Report of the IAG Secretary General

Transcription

1 Report of the IAG Secretary General 1 Introduction Report of the IAG Secretary General Secretary General: Hermann Drewes (Germany) Assistant Secretary: Franz Kuglitsch (Germany) The duties of the IAG secretary General include to serve as secretary of the General Assembly, the Scientific Assembly, the Council, the Executive Committee and the Bureau; arrange for meetings of these bodies, distribute promptly the agenda and prepare and distribute the minutes of all their meetings. to act as Director of the IAG Office; to manage the affairs of the Association including finances as per Bylaws 42(b), attend to correspondence, and preserve the records; to circulate all appropriate information related to the Association; to prepare the reports of the Association's activities; to perform such other duties as may be assigned by the Bureau. The function of the Secretary General is unpaid, and only expenses incurred in connection with the functions and duties are repayable. Administrative activities IAG Council The Council met during the IUGG General Assembly 2015 in Prague, Czech Republic. The list of national correspondents forming the IAG Council was updated regularly in contact with the IUGG Secretary General. The Council was informed by about activities of the Bureau and the Executive Committee. IAG Executive Committee (EC) The Executive Committee is composed by the IAG President, immediate Past-President, Vice- President, Secretary General, the four Commission Presidents, the Chairperson of GGOS, the President of the COB, three representatives of the Services, and two members at large. Four EC meetings were held from July 2015 to April 2014: Prague, Czech Republic, July 2015, San Francisco, CA/USA, December 2015, Potsdam, Germany, April 2016, and Vienna, Austria, April Minutes were prepared for the EC members, and the meeting summaries were published by in the IAG Newsletter and in the Journal of Geodesy (Springer-Verlag). They are available online in the IAG Homepage ( and in the IAG Office Homepage ( IAG Bureau The IAG Bureau, consisting of the President, the Vice-President and the Secretary General, had steady contact by , held teleconferences and met before EC meetings. The President and Secretary General participated in the IUGG Executive Committee Meetings.

2 Report of the IAG Travaux de l AIG IAG Office The IAG Office assists the Secretary General in the administrative organization of all IAG business, meetings and events. This includes the budget management, the record keeping and fee accounting of the individual IAG membership, and the preparation and documentation of all Council and Executive Committee meetings with detailed minutes for the EC members and meeting summaries published in the IAG Newsletters and the IAG Homepage. Important activities were the preparation and execution of the joint IAG-IASPEI Scientific Assembly 2017, the edition of the Geodesist s Handbook 2016 as the organisational guide of IAG with the complete description of the IAG structure (reports, terms of reference, documents), and the Mid-Term Reports (Travaux de l AIG Vol. 40). The accounting of the Journal of Geodesy and the IAG Symposia series, both published by Springer, were supervised. Travel grants for young scientists to participate in IAG sponsored symposia were handled. Communication and Outreach Branch (COB) The task of the COB is the IAG public relation in particular by maintaining the IAG Homepage and publishing the monthly Newsletter online and in the Journal of Geodesy. It also keeps track of all IAG related events by the meetings calendar. The IAG newsletter is sent to all IAG Officers, individual members, the Presidents and Secretaries General of the IUGG Associations and liaison bodies. The COB prepared, printed and distributed the IAG leaflet and IAG brochure and participated in the preparation of the Geodesist s Handbook Commissions and Inter-Commission Committee The four IAG Commissions (Reference Frames, Gravity Field, Earth Rotation and Geodynamics, Positioning and Applications) and the Inter-Commission Committee on Theory established their structure and scientific programme for the period (published in the Geodesists Handbook 2016) and coordinated their implementation. They reported regularly to the EC and prepared the mid-term reports for publication in the IAG Reports (Travaux de l AIG). Each Commission maintained its individual Homepage and held several symposia, workshops and other meetings (see below). All of them are organising a symposium at the IAG-IASPEI Scientific Assembly Services There are thirteen IAG Services, which split into three general fields: geometry (IERS, IDS, IGS, ILRS, and IVS), gravity (IGFS, ICGEM, IDEMS, IGeS, IGETS and BGI) and overlapping (BIPM and PSMSL). All of them maintain their own Homepages and data servers and hold their administrative meetings (Directing Board or Governing Board, respectively). They published their structure and programme in the Geodesists Handbook 2016, and the progress reports in the IAG Reports (Travaux de l AIG). Most of the Services held international meetings (see below). Global Geodetic Observing System (GGOS) The GGOS is IAG s observing system to monitor the geodetic and the global geodynamic properties of the Earth as a system. A new structure was implemented during the period 2015 to It includes a Consortium composed by representatives of the Commissions and Services, the Coordinating Board as the decision-making body, the Executive Committee, and the Science Panel. The scientific work of GGOS includes Bureaus, Focus Areas, and Working

3 Report of the IAG Secretary General 3 Groups. A new GGOS Coordinating Office was established for all organizational affairs, to maintain the GGOS website ( an exhibit booth, and brochures and books. Several retreats (GGOS days) were held for updating the structure. Coordination with other organisations IAG maintains close cooperation with several organizations outside IUGG. There were frequent meetings with the Advisory Board on the Law of the Sea (ABLOS, together with IHO), Group on Earth Observation (GEO, with IAG as a participating organization), International Standards Organization (ISO, TC211 Geographic Information / Geomatics), Joint Board of Geospatial Information Societies (JBGIS), United Nations Offices for Outer Space Affairs (UN-OOSA, with participation in Space-based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response, UN-SPIDER, and International Committee on Global Navigation Satellite Systems, ICG), and the United Nations Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM). Individual IAG membership At present IAG counts 222 individual members, students are free of charge. Meetings IAG sponsored meetings from July 2015 to July 2017 were: International DORIS Service (IDS) Analysis Working Group Meeting, Greenbelt, MD, USA, October International Laser Ranging Service (ILRS) Analysis Working Group Meeting, Matera, Italy, 24 October International Laser Ranging Service (ILRS) Technical Workshop 2015, Matera, Italy, October Latin American Reference System (SIRGAS) Symposium, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, November th International Symposium on Mobile Mapping Technology (MMT2015), Sydney, Australia, 9-11 December IGS Workshop, Sydney, Australia, February 15 19, 2016; 9th IVS General Meeting, Ekudeni (Johannesburg), South Africa, March 13 17, 2016; 3rd Joint Symposium on Deformation Monitoring, Vienna, Austria, March 30 April 1, 2016; 4th IAG Symposium Terrestrial gravimetry: Static and mobile measurements, Saint Petersburg, Russia, April 12 15, 2016; European Reference Frame Symposium (EUREF 2016), San Sebastian, Spain, May, 25-27, 2016; 18th Geodynamics and Earth Tide Symposium 2016, Trieste, Italy, June 5 9, 2016; Joint IAU/IAG/IERS Symposium Geodesy, Astronomy and Geophysics in Earth Rotation (GAGER2016), Wuhan, Hubei, China, July 18 23, 2016; Int. Symposium on Geodesy and Geodynamics (ISGG2016), Tianjin, China, July 22 26, 2016; 1st International Conference on GNSS+ (ICG+2016), Shanghai, China, July 27 30, 2016; IAG Commission 4 Positioning and Applications Symposium, Wroclaw, Poland, September 4-7, 2016; 18th General Assembly of WEGENER Understanding earth deformation at plate boundaries, Ponta Delgada, Azores, Portugal, September 12-15, 2016; 1 st Joint Commission 2 and IGFS Meeting, International Symposium on Gravity, Geoid and Height Systems 2016 (GGHS2016), Thessaloniki, Greece, September 19-23, 2016; First International Workshop on VLBI Observations of Near-field Targets, Bonn, Germany, October 5-6, 2016; 20th International Workshop on Laser Ranging, Potsdam, Germany, October 9 14, 2016; GGOS Days, Cambridge, MA, USA, October 24 28, 2016;

4 Report of the IAG Travaux de l AIG IDS Workshop, La Rochelle, France, October 31 November 1, 2016; Reference Frame for South and Central America Symposium (SIRGAS2016), Quito, Ecuador, November 16 18, 2016; 1st International Symposium - Applied Geomatics and Geospatial Solutions, Rosario, Argentina, April 3 7, 2017; 9th IVS Technical Operations Workshop, Westford, MA, USA, April 30 May 4, 2017; EUREF 2017 Symposium, Wroclaw, Poland, May 17 19, 2017; DORIS Analysis Working Group Meeting, London, UK, May 22 24, 2017; 21st Meeting of the Consultative Committee for Time and Frequency, Sèvres, France, June 6-9, 2017; 1st IUGG Symposium on Planetary Science, Berlin, Germany, July 3 5, 2017; IGS Workshop 2017, University of Paris-Diderot, France, July 3 7, 2017; IAG/GGOS/IERS Unified Analysis Workshop, Paris-Diderot, France, July 10 12, 2017; 2017 GNSS Tsunami Early Warning System Workshop, Sendai, Japan, July 25 27, 2017; IAG and IASPEI Joint Scientific Assembly, Kobe, Japan, July 30 August 4, The following IAG Schools were sponsored from July 2015 to June 2017: VII SIRGAS School on Reference Systems, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, November nd IVS Training School on VLBI for Geodesy and Astrometry, Hartebeesthoek, South Africa, March 9 12, 2016; ISG Geoid School, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, June 6 10, 2016; SIRGAS School on Vertical Reference Systems, Quito, Ecuador, November 21 25, 2016; Publications The Journal of Geodesy, the official IAG scientific periodical with an Editor in Chief approved by the IAG Executive Committee, published continuously monthly issues in Springer-Verlag. The IAG Symposia Series published the following volumes : VIII Hotine-Marussi Symposium on Mathematical Geodesy 2013, IAG Symposia Vol. 142, Springer 2016; IAG Scientific Assembly, Potsdam 2013, IAG Symposia Vol. 143, Springer 2016; 3rd International Gravity Field Symposium 2014, IAG Symposia Vol. 144, Springer 2017; International Symposium on Geodesy for Earthquake and Natural Hazards (GENAH), IAG Symposia Vol. 145, Springer 2017; IAG Commission 1 Symposium REFAG 2014, IAG Symposia Vol. 146, Springer The IAG Reports (Travaux de l AIG) Vol. 39 (2015) and 40 (2017) include reports of all IAG components. Awards, anniversaries, obituaries The following medals and prices have been awarded: Levallois Medal to Rainer Rummel, Germany (2015); Bomford Prize to Yoshiyuki Tanaka, Japan (2015); Young Author Award to Xingxing Li, Germany (2015); Young Author Award to Olga Didova, The Netherlands (2016); 42 Travel Awards to young scientists for participation in 7 IAG sponsored symposia with a total of EURO (15 awardees for IAG-IASPEI 2017).

5 Report of the IAG Secretary General 5 Obituaries were written for former IAG officers and outstanding geodesists who passed away: Bob Schutz, USA, ; Suriya Tatevian, Russia, ; Graciela Font, Argentina, ; John Wahr, USA, ; Hermann Seeger, Germany, ; Alexander Kopaev, Russia, ; Heinz Henneberg, Venezuela, ; Barbara Kolaczek, Poland, ; Bernard Guinot, France, ; Klaus Linkwitz, Germany, Hermann Drewes, IAG Secretary General