Subject: [IGSMAIL-268] Baltimore Oversight Committee Meeting
From: G. Beutler
Date: 8 JUN 1993 14:14:15

IGS Electronic Mail        8-JUN-1993 14:14:15       Message Number 268
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From: G. Beutler
Subj: Baltimore Oversight Committee Meeting
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***                        Summary of the 5th                           ***
***        5TH IGS Oversight Committee Meeting in Baltimore             ***
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5th IGS Oversight Committee Meeting in Baltimore
------------------------------------------------

Only two months after the 4th IGS Oversight Committee Meeting in
Berne the 5th Meeting took place in Baltimore on 27 and 28 May, 1993
during the 1993 AGU Spring Meeting.

Despite the very short time interval between the two meetings progress was
made in different areas. Let me briefly summarize the important results of
the meeting below.

1. Future Meetings
   ---------------

David Boal and Jan Kouba from Energy, Mines and Resources Canada kindly
agreed to host a small IGS workshop with the emphasis on the routine IGS
processing (Global Analyses) in the week of 12 October 1993.  The main
topic of the participants invited to the workshop will be the coordination
of the analysis as performed at the IGS processing centers.  The precise
time frame and the set-up will be defined later by Jan Kouba and Clyde Goad
(analysis Center Coordinator).

Martine Feissel from the Observatoire de Paris offered to organize a
combined IERS/IGS workshop in Paris in spring 1994 (21 - 26 March 1994) in
collaboration with the French Institut Geographique National.  It is
planned to reserve the first two days (Monday and Tuesday) for IERS, the
third will cover both, IERS and IGS topics, the last two days (Thursday and
Friday) are reserved for IGS.  It is of course planned to schedule meetings
for the IERS Directing Board and the (future) IGS Governing Board during
this week (possibly also on Saturday, 26 March).

The chairman thanked David Boal, Jan Kouba, and Martine Feissel for
their willingness to organize the next IGS workshops.

2. The Terms of Reference
   ----------------------

The Terms of Reference were iterated several times between the Berne and
the Baltimore IGS Meetings. In Baltimore they were finally accepted as the
official document to be sent to the IAG.

There was one substantial change: instead of having two coordinatores (an
Analysis Center Coordinator and a Product Coordinator) it was decided to
have only one coordinator, called Analysis Center Coordinator, who will be
responsible for both, Analysis Center coordination and product
coordination (in particular the combination of the processing center's
products into a single set of products). It was furthermore discussed
whether or not this coordinator should be included in the Governing Board.

After this revision the Terms of Reference were accepted by a vast majority
of the 16 IGS Oversight Committee members present at the Baltimore meeting.

3. Confirmation of Participation,Election of the Voting Members
   of the future Governing Board
   ------------------------------------------------------------

The chairman informed the Oversight Committee that all major institutions
which participated in the 1992 IGS Test Campaign also confirmed their
participation in the future official IGS by either answering the letter
sent out on 31 March, 1993 or by giving verbal committment to be followed
by a formal letter in the near future.  A list of all confirmed
participating institutions will be distributed by IGS Mail in the near
future.

The IAG representative in the Oversight Committee, Prof. Ivan I. Mueller,
then presented the nominations for six members of the future IGS Governing
Board (the three other members will not be elected, but either be appointed
(IERS- and IAG- representatives) or be an "ex officio" voting member of
the Governing Board (director of the Cenral Bureau)).

The situation was "cristal clear" (Ivan's words) for the processing center
representatives:  Gerhard Beutler, Yehuda Bock, and Jan Kouba (in
alphabeitc order) got clear majorities.  The picture was not so clear in
the case of the data centers (1 representative) and of the network (2
representatives).  In accordance with the just adopted Terms of Reference
it was therefore decided to consider the three processing center
representatives as elected, whereas the data center- and network-
representatives were elected at the meeting.  It was also necessary to
define the term-lengths for the elected members.  The result is as follows:

      Elected Voting Members of the First IGS Governing Board
     _____________________________________________________________

     Name             Representing    Organization    Term Length
     _____________________________________________________________

     Gerhard Beutler  Proc. Center   AIUB, Switzerland   4 years
     Yehuda Bock      Proc. Center   SIO,  U.S.A.        2 years
     Jan Kouba        Proc. Center   EMR,  Canada        2 years

     Carey Noll       Data Center    CDDIS, U.S.A.       4 years

     John Dow         Network        ESA,   Germany      2 years
     Bjoern Engen     Network        ST-K,  Norway       4 years
     _____________________________________________________________
     AIUB : Astronomical Institute, University of Bern
     SIO  : Scripps Institution of Oceanography
     EMR  : Energy, Mines and Resources, Canada
     CDDIS: Crustal Dynamics Data Information System
     ESA  : European Space Agency
     St-K : Statens Kartverk, Norway

Nomination letters and election ballots have been deposited with the
Central Bureau and are available for inspection from Ruth Neilan.

4. Central Bureau Activities
   -------------------------

Ruth Neilan presented the hardcopy version of the Newsletter recently sent
out by IGS Mail. She also informed about the the state of the network, and
about the state of assembling the IGS site catalogue. This document was
iterated several times and will now be sent to all network/station
responsibles. It is assumed that this catalogue will become available
(e-mail and hardcopy) in the near future.

5. Epoch related Events
   --------------------

Peter Morgan developed his ideas concerning (a) the definition of an IGS
polyhedron and (b) the next Epoch campaigns. It was first decided that no
official Epoch Campaign should be organized in 1993 (the schedules of the
participating organizations would not allow that). Peter then strongly
supported the idea of organizing an official IGS Epoch Campaign around
August 1994.  The decision was postponed to autumn 1993.

The IGS Oversight Committee is fully aware of the necessity to have
fiducial stations in large numbers for regional geodynamics purposes.  It
is also fully aware of the increasing number of (either permanently or
temporarily occupied) GPS sites.  It was argued that the IGS should be
aware of such activities (by maintaining catalogues at the network centers
including site lists and an index of the acual observations) but that it
would not make sense to concentrate the observations from all these sites
at the global data centers. Regional organizations have to be in charge for
the actual organization.

But, in order to avoid mistakes made in the past, the announcement of a future
Epoch Campaign by the IGS Oversight Committee must be accompanied by a list
of fiducial sites that are expected to be observed.  It may be appropriate to
recruit these Fiducial Sites from the growing number of permanent regional
sites.  Additional fiducial sites of course may be added by regional
organizations.  Let me add that from my point of view it is neither
necessary, nor may it be justified, to let these data (we are talking about
100 to 200 sites here) flood the global data centers.  The issue needs to
be settled in the near future.

6. Action Items
   ------------

 - the proposal for the official establishment of the IGS on 1 January 1994
   will be sent to IAG in June 1993.
 - the proceedings of the Bern IGS workshop will be finished in June.
 - the plan for the fiducial sites has to be prepared.
 - after having the first reactions from IAG (expected around the Beijing
   meeting) a last Oversight Committee Meeting will have to be organized to
   get ready for the 1 January 1994.

                                                 Gerhard Beutler
                                                 Chairman
                                                 IGS Oversight Committee