Journal of Geodesy (2001) 75: 627±632

IAG Newsletter Ole Baltazar Andersen IAG Central Bureau, Department of Geophysics, Juliane Maries vej 30, DK-2100 Copenhagen é, Denmark e-mail: [email protected]; Fax: +45 3536 5357; URL:http://www.gfy.ku.dk/iag/

The IAG Newsletter is under the editorial responsibility of the IAG Central Bureau. It is an open forum and contributors are welcome to send material (preferably in electronic form) to the IAG Central Bureau. These contributions should complement information sent by IAG ocials or by IAG symposia organizers (reports and announcements). Each IAG Newsletter includes several of the following topics:

the opening ceremony of the IAG Scienti®c Assembly in Budapest. The IAG best paper award for young scientist for 2000 was awarded Christopher Kotsakis and RuÈdiger Lehmann

I. general information II. reports of IAG symposia III. reports by commissions, special commissions or study groups IV. symposia announcements V. book reviews VI. fast bibliography In Memoriam Jean-Jacques Levallois, Secretary General of IAG (1960±1975) died on the 31 August 2001. The IAG Central Bureau expresses its deepest sympathy to his family and former colleagues. His obituary will be published in a future IAG Newsletter. 2000 IAG Young Author Award The IAG Young Author Award for 2000 was split between two winners. The Award consists of a certi®cate and a cheque of US$ 500, which was handed out during

Books for review are the responsibility of: Christian Tiberius TU Delft, Faculty of CEG Dept. of Mathematical geodesy and positioning P.O. Box 5030 ± NL 2600 GA Delft ± The Netherlands Fax: (+31) 15 27 83 711 e-mail: [email protected]

Christopher Kotsakis

Christopher Kotsakis was born in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1970. After graduating with a Dipl.-Eng. (Honours) from the Department of Rural and Surveying Engineering at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in 1995, he joined the Department of Geomatics Engineering at the University of Calgary and received his Ph.D. degree in 2000. His doctoral thesis was entitled, `Multiresolution Aspects of Linear Approximation Methods in Hilbert Spaces

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Using Gridded Data'. From 1999±2001 Christopher was also a sessional instructor in the same department where he carried on full teaching responsibilities for various undergraduate engineering courses, including gravity ®eld in surveying and geodesy, fundamentals of geodesy, geomatics networks and probability and statistics for engineers. Over the past few years, he has received numerous awards for his excellence in teaching. Upon the completion of his Ph.D. Christopher stayed on at the department as a Post-Doctoral Fellow from 2000±2001, where he conducted research work related to gravity ®eld modeling, advanced estimation and approximation methods, non-probabilistic description of spatial ®elds using wavelets, and the optimal integration of GPS, levelling and geoid data. Other research interests include estimation theory and inverse problems, Hilbert space methods for Physical Geodesy boundary value problems, and multiresolution and wavelet methods for gravity ®eld approximation problems. He continues to be a regular reviewer for many scienti®c journals and conference proceedings series as well as being an active associate member of the IAG since 1997.

of Freiberg. In 1994 he received a Ph.D. degree in Geodesy from the Technical University of Dresden. Currently he is a professor of surveying engineering at the Dresden University of Applied Sciences. His scienti®c interests are mainly in the ®eld of geodetic boundary value problems, where he also chairs the related IAG subcommission 1.3. Other ®elds of interest are geodetic problems of gravity and geoid and applications of geodesy to surveying engineering.

The IAG Young Author Award Purpose: To draw attention to important contributions by young scientists in the Journal of Geodesy and to foster excellence in scienti®c writing. Eligibility: The applicant must be 35 years of age or younger when submitting the paper for publication. The paper must present the applicant's own research, and must have been published in one of the two annual volumes of the Journal of Geodesy (J of G) preceding either the IAG General Assembly or the IAG Scienti®c Assembly. Although multiple author papers will be considered, single author papers will be given more weight in the selection process. Award: The award consists of a certi®cate and a cheque of US $ 1000. Presentation of the awards will be made at each IAG General Assembly and each IAG Scienti®c Assembly. Up to two awards will be presented on each occasion for the two-year period corresponding to the annual volumes speci®ed above.

RuÈdiger Lehmann

RuÈdiger Lehmann was born in Freiberg (Germany) in 1963. He studied Geodesy at the Technical University of Dresden, ®nishing his thesis of diploma in 1990. From 1991 to 1999 he did research work in Physical Geodesy at the Geophysical Institute of University of Copenhagen, at the Danish National Survey and Cadastre, at the GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam, at the University of Karlsruhe and at the Technical University

Nomination and selection: For each two-year period the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Geodesy will propose a minimum of three candidates for the award. In addition, proposals made by at least three IAG Fellows or Associates will be considered for the competition. The voting members of the IAG Executive Committee will make the ®nal selection. It will be based on the importance of the scienti®c contribution, which may be either theoretical or practical, and on the quality of the presentation. The name and picture of the award winner and a short biography will be published in the Journal of Geodesy. Procedure: Each year the conditions for the award will be announced in the Journal of Geodesy. Nominations should be sent to the General Secretary of the IAG, giving name, address, and age of the author (at date of submission), the title of the paper on which nomination is based, and a brief justi®cation. Nominations must be received by March 1 of the year in which either an IAG General Assembly or an IAG Scienti®c Assembly takes place.

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Meeting announcements IAG International Symposium On Recent Crustal Deformations In South America And Surrounding Areas, and VII International Congress Of Earth Sciences 2002 October 21±25, 2002 Santiago, Chile Website: http://www.igm.cl International Workshop on Satellite Altimetry for Geodesy, Geophysics and Oceanography, September 15±20, 2002, Wuhan, China Website: http://space.cv.nctu.edu.tw/altimetryworkshop/ altimetry.htm Second Symposium on Geodesy for Geotechnical and Structural Engineering, May 21±24, 2002, Berlin Germany Website: http://info.tuwien.ac.at/ingeo/sc4/berlin.html World Space Congress/34th COSPAR Scienti®c Assembly Houston, Texas, 10±19 October, 2002 Website: http://www.copernicus.org/COSPAR/ COSPAR.html IUGG General Assembly June 30, July 11, 2003, Sapporo, Japan Assembly website: http://www.jamstec.go.jp/jamstec-e/ iugg/index.html

Meeting Reports Recommendatitions from ``Joint Board of Space Information Societies'', September 2, 2001 ± Budapest, Minute Present to meeting were:, F. SansoÁ (IAG President), J.C. Trinder (ISPRS Presiedent), I. Dowman (ISPRS Secretary General), M. Villikka (FIG Secretary Central Oce), M. Lilje (FIG Comm. 5), F. Ormeling (ICA Secretary). The Joint Board of Spatial Information Societies, meeting in Budapest ± September 2, 2001 with the participation of IAG, ISPRS, FIG, ICA ± recognizing the outstanding importance of geodetic services such as IERS, IGS, ILRS, IVS in de®ning a unique reference frame for the whole earth and materializing it in a worldwide network of permanent observatories; ± recognizing that the products of such services are not only of the greatest importance for the other geosciences, but also fundamental in the applications of spatial information systems in use in surveying and cartography, photogrammetry, remote sensing, etc., with a signi®cant impact on general interest of civil society; ± aware that the support of these services certainly represents a non-negligible e€ort, also from the economical point of view;

urges the supporting organizations to continue in their e€orts, to keep the level of these services adequate to the increasing technological demands that the growing society is putting to them. F. SansoÁ Milano, Italy International Symposium on GPS ± Application to Earth Sciences and Interaction with Other Space Geodetic Techniques ± GPS99 in Tsukuba, October 18±22, 1999 ± Tsukuba International Congress Center, Tsukuba, Japan The above symposium was held under the auspices of the National Committee of Geodesy, Science Council of Japan, and other domestic organizations as well as IGS and CSTG (Commission VIII in Section II of IAG and Commission B.2 of COSPAR). The symposium was, in part, joint with the Third International Meeting of the Asia-Paci®c Geodynamics Program (APSG). Considering recent exploding applications of GPS technologies to vast areas of Earth sciences, fourteen sessions were organized. In addition to the 11 scienti®c sessions, a plenary session of APSG was held. The symposium aimed at not only exchanging recent results and ideas among advanced researchers but also promoting those who were beginning GPS sciences. Thus, considering expected large attendants from those developing countries, three tutorial sessions were organized. A number of advanced scientists made a series of lectures and panel discussions for GPS beginners. These tutorial sessions were attended very well. Recent developing GPS research ®elds were also highlighted such as: GPS meteorology, tectonics in Asia and western Paci®c, kinematic applications etc. A series of large devastating earthquakes in Turkey, Taiwan, Greece and California urged the LOC to set up urgent poster session in the symposium. In total, we counted 366 participants from 39 countries (190 from Japan and 176 from other countries) of all continents over the world and more than 300 presentations (oral and poster). This symposium thus became ``the largest ``GPS geodesy'' conference of 1999, and one of the biggest such events ever held in the Asian region'' according to Rizos (personal communication). The papers read in the symposium were published as two volumes of Earth, Planets and Space (Vol.52, Nos. 10 and 11, 2000), a refereed English journal published by the Japanese Earth Science Societies, edited by Kosuke Heki and other seven co-editors. These volumes including more than 100 articles were bound for a hard covered book and distributed to participants. GPS99 homepage URL : http://wwwsoc.nii.ac.jp/geodsoc/gpssymp/ Teruyuki Kato University of Tokyo e-mail. [email protected]

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Status Report ± Geodesy Relevant Standardisation Activities in the Frame of ISO TC211 Geographic Information The ISO/TC 211 Geographic Information started with its works in the ®eld of standardization of digital geographic information in 1994 (1st plenary Nov. 1994, Oslo) and has now 5 WGs and more than 20 work items (WI) equally single standards. This work aims to establish a structured set of standards for information concerning objects or phenomena that are directly or indirectly associated with a location relative to the Earth. These standards may specify, for geographic information, methods, tools and services for data management (including de®nition and description), acquiring, processing, analyzing, accessing, presenting and transferring such data in digital/electronic form between di€erent users, systems and locations. This work shall link to appropriate standards for information technology and data where possible, and provide a framework for the development of sector-speci®c applications using geographic data. The standard with geodetic relevance ISO 19111 (ISO/TC 211, WI 11) Spatial referencing by coordinates was made for producers and users of GIS. Therefore the structure shall be clear and easy ± but correct on a common level of abstraction. ISO 19111 describes the conceptual schema and de®nes the description for a minimum data to two cases for which 1-, 2- and 3-dimensional coordinate reference system information shall be given: ± A coordinate reference system to which a set of coordinates is related; ± A coordinate operation (coordinate transformation, coordinate conversion, concatenated coordinate operation) to change coordinate values from one coordinate reference system to another. The ISO 19111 has the status of a Draft International Standard (DIS). Under the head of ISO/TC 211 it is not planned to standardise a special CRS for worldwide GIS users, e. g. ITRS. A new work item with geodetic relevance ``Geodetic codes and parameters'' started in the year 2000 but cannot take over the function of a standard CRS. It is the task of political, technical and scienti®c organisations or commissions to de®ne reference systems as defacto standards for GIS applications, as to be done by the spatial reference workshop, EUREF and CERCO with their activities. The realization of geoinformation systems needs conventions for the use of geodetic reference systems. On behalf of the European Commission (EC) at the end of 1999 a European Spatial Reference Workshop was organized to recommend common European reference systems for geoinformation systems and data of the EC and for the member states. The IAG Subcommission for Europe (EUREF) works for over 10 years actively and continuously together with the national mapping agencies for the realization of the ETRS89 and since 1995 on

the United European Levelling Network. Therefore, EUREF was well prepared and able to answer the requests. EUREF and the Work Group VIII of the Comite EuropeÂen des Responsables de la Cartographie Ocielle (CERCO), now EuroGeographics were asked to prepare relevant information describing the systems and the transformation from the national reference frames to the European one. The Spatial Reference Workshop, 29±30 November 1999 in Marne-La-ValleÂe was organised by MEGRIN on a request of the Joint Research Centre on behalf of the EC. Due to the participation of relevant geodesy and standardisation experts as well as institutional crossborder GI users the workshop was successful. It was recognised that the ETRS89 is accepted by the European National Mapping Agencies (NMAs) and the scienti®c community as the most appropriate European geodetic datum for continental spatial referencing tasks. The geodetic datum ETRS89 derived from GPS campaigns and the European GPS Permanent Network (EPN) are part of the geodetic basic networks of EU member states. The Spatial Reference Workshop recommended that the European Commission: · Adopts ETRS89 as the geodetic datum for the georeferenced coordinates of its own data; · Includes ETRS89 in the future speci®cations of the products to be delivered to the EC, within projects, contracts, etc; · Promotes the wider use of ETRS89 within all member states, by appropriate means (recommendations, of®cial statements, ¼). · The coordinates for expressing positions related to ETRS89 datum will normally be ellipsoidal (geodetic latitude, geodetic longitude, and if appropriate ellipsoidal height). The Workshop de®ned its various needs for map projections and to obtain further expert advice to determine the appropriate projections. It was recognized that the European Vertical Reference Network (EUVN) and the United European Levelling Network (UELN) projects form the basis for a vertical reference in Europe. The workshop recommended that the EC: · Adopts the results of the EUVN/UELN initiatives when available, as de®nitions of vertical datum and gravity-related heights; · Includes the EUVN reference system so de®ned for the speci®cations of the products to be delivered to the EC, within projects, contracts, etc; · Future promotes the wider use of the European vertical reference system within all member states, by appropriate means (recommendations, ocial statements, ¼). In the meantime the European Vertical Reference System (EVRS) was de®ned as a world height system. The realization is given by the UELN and EUVN projects and named EVRF 2000 (see http://evrs.leipzig.ifag.de).

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Both the ETRS89 and the current national coordinate reference systems for spatial reference and both a European vertical datum and the current national height systems for height reference will continue for many years in parallel. From this point of view the workshop recommends to the NMAs that transformation parameters and algorithms to and from ETRS89 providing coordinates of an accuracy level of 1±2 m should be placed in the public domain. The information are stored in a relational data base regarding the conventions and tables of ISO 19111 standard. With the response of the countries the information system will be updated and more information will be added. In a public domain the information system is free available: ± http://ers.ifag.de. Johannes Ihde ± Representative of IAG for the IAG liaison in ISO/TC211 Book Review

title: author: publisher: ISBN: year: price: pages: size: details:

Inertial Systems in Navigation and Geophysics Oleg Salychev Bauman MSTU Press, Moscow 5-7038-1346-8 1998 US $ 45 350 17 ´ 24 cm hard cover

The book is written by the well-known scientist and Professor of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, Director of the Laboratory of Inertial Geodetic Systems (LIGS) and adjunct professor at the Department of Geomatics Engineering of The University of Calgary, Oleg Salychev, who has worked for several decades in inertial navigation and can now report about his rich experience gathered in his laboratory. The book is derived from classroom lecture notes, in particular also from a postgraduate course on inertial geodetic systems given by the author at Prof. Klaus-Peter Schwarz's inertial group at the University of Calgary. Insofar the book is really primarily written for geodesists, although this is not explicitly expressed in the title. It is the intention of the author to emphasize more the practical rather than the theoretical side of inertial navigation systems. No doubt also that the author is mainly concentrating on his experiences with the inertial platform ITC-2 developed at the Inertial Technology Scienti®c Center Ltd. The book is very well structured in ten chapters and four appendices. Starting from a description of necessary coordinate frames and coordinate transformations the author reviews the main principles in inertial navigation systems. Clear diagrams describe the strapdown computations and the applied alignment procedures for the practitioner, thereby avoiding lengthy derivations but rather reviewing and summarizing the necessary theoretical formulas. The inertial navigation system (INS) error model is outlined very brie¯y on only ®ve pages. INS calibration procedures and INS testing in the lab follow. After these seven chapters a central chapter on applied estimation theory builds one of the hearts of the book (chapter 8 with 75 pages). It starts ®rst with the well-known traditional Kalman ®lter formulas. The second part outlines the author's favourite non-traditional estimation methods like scalar adaptive estimation, wave estimation, adaptive ®ltering and others. This is a chapter where newcomers can learn a lot on what is possible in applied estimation theory for INS. Chapter 9 deals with INS/GPS integration. Actually the main headline does not include GLONASS although sub-chapters mention also the Russian satellite navigation system. Both systems are described very brie¯y only. I am not sure whether it was advisable to describe in a textbook like this just one GPS/GLONASS receiver (Ashtech GG24) and its performance. GPS hardware has nowadays only a life cycle of about three years. Central point, however, was the author's intention to outline the corresponding mixed adaptive estimation algorithm. The integration is only discussed on position and velocity level, thereby looking mainly to the smooth transition from one to another satellite con®guration. The ®nal chapter 10 discusses INS/GPS positioning for surveying and airborne gravimetry. The author favours a cascaded scheme of GPS/INS integration for surveying. There is no tight integration on observation level, but instead separate estimators for GPS and INS position and velocity and a ®nal estimator and predictor `mixing' both results. There is a considerable portion of

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this chapter dealing with practical ¯ight results in airborne gravimetry for which the Russian INS ITC-2 was used. Four useful appendices inform the reader on measurement models, wave algorithms, comparisons with traditional procedures and coning calculations. The book can be recommended to everybody who wants to deal practically with inertial navigation systems, either when writing estimation software or just to ®nd out the practical hints in calibrating or testing an INS. The student ®nds a comprehensive summary of the basic formulas in inertial navigation. Main practical examples come from GPS/INS positioning for surveying

and determining the gravity ®eld from aircraft using a special parametrization in the estimation model. Insofar, a more speci®c title for the book would be `Inertial Systems for Geodesy and Airborne Gravimetry'. The style of the book allows the reader ¯uently to get an overview about the theoretical background. Many illustrations, diagrams and plots and even photos of the instrumentation give the reader an insight into the practical side. It is certainly a book which should not be missing in a library of inertial geodesy and gravimetry. GuÈnter W. Hein University FAF Munich/Germany