Minutes - 1st Advisory Board meeting of the International Gravity Field Service

Nice (EGU), April 28, 2004, 1830-2030.

Participants (advisory board):

R. Forsberg, M. Sideris, F. Sanso, P. Schwintzer, S. Kenyon

Absent board members: B. Ducarme, J. P. Barriot, P. Berry, H. Denker, C. Jekeli

Other participants: R. Neilan, B. Chao, R. Cox, Ali K.(Turkey)

Agenda:

1. IGFS – background and structure

2. Status of the services and centers

3. Plan for activities and actions – should IGFS be more than a portal?

4. Common schools and outreach activities

5. Website – logo

6. AOB

1. RF went through the background of the formation of IGFS, including the uncertainty after the Sapporo meeting. The IAG executive has subsequently confirmed the forming of the IGFS with RF as initial chairman. The Advisory Board was called to initiate the process of doing something. Unfortunately several service directors were not able to participate due to illness or other activities.

2. The three core centers (ICET, BGI, IGeS) work as usual. BGI is undergoing an internal French review at CNES. New service centers are ICGEM (International Centre for Global Earth Models) at GFZ Potsdam, and the DEM centre at Montfort University, UK. ICGEM has a comprehensive web page on line now. No information was available on the DEM centre. NIMA has a very comprehensive gravity collection service with presently more than 47 mio point values on file, and has cooperated with IgeS on e.g. the South American geoid. The role of NIMA – now NGA – was discussed. NGA has a key role across the excisting centers, and the earlier suggested denomination of NIMA – a 2^nd geoid service – was changed to “Technical Support Center of the IGFS”, meaning that NGA will cooperate with the IGFS on a broad scale of topics including gravity, geoid and DEMs.

3. There was consensus that there is a role for IGFS, and that IGFS should be instrumental in organizing projects across the services, and should be active partner in data compilation projects (e.g., as the recently completed Arctic Gravity Project), and e.g. to coordinate together with BGI global activities in absolute gravity, a key element in the Global Geodetic Observing System (now GGOS, originally IGGOS).

4. IGFS should help in organizing and coordination schools across the services. There could e.g. be need for “simpler” geoid/gravity schools in less developed regions. The journal “Newtons Bulletin” (published jointly by IGeS and BGI) should be the journal of IGFS. Other outreach activities should be a good web site with some general gravity field introduction.

5. Web site and logo still to be made. Chairman promised some action over the summer.

6. It was suggested to strengthen the Advisory Board with 1-2 additional members, preferably from outside Europe.

An invitation was issued from Turkey to host a gravity and geoid meeting in Istanbul, September 2006. RF would report back to the Turkish geodesists after consultation with C. Jekeli (Comm. 2) and the reminder of the Advisory Board (a meeting in Turkey was welcomed, with the only problem that it would be the 3^rd in a row in Europe of the bi-yearly “gravity and geoid” meetings). It was suggested that the meeting could be the 1^st meeting of IGFS, but to give room for more theory RF proposed a joint meeting of IGFS and Comm. 2.