Draft Minutes of the Third Meeting of the ESEAS Governing Board

Draft Minutes of the Third Meeting of the ESEAS Governing Board

Place and date: Crystal Hotel, Istanbul, Turkey, 13 November 2002.

Participants:
Stefano Corsini, Italy
Hans-Peter Plag, Norway
Richard Bingley, U.K
Maria Jesus Garcia, Spain
Tor Tørresen, Norway
Hanne Heiberg, Norway
Philip Woodworth, U.K.
Dov Rosen, Israel
Ivica Vilibic, Croatia
Nico Kaaijk, Netherlands
Hasan Yildiz, Turkey
Vitaly Ivanov, Ukraine
Eugen Lemescko, Ukraine
Anna Novychykhina, Ukraine
Alexander Kuznetsov, Ukraine
Eimuntas Parseliunas, Lithuania
Lesley Rickards, U.K.
Igor Strojan, Slovenia
Per Knudsen, Denmark
Mehmet Emin Ayhan, Turkey
Coskun Demir, Turkey
Malciu Viorel, Romania
Ryszard Zdunek, Poland
Marzenna Sztobryn, Poland
Roger Flather, U.K.

Draft Programme/Agenda

1. Adoption of the Agenda
2. Discussion and Adoption of the Minutes of the Second GB Meeting
3. Status Report from the CB
3.1 Changes in Membership of GB
3.2 Action Items
3.3 Overview of Other CB Activities
4. New Proposals for Participation: Proposal from ESEAS National Centre in the Netherlands
5. Status Report from the TEC
6. Network and Product Coordinators
7. Report from the ESEAS-RI Project to the GB as Steering Committee
8. The Role of ESEAS TEC for the ESEAS-RI Project
9. Coordination of Cooperation with Other Agencies and Organisations
10. The ESEAS Web Page
11. ESEAS and the FP6
12. External Presentation of the ESEAS, ESEAS TEC and ESEAS-RI Project
13. List of Action Items
14. Date and Place of the Next GB Meeting

The meeting was opened at 9:00 by the Chair of the ESEAS Governing Board, Stefano Corsini.

1. Adoption of the Agenda

The agenda was adopted without changes.

2. Discussion and Adoption of the Minutes of the Second GB Meeting

The minutes were accepted without modifications.

3. Status Report from the CB

The status report was given by the director of the CB, Hans-Peter Plag.

3.1 Changes in Membership of CB and TEC

P.F Heinen has been replaced by Douwe Dillingh in the TEC and he also is one of the Dutch representatives to the GB.

3.2 Action Items

Action Items from the first GB meeting:

Action Item GB1-5: The CB contacts GLOSS and IAPSO to clarify the situation concerning GB members ex officio.

For GLOSS, this issue was clarified earlier. Christian LeProvost has indicated that he will come up with a formal response from IAPSO. Still open!

Action item GB1-6: The CB contacts all Corresponding Members stated in the ToR and asks them to confirm their status as part of the ESEAS.

Still not done. Action required!

Action Item GB1-14: EuroGOOS is asked to specify the requirements for near real-time data in terms of latency, up-date time and geographical locations.

Done. Is further handled by the ESEAS TEC. Closed!

Action Item GB1-15: The CB investigates which ESEAS Observing Sites are potentially available in real-time, near real-time and real-time on request.

Not done. Is handled by the ESEAS TEC/ESEAS-RI Project. Closed!

Action Item GB1-16: The CB drafts a letter to the IGS in response to the CfP in TIGA and sends the draft to the GB members for comments. Comments should be send to the CB until 20 July 2001.

Previously done. However, up to now we have not received a response from IGS. H.-P. Plag has taken the issue up on several opportunities with Ruth Neilan, Thilo Schoene and Chris Reigber, the latest during the Vertical Motion Workshop in Toulouse, September. There, Chris Reigber expressed the opinion that TIGA and ESEAS should cooperated and that TIGA should be present at the ESEAS-RI kick-off meeting. Still open!

Action Item GB1-18: The CB improves the present ESEAS web page and announces the web page to a broad public before 26 July 2001.

No widespread announcement was made so far. It is considered to be more appropriate to wait until the web pages very soon are more complete and can offer some products. Action required!

Action Items from the second GB meeting: Action item GB2-1: The CB informs all TEC members and observers of their status.

Done. Closed!

Action item GB2-2: The CB informs all proposing organisations of this decision.

Not done completely. A summary of the current situation is required. It was agreed, that this summary should be done by the CB together with the chair of the TEC. Action required!

Action item GB2-3: The CB continues to search for candidates for the ESEAS Network Coordinator and the ESEAS Product Coordinator.

Not successfully done. See below. Action required!

Action item GB2-4: Dov Rosen and Susanna Zerbini to clarify whether MedGLOSS accepts the invitation to have an ex-officio member in the ESEAS GB.

Has been clarified. Dov Rosen is the MedGLOSS representative in the GB. Closed!

Action Item GB2-5: All GB members to ensure that interested organisations send a statement of interest to the CB by 1 October 2001.

Most responses came later than 1 October. This caused considerable problems for the coordination of the proposal and also excluded several potential partners from the consortium. H.-P. Plag pointed out that for future activities requiring actions from the GB members, all members are asked to follow up these actions in a timely manner.Closed!

Action Item GB2-6: The CB coordinates the proposal and ensures that the proposal is submitted according to the deadline.

Successfully done. Closed!

3.3 Overview of Other CB Activities

Here, the question of whether the ESEAS name and logo should be registerd as a trade marks. H.-P. Plag pointed out that this would require registrations in all European countries separately, which would be considerable work and also associated with significant costs. The Geodetic Institute of NMA has experience from doing this process for the EUREF name. The question whether is it worth the effort was left open for the time being.

4. New Proposals for Participation

Proposal from ESEAS National Centre in the Netherlands

RIKZ (The Netherlands) have submitted a proposal for membership in the ESEAS. 18 tide gauge stations from the Dutch coast are proposed as observing sites. These stations form a stable and reliable measurement system. Currently, the data from these gauges are are available on internet

The proposal was were much appreciated and accepted by the GB.

Stefano Corsini informed the GB that in Italy, 2 new stations will be installed in the North-Adriatic Sea.

The EUREF proposal to contribute to the analysis of GPS data from selected ESEAS Observing Sites was already considered through e-mail and accepted by the GB.

Guy Woppelmann has previously submitted a proposal for a GPS data centre. This was also handled through e-mail and accepted by the GB. However, Guy Woppelmann clarified that the data centre would be a merged TIGA/ESEAS data centre with no indication that some data originates from ESEAS. This caused some discussion since it appeared not appropriate to contribute data to the TIGA data archive without the relation between ESEAS and TIGA clarified.

It was agreed that the French proposal for membership in the ESEAS would also include a new proposal for the data centre taking into account that the ESEAS data should be identifiable, e.g. through a special directory. Once the French proposal is submitted, the issue will be taken up again.

5. Status Report from the TEC

The status report for the TEC was presented by the chair of the TEC, Richard Bingley (see powerpoint pres.). He pointed out that the TEC has 12 members (for a full list see the TEC home page), which cover the different fields, namely three members for tide gauge operation, three for tide gauge data analysis, one for satellite altimetry, two for GPS measurements and analyses, one for absolute gravity, and two for modelling. Moreover, there are currently four observers.

R. Bingley stressed that it is important that all the members of the TEC are active both in the meetings and the resulting activities. Today, most TEC members are active, but a few are not. It has to be checked whether these members have an interest to continue in the TEC.

Richard Bingley then addressed the action items of the TEC originating from the first and second TEC meeting in June 2002 (see the minutes of the first and the second meeting for a full list):

He summarised the status as follows:

Closed:
- Combined ESEAS/ESEAS-RI web page
  - TEC 1-17
  - TEC 1-18
  - TEC 2-14
  Here it was pointed out that the ESEAS CB would like to include products on the web pages before formally announcing them to a broader public.
- Altimetric web page
  - TEC 1-13
Open and Uncovered:
- Review of state-of-the-art instrumentation for tide gauges
  - TEC 1-4
  - TEC 2-5
  To be used as input to ESEAS-RI T1.1, T4.1
- Draft minimum requirements for ESEAS tide gauges
  - TEC 2-3
  To be used as input to ESEAS-RI T1.1
- Review of current quality control of tide gauge data
  - TEC 1-5
  - TEC 2-6
  To be used as input to ESEAS-RI T1.2
- Draft specifications for ESEAS Observing Sites
  - TEC 1-2
  - TEC 2-4
  To be completed by ESEAS-RI T1.1.
- Draft classification of proposed ESEAS Observing Sites
  - TEC 1-3
  To be completed by ESEAS-RI T1.1, to take output from T2.3, T2.6, T2.7, T4.2, T4.3, T4.4; to be used as input to T3.1, T3.5.
- Modelling issues
  - TEC 1-16
  - TEC 2-10
  - TEC 2-11
  - TEC 2-12
  - TEC 2-13
  Work in progress but not part of ESEAS-RI.
Not addressed to date:
- Guidelines for CGPS at ESEAS Observing Sites
  - TEC 1-6
  To be resolved in the very near future. Pre-requisite for ESEAS-RI T4.3. The discussion resulted in the Action Item GB3-1 (see below).
- CGPS archive
  - TEC 1-14
  - TEC 2-1
  To be resolved in the near future. Pre-requisite for ESEAS-RI T2.3.
- Inventory of absolute gravity measurements carried out to date and planned
  - TEC 1-8
  - TEC 1-15
  To be resolved by ESEAS-RI T2.6.
- Site documentation for ESEAS Observing Sites (hierarchical structure)
  - TEC 1-7
  To be completed by ESEAS-RI T1.1; to take output from T2.3, T2.6, T2.7, T4.2, T4.3, T4.4; to give input to T3.1, T3.5.
- Request for specific, detailed information on the proposed ESEAS Observing Sites
  - TEC 2-7
  To be carried out by ESEAS-RI T1.1; to take output from T2.3, T2.6, T2.7, T4.2, T4.3, T4.4.
- Draft ESEAS product specifications
  - TEC 1-9
  Work in progress but not part of ESEAS-RI.
- Web page near real-time demonstration project
  - TEC 1-10
  - TEC 2-8
  To be carried out by ESEAS-RI T1.3. Here it was mentioned by Stefan Corsini that ftp transfer of data from Italy can be done once a day.
- Web page links to national sea level web-sites
  - TEC 1-11
  To be carried out by ESEAS-RI T1.3.
- Web page links to national sea level data bases
  - TEC 1-12
  To be carried out by ESEAS-RI T1.3. A question concerning data format for the delivery of data was raised. Hans-Peter Plag pointed out that the web page should deliver the data in a standard format to the users. However, data delivery from the national centres to the web page could be in a centre-dependent format, which would then be reformatted automatically before delivery to the users.

The following action item resulted from the discussion:

Action item GB3-1: Include guidelines for collocation of CGPS with tide gauges and the operation as well as for absolute gravity measurements at tide gauges on the ESEAS web site as soon as possible.

In the discussion a question concerning the relation between ESEAS and PSMSL was raised. H.-P. Plag pointed out that ESEAS ideally would deliver the monthly mean values to PSMSL with all monthly means being computed and quality controlled in the same standardised way. Actually, it is planned that ESEAS will deliver monthly means to PSMSL for all ESEAS Observing Sites, if the owners agree.

6. Network and Product Coordinators

H.-P- Plag pointed out that these two coordinators are very important as focal points for the related activities. It is hoped that there soon are nominations for the coordinators, hopefully from the ESEAS-RI consortium or other groups active in the ESEAS. The CB will send out a new call for nominations.

7. Report from the ESEAS-RI Project to the GB as Steering Committee

Hans-Peter Plag, the coordinator of the ESEAS-RI project, informed the GB that the project is funded under the EU Framework Programme Five under the heading "Support for research infrastructure". The total funding is 2.3 MEuro while the total costs are approx. 3.9 MEuro. The project consortium has 21 partners and five subcontractors from a total of seventeen countries. The project started officially on 1 November 2002 and the kick-off meeting (KOM) was held on 11-12 November 2002 in Istanbul (see minutes of the ESEAS-RI KOM). Coordination of the project is done by the ESEAS Central Bureau, which is hosted by the Norwegian Mapping Authority.

The project has both technological and scientific objectives (for full details see objectives or DoW). The technological objectives include the support of the ESEAS research infrastructure, the facilitating of transnational coordination, the support of the upgrading of the network of observing sites, and the promotion of standardisation of the network, the operational routines, the databases and the quality-control. Scientifically, the project focusses on the study of sea level variations at inter-annual to century time scales, and the quantification of potential future changes in mean sea level.

H.-P. Plag pointed out that there needs to be a very close connection between ESEAS and ESEAS-RI. One major outcome of the project is the Technical Implementation Plan (TIP), which details how the results of the project will be implemented after the project is finished. All annual reports to the EU have to include an updated draft of the TIP. The implementation of the final TIP available at the end of the project to a very large extent will be done by the ESEAS. Therefore, it is mandatory that the ESEAS has a strong influence on the progress and development in the ESEAS-RI project. It also needs to be pointed out that not all partners in the ESEAS-RI consortium are members of the ESEAS and vise versa.

H.-P. Plag explained the links between ESEAS and ESEAS-RI as proposed by the project consortium. According to the figure below, the ESEAS GB is the Steering Committee for the ESEAS-RI project, while the ESEAS TEC acts as the Scientific Advisory Committee. The GB was asked to accept this link between the ESEAS and the ESEAS-RI.

After some discussion, the project coordinator was asked to specify the role of the Steering Committee in more detail, After that, the GB would decide by e-mail on acceptance of this role. This led to the following action item:

Action item GB3-2: CB specifies the task of the GB as the Steering Committee for ESEAS-RI as a prerequisite for the GB to accept this task.

It is expected that the GB will accept to be the Steering Committee if the tasks are defined satisfactorily.

The meeting plan of the ESEAS-RI project was presented:

M.-No.	Month	Key Elements for Discussion	Date
1	00	Start-up of project	11-12/11/2002
2	06	Project Team/Steering Committee	15-16/05/2003
3	12	Project Team/Steering Committee, Annual review meeting	06-07/11/2003
4	15	1st workshop, presentation of project results and review of plan	29-30/01/2004
5	18	Project Team/Steering Committee	06-07/05/2004
6	24	Project Team/Steering Committee, Annual review meeting	04-05/11/2003
7	30	Project Team/Steering Committee	Mai/2005
8	35	Final project workshop	Sep or Oct/2005

Depending on the progress of the ESEAS and the ESEAS-RI project, the CB and Project Team will consider if a GB meeting is necessary for the six-monthly meetings or whether GB/Steering Committee meetings co-located with the annual meetings would be suffcient.

The DoW specifies that the ESEAS Project Team should consist of the Coordinator, the WP Leaders and three experts from the ESEAS TEC. The role of the three experts would be to provide both advice and reviewing to the Project Team. In a detailed discussion, it was clarified that most TEC members are either active in the project or members of the GB Board. It was pointed out that TEC members are already part of the Scientific Advisory Group, while GB member would also be members of the Steering Committee. Therefore, it was suggested to change the Project Team membership to include three experts external to the ESEAS and covering the three fields sea level studies, geodesy, and user community. Potential candidates for the fields mentioned were Christian Le Provost (if he is not going to be a member of the GB) or Anny Cazenave for sea level studies, Rainer Rummel or Gerhard Beutler for geodesy, and someone from EuroGOOS for the user community. As a result of the discussion, the following action item was formulated:

Action item GB3-3: The coordinator of the ESEAS-RI projects solicits three experts for the project team, representing the fields sea level studies, geodesy, and user community.

The next point taken up was the question whether the four WPs of ESEAS-RI project should be established as formal working groups of the ESEAS. This would formally open up for participation in the ESEAS-RI work of ESEAS members not included in the ESEAS-RI consortium. Moreover, it would also ensure a continuation of the important work carried out by these WGs after the formal end of the ESEAS-RI project.

After some discussion, it was agreed to establish the four WGs formally as ESEAS WGs. The WP leaders are to be the leaders of the WGs. Richard Bingley as the chair of the TEC was asked to contact the WP leaders in this respect. The following action item was agreed upon:

Action item GB3-4: GB member are asked to nominate additional persons to the four working groups and send names to WP leaders and CB.

The CB was asked to established asap mailing lists for the individual WGs on the ESEAS web page. For that, the WP leaders should submit all members and corresponding e-mail addresses to the CB.

8. The Role of ESEAS TEC for the ESEAS-RI Project

Richard Bingley presented questions concerning the role of the ESEAS TEC for the ESEAS-RI Project (see powerpoint pres.). According to the DoW of the ESEAS-RI project, the ESEAS TEC is the Scientific Advicory Committee for the project providing a continuous reviewing of the project's progress. In a brief discussion, it was pointed out that the majority of the TEC members are actively involved in the project. Moreover, most action items of the TEC are included in the DoW of the project. Therefore, the TEC will closely follow the progress and give advice where necessary. Moreover, the TEC will concentrate on issues not covered by ESEAS-RI, such as modelling.

9. Coordination of Cooperation with Other Agencies and Organisations

The chair of the GB pointed out the need to coordinate ESEAS activities with other relevant activities and organisations. Data delivery to users should preferably go through the ESEAS in order to make the ESEAS more visible.

Data should not be delivered for storage in other data archives, as this would cut the link between the data orginator and duplicate data with the danger of some datasets not being update if errors are discovered.

Nico Kaaijk pointed out that there is an EU project called Sea Search, which is a pan European network offering ocean and marine data from thirteen countries. ESEAS should investigate possibilities for cooperation with Sea Search.

Action item GB3-5: The ESEAS-RI Coordinater contacts Alan Edwards to officially clarify the relation ESEAS-RI and Sea Search.

10. The ESEAS Web Page

The ESEAS web page had been discussed in detail during the ESEAS-RI KOM and was not discussed again. P. Woodworth pointed out that he has suggestion for links and tables that should be included on the web pages.

11. ESEAS and the FP6

In the frame of the FP6 of the EU, there are several possibilities for funding, where the ESEAS may be included. No Expression of Interest (EoI) was submitted in June for the ESEAS alone, but the ESEAS is included in two EoIs related to geodesy. Information from the EC indicates that there are nevertheless opportunities for ESEAS-related proposals.

In the orginal ESEAS-RI proposal, two work packages related to sea level research were included, which were cut by the referees. These two WPs could form the basis for a new proposal.

The CB will follow the calls for proposals issued by the EC and investigate where the ESEAS fits in. GB members who come across information related to potential funding under FP6 should forward this information to the CB.

12. External Presentation of the ESEAS, ESEAS TEC and ESEAS-RI Project

It was emphasised that the ESEAS is externally represented by its chair, Stefano Corsini. Official representation of the ESEAS by others needs to be authorised by the GB chair. This applies also to presentations of the ESEAS at meetings, e.g. with titles like "The ESEAS: status and plans". However, work carried out by individual groups related to the ESEAS can be presented without any authorisation, as long as it is clear that the presentations are not offical representations of the ESEAS.

Concerning the ESEAS-RI project, presentations describing the project as a whole have to be coordinated with project coordinator. Work of individual groups carried out in the frame of the ESEAS-RI project can be presented without prior coordination.

In order to avoid unnecessary overlap and conflicts, it is requested that all abstracts submitted for presentations related to the ESEAS and/or the ESEAS-RI project are sent to the ESEAS CB. A full list of all presentations will be maintained on the ESEAS web page. The CB should also be informed of what was presented, and receive files of presentations to publish these on the web page.

Action item GB3-6: The CB makes available standard presentations concerning the ESEAS and the ESEAS-RI project both as postscript and pdf files.

It was pointed out that Hans-Peter Plag will give a presentation of the ESEAS and the ESEAS-RI project at the Third EuroGOOS Conference in Athens, 2-5 December 2002.

13. List of Action Items

Action item GB3-1: Include guidelines for collocation of CGPS with tide gauges and the operation as well as for absolute gravity measurements at tide gauges on the ESEAS web site as soon as possible.

Action item GB3-2: CB specifies the task of the GB as the Steering Committee for ESEAS-RI as a prerequisite for the GB to accept this task.

Action item GB3-3: The coordinator of the ESEAS-RI projects solicits three experts for the project team, representing the fields sea level studies, geodesy, and user community.

Action item GB3-4: GB member are asked to nominate additional persons to the four working groups and send names to WP leaders and CB.

Action item GB3-5: The ESEAS-RI Coordinater contacts Alan Edwards to officially clarify the relation ESEAS-RI and Sea Search.

Action item GB3-6: The CB makes available standard presentations concerning the ESEAS and the ESEAS-RI project both as postscript and pdf files.

14. Date and Place of the Next GB Meeting

The next ESEAS GB meeting is anticipated for 7 November 2003. If necessary, a GB meeting may be held together with the ESEAS-RI Project Team meeting planned for 15-16 May 2003.

The GB members are asked to send suggestions for the place of the next GB meeting to the ESEAS CB.

15. Any other business

Hans-Peter Plag, on behalf of all participants, warmly thanked the colleagues from the GCM for organising the meetings and providing a perfect environment for a successful meeting. Stefano Corsini also thanked the hosts and expressed his hope that the ESEAS will continue its positive development in the future.

The meeting was closed by the chair on 13:15.

Honefoss, 17 December 2002

Draft Minutes written by Hans-Peter Plag and Hanne Heiberg