Meeting reports

Minutes of the EC meeting in Nice, 28-29th April, 2000, held in connection with the EGS XXV general assembly.

The following were present.
F. Sanso President
G. Beutler First Vice President.
D. Blitzkow Second Vice President
C. C. Tscherning Secretary General
O. Andersen Ass. Sec. General
K. Keller Ass. Sec. General
C. Rizos Secretary Sec 1.
C. K. Shum President Sec 2.
M. Sideris President Sec 3.
G. Boedecker Secretary Sec 3.
B. Heck President Sec 4.
C. Wilson President Sec 5.
V. Dehant. Secretary Sec 5.
H. Drewes President Comm VIII.
C. Boucher President Comm X
M. Vermeer. President Comm XIII
S. Zerbini President Comm XIV.
I. Mueller Past President
K. P. Schwarz Past President

1. Approval of agenda
F. Sanso presented the agenda containing several additions, and this was approved.

2. Adoption of minutes of Como EC meeting
The Minutes of the EC meeting on 28-29th November, 1999, in Como, Italy, had been distributed by e-mail and were published as part of the IAG newsletter in JoG 74/02. They were adopted by the EC without corrections.

3. Proposal for an IAG retiree association.
I. Mueller had distributed a proposal for establishing an association of IAG retiree/seniors/past officers as a forum to contribute expertise of value to IAG. The association would be open to all IAG fellows and associates, and have meetings at Scientific Assemblies and an electronic newsletter. The EC agreed on the general idea of having such an association, and awaits the formal proposal from I. Mueller at the SA in Budapest.

4. IAG Scientific Assembly in Budapest 2001.
I. Mueller presented the status of the preparation of the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) for the SA in Budapest (3-7 Sept 2001). The preparations are under control and the LOC has established a web page for communication. The Academy of Sciences, where the SA will be held, has 11 meeting rooms of various sizes (max 320 persons). The LOC requests that IAG specify requirements with respect to rooms and sizes at least 3-5 weeks before the SA. Details on the scientific program are given under item 8.

5. Feedback on Travaux/Handbook and IAG newsletter.
O. Andersen informed that the Travaux was distributed on CD and is also available from the Central Bureau (CB) as a book. The Geodesist's Handbook is published, but only a few members of the EC had received it so far. O. Andersen reported that Springer takes up to 2-3 month in printing issues, and also sometimes merges issues which delays publication of the IAG newsletter. This is problematic, and EC stressed that it should be avoided in the future. The IAG Secretary will contact the Editor-in-chief on this issue.
Possible distribution of an electronic quarter-annual newsletter via e-mail was considered.

6. Collaboration with ION. (Institute of Navigation).
The president of ION has approached IAG for coorporation on a GPS book jointly written by authors from IAG and ION. The EC decided to ask F. Sanso to contact R. Neilan, P.Willis, G. Hein or W. Gurtner to establish liaison and to define a fruitful coorporation with ION, based on areas where IAG has strength

7. Report from the review committee (herinafter RC)
G. Beutler presented the report of the IAG review committee (RC) and went through the Executive summary available at ftp://ubecx.unibe.ch/aiub/iag Only part 5(IAG mission and objectives) and part 6 (IAG structure) were subsequently discussed in detail. Once the comments made below have been given to the RC they have the mandate to create the proposal that should be presented to the EC in March 2001 and subsequent to council at the SA in 2001.

IAG mission and objectives.
A revision of the suggested IAG mission and objectives was carried out, and it was recommended that two more points should be added: a preamble on the usefulness of geodesy for society and another bullet on emerging technologies.

IAG structure.
It was decided by vote that the IAG structure should have commissions, services, and a communication/outreach branch and a few projects represented on the same level. Projects on this top level will be established by the EC. GIGGOS may be one of them, but has not been selected at this point in time.
There was agreement on establishing a communication and outreach branch, and that a call for participation should be drafted. It was recommended by the EC that the review committee consider the flexibility within the IAG structure and allows for establishment of inter-commission/service bodies (i.e., for geodetic theory or techniques, which presently resides within commissions)

Structure of the IAG Central bureau, IAG bureau, EC and Council. G. Beutler pointed out that the commission names were not fixed by the proposal, and that he would appreciate input from EC members on this.

It was strongly stressed that there should be no appointed members in the EC. Services, commissions and members can nominate members, which will subsequently be elected by the Council.
The importance of the Council was stressed. A suggestion for improved communication between the EC and the Council would be to initiate informative meetings at the SA.

Individual Membership and Nominations/Voting.
K. P. Schwarz introduced possible scenarios for IAG personal membership based on the IAVCEI model. It was clarified that the issue of personal membership is not necessarily linked to the review process, but that it would be advantageous to introduce it at the same time if the EC agrees to go this route. In the IAVCEI model, personal members have benefits (i.e. discounts on participation in General Assemblies and journal subscription, voting rights). The EC gave its approval in principle to develop a proposal for personal membership that has different levels of membership fees (developing countries) and benefits. It also decided that voting rights should not be given to individual members. The proposal will have to be approved by the EC.

Finally the EC agreed to invite I. Mueller and J. Kauba to join the review committee for finalising the proposal for IAG restructuring.

8. Scientific program for the IAG Scientific Assembly (SA) in Budapest.
K. P. Schwarz had prepared and distributed a proposal for the scientific program for the SA in Budapest in 2001. Four symposia are proposed, two of them will run in parallel every day. Friday will be devoted to the IAG restructuring. The possibility of awarding a prize for the best student presentation using the IAG fund was discussed.
It was decided to publish all presented and poster papers whose mauscripts are available at the meeting on a CD without review. A selected number of representative papers will be reviewed for publication in the IAG/Springer symposia series. The registration fees will be increased to include the cost of producing the proceedings. The review process should be strict to be representative of the quality of science that IAG stands for. J. Adam will be asked to serve as editor of the proceedings. It was left to the convenors to accept/reject abstracts and carry out the review process. Besides the CD containing all abstracts and remaining un-reviewed papers, there will be an official IAG CD containing mid term reports of the bodies (especially the SSG) of the IAG.

9. Collaboration with sister societies (FIG, ISPRS, etc) after IUSM
It was stressed that the collaboration should be on the working level and as concrete as possible. Obvious collaboration should be co-sponsoring of each other?s symposia.

10. ISPRS has requested support for becoming a member of ICSU
The Bureau has issued a positive response to the ISPRS request for ICSU membership.

11. Report from the WG on Education
The report of the WG was presented by C. Tscherning. It was questioned whether there should be any “checking” of teaching material, and it was agreed that only the functionality of the links from the homepage to the proposed material will be checked. C. Tscherning was elected as president of the Committee on Education.

12. Report from the Committee for Developing Countries (CDC).
D. Blitzkow had found it difficult to make progress in the work. The goals of the former CDC had been reviewed, and a number of concrete activities were taking place in South America. Despite IAG had allocated USD 4000 to the CDC it was not at all sufficient to start any meaningful activity due to the large cost of air-travel within Africa.
A workshop will be organized in May 2000 in Sao Paulo on the South-American geoid cosponsored by the Int. Geoid Service (IgeS). G. Beutler referred to the position paper of J. Manning, which contained useful considerations concerning the developing countries. J.Manning had also pointed to the activities of the UN regional Cartographic Conferences. It was concluded that we have to start with local geodesists, and in this sense the schools were a good entry point.

13. Discussion of IAU recommendation.
E. Groten had informed the Bureau about the IAU request of having a reference value of the gravity potential for time-corrections. It was recommended to use the best current value.

14. Request from GALOS to Recognize Galo Carrera as an IAG Fellow
GALOS had requested that the work of Galo Carrera was recoginzed by IAG. The EC decided to award him the fellowship of IAG.

15. IAU request of IAG representative to IAU Commission 19.
Clark Wilson was proposed, and accepted.

16 IAG Sponsored meetings.
To be summarized from the IAG homepage. J. Manning has requested the IAG endorsement of a regional workshop in Mongolia. An IAG representative was requested. The meeting is recognized as a fine initiative, and J.Manning will be asked to represent IAG. A meeting on Recent Crustal Movements in Helsingfors in August has been organized, and could be in conflict with the Scientific Assembly. It was felt that the way in which the first announcement of this meeting used the IAG name was inappropriate.
This was conveyed to the organizers by M.Vermeer. S.Zerbini is advising the LOC with respect to the program. Com. XIV will sponsor the meeting.

17. IAG collaboration with EGS and AGU.
IAG SSG co-sponsorship is possible together with AGU/EGS at international meetings. This would be a way to achieved IAG goals. IAG SSG could be used as a bridge between AGU and EGS. IAG ought to be visible, by co-sponsering sessions etc. F. Sanso will contact AGU and EGS concerning collaboration.

18.Young author's award
F. Sanso refered to the letter of P. Teunissen, editor-in-chief of the JofG, which had been distributed in advance. Of the four candidates proposed. Dr. Xu. was unanimously chosen for his paper "Biases and the accuracy of, and an alternative to, discrete nonlinear filters", Published in JoG, Vol. 73, pp. 35-46, 1999.

19. Gravity field service.
A meeting will be held in Milan concerning unification of the three gravity services. BGI, IGS, IETC. NIMA might provide a new GDEM (SRTM (100-200m)) to improve global gravity. The EC encouraged this initiative.

20. Next meetings.
Next EC meeting: (EGS 2001 26-30 of March) 30-31/3 2001. Major items will be IAG restructuring, and SA planning.

Ole B. Andersen