GGOS Working Group on GEO Relations: Record of Past Activities

GEO Work Plan 2009-2011

The GGOS WG on Geo relations was tasked by the GGOS EC to comment on Version 2 of the GEO Work Plan 2009-2011. However, no comments were submitted to the GEO Secretariat. The relevant documents were

• a letter from the GEO Secretariat Director introducing Version 2 of the GEO 2009-2011 Work Plan (pdf)
• Version 2 of the GEO 2009-2011 Work Plan submitted for official review (pdf)
• Annex 1 to the GEO 2009-2011 Work Plan V2 summarizing development guidelines and schedule (pdf)
• Annex 2 to the GEO 2009-2011 Work Plan V2 tracking details of the evolution from 2007-2009 Work Plan V6 to 2009-2011 Work Plan V2 (pdf)

Version 1 of the GEO Work Plan 2009-2011 is kept here for historical reasons:

• a letter from the GEO Secretariat Director introducing Version 1 of the GEO 2009-2011 Work Plan (pdf)
• Version 1 of the GEO 2009-2011 Work Plan submitted for technical review (pdf)
• Annex 1 to the GEO 2009-2011 Work Plan V1 summarizing development guidelines and schedule (pdf)
• Annex 2 to the GEO 2009-2011 Work Plan V1 tracking details of the evolution from 2007-2009 Work Plan V6 to 2009-2011 Work Plan V1 (pdf)

6th ADC Meeting, February 6-7, 2008

• GEO Draft CfP for the GEO Portal: The GEO Secretariat has prepared a Draft CfP for the GEO portal (pdf), which was discussed during the sixth ADC meeting in Ispra, Italy. This CfP could be of interest for the CfP for the GGOS Portal as it addresses many relevant issues.
• Best Practice Wiki: GEO has established a wiki for best practices. This is available at http://wiki.ieee-earth.org. GGOS needs to look at this and decide whether contributions should be made.
• Report on Task AR-07-03: A report was given on Task AR-07-03 (see the presentation ...). It was asked what the anticipated time schedule is for reaching to a global unified height system.

GEO-IV Plenary and Ministerial Summit, Cape Town, South Africa, November 28-30, 2007

At the GEO meetings in Cape Town, GGOS was represented by the GGOS chairs Markus Rothacher, Hans-Peter Plag and Ruth Neilan (see the chairs ...). In a statement delivered by the Chair of GGOS, Markus Rothacher, GGOS emphasized the importance of an operational core for the sea level, water cycle, and geohazards components of the geodetic observing system (read the statement ...). GGOS was also represented in the Exhibition of the Fourth Plenary meeting of the Group on Earth Observation (GEO) with a booth featuring among others a CHAMP model and a visualization of the changing Earth gravity field (see the booth ...).

GGOS Contribution to the preparation of the Ministerial Summit, November 30, 2007, Cape Town, South Africa

GGOS contributed to the preparation of the Earth Observation Summit in two ways:

• IAG was represented in Task Force 2, which had the task to prepare the Progress Report for the Summit. The representative was Hans-Peter Plag. The Progress Report is available as pdf
• Under the lead of IAG/GGOS, the Task Team of Task AR-07-03 prepared a proposal for an Early Achievement, which was accepted and included in the Annex to the Progress Report. The Early Achievement report is available as pdf.

GEO Task Sheets

The Task sheets for the task of the 2007-2009 Work Plan are available from the GEO Ftp site at ftp://ftp.wmo.int/Projects/GEO/TaskSheets/.

Further developments of GEO Workplan 2007-2009

In the preparation of the Version 3 Work Plan, GGOS had interacted with the GEO Secretariat through both written inputs and oral communciations. As a result, the Work Plan includes task AR-07-03 "Global Geodetic Reference Frames". This task provides an unique opportunity to interact with the GEO Secretariat and the GEO Plenary over the coming years, and thus to promote the work of GGOS in its importance for Earth observations and other applications.

In spring 2007, negotiation between GEO Secretariat and GGOS concerning the detailed task sheet for task AR-07-03 led to a task sheet that was a combination of the proposals for two separate Tasks (see below). The originally proposed Task Sheets are available as pdf and pdf, respectively.

GEO Workplan 2007-2009

The GEO Work Plan for 2007 to 2009 was accepted during the Third GEO Plenary Meeting held on 28-29 November 2006 in Bonn, Germany. In the preparation of the Version 3 Work Plan, GGOS has interacted with the GEO Secretariat through both written inputs and oral communciations. As a result, the Work Plan includes task AR-07-03 "Global Geodetic Reference Frames". This task provides an unique opportunity to interact with the GEO Secretariat and the GEO Plenary over the coming years, and thus to promote the work of GGOS in its importance for Earth observations and other applications.

In spring 2007, negotiation between GEO Secretariat and GGOS concerning the detailed task sheet for task AR-07-03 led to a task sheet that was a combination of the proposals for two separate Tasks (see below). The originally proposed Task Sheets are available as pdf and pdf, respectively.

GEO-III

At GEO-III, which took place on November 28-29, 2006 in Bonn, Germany, IAG was represented by Markus Rothacher, Hans-Peter Plag, and Susanna Zerbini. Also present were the GGOS Steering Committee members Bente Lilja Bye (for ESEAS) and Bernd Richer (for Germany). No report was prepared.

GGOS Contribution to the preparation of the GEO Work Plan 2007-2009

The GEO Work Plan for 2007 to 2009 was prepared in several iterative steps over the period from May 2006 to November 2006. GGOS provided input to the various steps with the main goal to ensure an improved reflection of the importance of the geodetic reference frames and geodetic observations in this three years plan, compared to the 2006 Work Plan.

A draft outline was sent out in May 2006, and comments were invited by May 26, 2006. Based on input from the GGOS Steering Committee, the GGOS Executive Committee prepared a comment on the draft outline, and submitted this to the GEO Secretary.

IAG/GGOS also reacted on the version 1 of the Work Plan. Together with the Steering Committee, the GGOS EC developed and proposed a task on reference frames with the goal to "Ensure the availability of accurate, consistent, homogeneous, long-term stable, global geodetic reference frames as a mandatory framework and the metrological basis for Earth observation." The task proposal is made available for historical reasons as pdf. This task was included in the next version of the Work Plan, i.e. Version 2, although only the title of the task is given there.

The Version 2 was released on August 1, 2006. Comments on this version were due by October 2, 2006. Subsequent to the publication of Version 2, the GGOS/IAG Representatives to the GEO Committees and Working Group were asked to provide further comments on the work plan. Based on the received input and also based on the discussions at the UIC meeting on September 5-7, 2006, in Ottawa, a new task was proposed, with the preliminary title "Establish links to relevant user communities in the nine societal benefit areas and identify their requirements concerning georeferencing and geodetic reference frames".

The comments that were finally sent to GEO before the deadline are available as pdf. The second task proposal for the task US-07-P3 is available as pdf. This new task also required a revision of the previously proposed task, and the revised task proposal isavailable as pdf.

The Version 3 of the Work Plan was made available in October 2006. Unfortunately, the new Task Proposal was not accepted by the GEO Secretariat, with the main reasoning that the GEO Executive Committee had asked the GEO Secretariat to reduce the number of tasks in the 2007-2009 Work Plan and to work towards larger, more comprehensive tasks. The GEO Secretariat therefore decided to combine the two task proposals into one reference frame-related task covering also the user requirements and user linkage.

IAG input to the Work Plan 2006

For historical reasons, we provide here also some information on the process of refining the Work Plan 2006. GEO-II defined the GEO Work Plan for 2006 as a living document that was further developed during 2006 by the various GEO Committees and WGs. The version provided here is as of January 9, 2006. For the most recent version, please check at GEO.

The GEO Task List Matrix for 2006 as of February 10, 2006, gave an overview of who is working on what. The GGOS GEO representatives discussed the task list after the GGOS Retreat and prepared input to the process (see the respective minutes available at the Steering Committee meeting page for the Retreat.)

The work plan was revised and detailed by the GEO Committees and WG in a sequence of meetings in spring 2006. IAG/GGOS GEO representatives used these meetings to input the comments of IAG/GGOS into the process.

GEO-II

At the GEO-II meeting, which took place on December 14-15, 2005 in Geneva, GGOS was represented by Markus Rothacher and Hans-Peter Plag. See their Report from GEO-II ...