organization, the corresponding regional coordinator could do it.
I hope this helps.
Best regards, Luiz Paulo
- Markku Poutanen, November 23:
Dear All,
as a reply to Hans-Peter's mail, and a comment to Luiz's mail, we have
discussed the topic in the Nordic Geodetic Commission (NKG). Some years
ago NKG established a task force, NGOS (Nordic Geodetic Observing
System) to do basically same things regionally what GGOS is doing
globally. Our aim is to act as a regional implementation (and
densification) of GGOS. In the NKG we have a 50+ years experience on the
co-operation in the Nordic area.
The area covered by the NGOS includes not only Fennoscandian postglacial
rebound area, but also Iceland, Greenland, Svalbard, and also North
Atlantic, and a great part of Arctic seas up to the North Pole. The area
covered by NGOS is larger than the continental Europe.
In this area interests and problems are different than in most of the
Europe. Therefore, we have the opinion, that division of regional GOSes
based only on continents is too simplified. It does not take into
account various conditions and differences in different areas. NGOS
region is just one example on this.
Another aspect deals with current organisational structure. Because all
of the work is done on voluntarily basis, based on participation of
national mapping authorities, Universities and research institutes,
there already exist local contacts and structure which will be used on
GOS level, too. It means that regional GOSes must be close enough to the
researchers, so that they find it meaningful to voluntarily participate.
If people see no benefit on participation, why they should put their own
time and money on something far-away "useless" things. We should
therefore respect existing natural contacts and co-operation.
If the division of local GOSes is made in a coordinated way, we see no
specific problems why the number of regional GOSes should be limited to
the number of continents. There are already a number of existing groups
which eventually could develop their work toward the requirements of GOS.
Also, there can be regional overlapping. It is diffcult to imagine a
complete system covering everything and all data forms regionally. More
likely the development is leading to a specified participation, and in
such cases the most natural place to coordinate the work is on the GGOS
level. It means that one group or organisation is collecting certain
type of data, and in the same region, another "GOS" will take care of
something else.
A counter-argument on this development could be that all regional GOSes
could be lumped under one, say European, GOS. But why we should increase
one additional layer of administration there? It will not improve the
situation, and there is no need to increase administration just for
administration. And what to do, for instance, with Wegener if they want
to participate? Will they be included in European or African GOS?
The only drawback I see is the number of people in the GGOS steering
group. But does it matter; after all there will be not so many regional
GOSes on the globe. And for such voluntarily participation, let's keep
administration as simple and as small as possible. GGOS is solely based
on the work people are willing to do for it.
Therefore in the NKG we are in favour of more liberally defined regions
and tasks for regional GOSes. After all, the goal is to reach as good
and as comprehensive GGOS as possible, and at the same time also serve
local and regional needs.
Unfortunately, I am not able to participate the SC7 in San Fransisco in
December. However, Bjorn Engen will come and he promised to give our
NKG/NGOS contribution in the meeting.
with best regards,
Markku Poutanen
chairman of the NGOS Task Force
- Susanna Zerbini, November 24:
Dear Colleagues,
following Luiz and Marku recent e-mails, I send you copy of
an e-mail concerning the GGOS regional issue I sent to Hans-Peter
some time ago and which most likely was not distributed to all of you.
These are a few thoughts which appears to be in line with the other
comments I read till now.
1) Some coordination will be necessary, at least in order to
rationalize the activities being developed (and to know how) in
each single regional activity. However, we shall try to minimize
as much as possible any additional "burocracy" and/or over-
coordination and to avoid to repeat the same things over and over
again. I mention WEGENER as an example which is familiar to me
since it will actively contribute to "GGOS regional".
WEGENER is well-coordinated in its interior, it is now well-coordinated
with the "outside world" with EUREF and it is a member (therefore
coordinated within) of the TOPO-Europe project recently selected by the ESF.
In my opinion WEGENER and/or TOPO-Europe and/or EUREF do not need
any further coordination but only need to provide GGOS with a proposal
concerning their contributions and need to provide an interface with GGOS.
2) The reasoning might be a bit different when dealing with projects that are not so
well established and that are representative of more local realities. I am not
saying that these would be less important, we might well need also local information.
I am only saying that it might be difficult in these cases to have the same type
of interface as with the major regional projects.
3) I think that GGOS shall start to interact with the major regional projects (at least
one per continent) and proceed from this point to interact with more localized projects
whenever proved necessary.
With my best regards.
Susanna
- Richard Wonnacott, December 1:
Dear Colleagues
I have read with interest the comments from Hans-Peter, Luiz Paulo, Markku and Susanna.
It is clear that the level organisation and participation in GGOS related activities
is very different in various parts of the world. We go from the very organised
structures and projects of Europe to a very basic new organisational structure
in Africa where the only real continental geodetic activity is in the AFREF
project. Even this is not dedicated to GGOS but certainly has the potential
to contribute to GGOS. Apart from a few north African countries participating
in WEGENER there nothing near the sophistication of geodetic activity as in
Europe or even South America for that matter which may mean requiring a
different approach for each regional case. I think Luiz Paulo's approach
to South America is sound and could probably also work for Africa - in
fact this is the only way it will work in Africa. I'm not sure what to
propose for Europe considering Marku's and Susanna's sound arguments but
perhaps Susanna's point 3 is the way move forward initially.
"3) I think that GGOS shall start to interact with the major regional
projects (at least one per continent) and proceed from this point to
interact with more localized projects whenever proved necessary."
Regards
Richard
- Johannes Ihde, December 4:
Dear Hans-Peter, dear all,
How to transport and succeed new visions, ideas, strategies and - faiths inside a well established community is a complex problem and not easy to solve.
First of all: For me there is still a confusion about the mission of GGOS if I read on the GGOS home page in the second sentence: "It (GGOS) provides observations of the three fundamental geodetic observables and their variations, that is, the Earth's shape, the Earth's gravity field and the Earth's rotational motion." Is it really a goal of GGOS to provide observations and products?
What is the situation?
IAG has a long-time tradition, the fundamentals of Geodesy are clear i.e., e.g. in form of the three pillars. IAG has changed its structure in 2003 to better fulfil the mission of IAG. Okay, it looks quite good.
The head of IAG is the scientific work, done in the frame of the commissions, sub-commissions, projects, and services. The workhorses or the backbone of IAG are their services organising observations, processing and providing the products. They are basis and value of IAG. The heart of IAG are the people, scientists and engineers, with their continuous daily work. Not to forget: There are many national agencies, universities, bodies which finance the contributions to all levels and groups of IAG.
During the last years, several European initiatives were related to the IAG project GGOS.
The European Combined Geodetic Network (ECGN) was initiated in 2002 as a common project of the IAG Sub-commission for geodetic reference systems in Europe EUREF and the IGGC Sub-commission for Europe. The ECGN was conceived from the beginning as a GGOS related project. ECGN is a kinematical network of selected European reference stations at which several geodetic observation techniques are combined: time series of GNSS observations, precise levelling and tide gauge records with gravity field related observations (gravity, Earth tides). At present the ECGN contains about 45 stations.
NGOS is a similar initiative, which sets special emphasis upon the Fennoscandian land uplift. There are good and narrow connections between EUREF and NKG. There is no contradiction or competition to the other European IAG projects or IAG working groups.
The regional GGOS implementation: What is really necessary?
For Europe I see a number of projects, groups and IAG Sub commissions, which absolutely have already taken up and realize the GGOS thought. There are already relations between the groups, e.g. EUREF and Wegener plan a common symposium within some years. EUREF also invites Wegener representatives to Technical Working Group meetings and vice versa EUREF is also present with Wegener. Between EUREF and NGOS there is a good relation not only by the ECGN. These relations work also due to very personal connections and build on the good experiences of former common work. Of course not all efforts are successful. So EUREF tries for many years a cooperation in the European gauge project ESEAS , which, till now, has not seriously led to a success. Also an additional structure of GGOS will not change anything in this.
EPIGOSS was for me a test bed for a GGOS substructure. In practice there were two or three meetings and I cannot remember any concrete results. I have not observed that somebody has missed EPIGOSS in the last two years. Structures without concrete scientific and technical tasks are not viable. Why should we establish them first?
I see no big mess for the IAG groups in Europe. But, if the message of GGOS is not clear we could come into a big mess and confusion with a regional implementation.
How to proceed?
First of all GGOS Steering Committee has to start with an analysis of the situation in the regional IAG groups, their own mission and the definition of the goal of a regional implementation and if yes, what is really useful.
For the decision on the further procedure for the regional GGOS implementation it has to be taken into account that the IAG has already established firmly established structures with commissions and sub commissions or services. It would be fatal if parallel structures were built up by GGOS.
>From my point of view the structure of GGOS should be flat, i.e. GGOS is a project with outward communication by order of the IAG and inward communication via the existing IAG structures. I agree with Susanna that some coordination is necessary but each additional bureaucracy will disable initiatives and inventiveness.
GGOS will not be able to organize geodesy with its facets all over the world. The realization of the vision of GGOS must not be over-organized. Finally it depends on the experiences and the possibilities of the regional groups how GGOS will establish. The colleagues in IAG will understand the mission of GGOS if it is then clearly defined and can be communicated. The power and the experiences of the local working groups and projects are strong enough to realize the thoughts of GGOS. Surely, between the regional groups there are differences in the perception and their possibilities so that we will hardly succeed in building a global homogeneous entity.
>From my experience it does not make sense to additionally create an organization that does not directly deal with the development and realization of geodetic products. We do not need an umbrella for the already existing umbrellas. We need ideas, experiences, and a good working atmosphere.
For me GGOS provides a vision. That can be useful for the future development of IAG, especially for outward development. One of the goals of GGOS is to bridge to other geosciences. Anyway, GGOS will only be a success story together with the established geodetic community.
Generally there is nothing to be said against inviting regional representatives to the GGOS Steering Committee or establish them as members.
With my best regards
Johannes
- Gary Johnston, December 6 (submitted by Chris Rizos):
Hans-Peter
This is a reply from Gary Johnston, regarding GGOS Regional Implementations. Australia is of course part of the Asia-Pacific region, and what Gary does/can do is important.
CR
Geoscience Australia would like to endorse the views expressed by Luiz Paulo below regarding regional structures under GGOS. Currently the Asia Pacific region is represented by the IAG SC1.3 : Asia-Pacific. This sub-commission represents the interests of the many nations in the Asia Pacific Region. It also has very strong links to the United Nations Permanent Committee on GIS Infrastructure for Asia and the Pacific Region (PCGIAP) Working Group 1 - Regional Geodesy, which coordinates the "Asia and the Pacific Regional Geodetic Project (APRGP)". The PCGIAP consists of representatives from national agencies throughout the region. By closely aligning the work programs and objectives of IAG SC1.3 and PCGIAP geodesists in the Asia Pacific region are working towards effective data sharing arrangements and a better understanding of the complex tectonic motions that are present. The results of this work are contributed through Geoscience Australia to the ITRF as a regional solution.
Under the mandate of GGOS the IAG SC1.3 Asia Pacific may need to be revitalised with an update of membership since it has been somewhat dormant since the retirement of John Manning several years ago. It remains however that the existing structure is likely to be the optimum solution for our region.
Regards
Gary J
- Hans-Peter Plag, December 10:
Dear All,
thank you very much for your input to this rather important discussion.
With this e-mail, I would like to add my own personal answers to the
questions posed in my original e-mail. This time, I am not speaking
as the Vice-Chair of the GGOS Steering Committee but rather just as one
member of the community.
I see two main goals for the regional implementations, namely
(1) to get the regions better represented in the GGOS Steering
Committee, and to make this representation compliant with the
IAG By Laws, and
(2) to get GGOS promoted and supported in the regions.
Point (1) includes a rather formal component (compliance to IAG By Laws), which we need to take into account.
My comments on (1):
===================
If the IAG By Laws are not modified (which appears difficult), then
the number of Members at Large needs to be reduced to two. The door
to the representation of regions in the Steering Committee would then
be through GGOS sub-projects, for which the By Laws state that the
chairs of sub-projects are members of the Steering Committee. Thus, in
order to get regions represented in the Steering Committee, regional
GGOS sub-project need to be defined formally, and each will have to elect a chair in a somehow formal way. In order to achieve a minimum formally acceptable level, these sub-project would have to document that they actually represent the region and that they have some formal procedures to determine the chair.
In order to keep the effort for GGOS at a reasonable level, it is clear
that GGOS cannot deal with a large number of regional projects and
sub-regional organizations. The example of the Global Ocean Observing
System (GOOS) shows that without well defined regions and organizations
representing these regions, a number of conflicts and
ambiguities can be expected. GOOS chose a model of regional
alliances with the number of alliances per region not really limited.
This is leading to an increasing number of organizations claiming
that they are alliances of GOOS with a number of them not really
contributing, following or being compliant to GOOS. In my
opinion, this cannot be the model for GGOS. If there is not a dedicated
partner for GGOS in each region, it will be exceedingly difficult to
maintain a sufficient dialog between GGOS and the regions.
A large number of sub-projects would also inflate the size of the
Steering Committee. It would reduce the influence of the IAG
Commissions and Services in the Steering Committee and give unacceptably
high weight to the regional and sub-regional projects. Thus, GGOS would
have to find rules to limit the number of sub-projects by specifying
criteria for what can be a sub-projects. For me, these criteria would have to be simple. To develop such criteria on a basis other than the geographical regions themselves would be rather complicated and
still could lead to an uncontrolled inflation of the Steering Committee.
Thus, we are back to what I said above.
In order to have full control on the number of regional representatives
in the Steering Committee and to have simple criteria for regional
sub-projects, I suggest the rule: One GGOS Sub-Project per region, with
the request that this Sub-Project is truly representing the region
and the relevant regional and sub-regional organizations and projects.
In regions where no such organization exists, GGOS may have to contact
some of the best developed organizations and ask them to create a
simple regional umbrella organization with the sole task to facilitate
coordination of the relevant regional activities. This organization then
could act as a GGOS sub-project. Of course, these sub-project would have
to be recognized by GGOS and thus get the IAG stamp.
Here, Europe could act as an example. The creation of EPIGGOS had the
goal to establish a regional partner for GGOS (hence the name) as well
as a regional voice of all those contributing to relevant geodetic
activities in the region. Being open for all regional and sub-regional organizations and projects, EPIGGOS would easily be able to demonstrate
its regional mandate to GGOS and thus be recognized as the GGOS regional
sub-project for Europe. Of course, this would require someone to wake up EPIGGOS, which currently seems to be in hibernation (see Johannes Ihde's comment).
My comments on (2):
Regional GGOS sub-projects would not only facilitate coordination
needed to achieve sufficient representation of the regions in
the GGOS SC, but also might facilitate regional integration.
If open enough, they also might help to ensure that everybody feels appropriately represented in GGOS. The stronger representation of GGOS
in the regions could be achieved with something like AFRIGGOS, ASPAGGOS, SCAGGOS, NAGOOS, EPIGOOS. I do not see the need to have a regional
organization for Antarctica. In terms of the regional sub-projects, I am
not talking about the actual activities in a particular region but rather organizational issues ensuring that regional players are
connected to GGOS. This is similar to the fact that GGOS is not
implementing instruments and gathering observations (and thus not
duplicating any such effort, as Johannes Ihde and some others seem
to fear) but rather an organizational and conceptual umbrella for the
IAG Services actually doing the job. The regional sub-projects of GGOS
would do the same for the region: making sure that all relevant regional
and sub-regional organizations are represented. At the same time, these
GGOS sub-projects would engage in the promotion of GGOS standardization
and the coordination of contributions to GGOS. Moreover, they might
provide a stronger regional voice to get funding, to talk to
governments, etc.
In summary, I think, regional GGOS sub-projects are a very helpful
options in order to reconcile the current conflict of the SC
with the By Laws, ensure regional representation in the GGOS SC, and
facilitate promotion of GGOS in the regions.
I am looking forward to a fruitful discussion of this issue at SC7.
Best regards
Hans-Peter Plag