Journal of Geodesy (2002) 76: 63–66 DOI 10.1007/s00190-002-0243-z
IAG Newsletter Ole Baltazar Andersen IAG Central Bureau, Department of Geophysics, Juliane Maries vej 30, DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø, 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 officials or by IAG symposia organizers (reports and announcements). Each IAG Newsletter includes several of the following topics: 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
Call for participation Call for Participation in IAG Outreach Branch The IAG has recently changes structure. A major change is that IAG besides National Members also will have individual members. The new structure is described in the new statutes and by-laws, which are found at the IAG home-page, http://www.gfy.ku.dk/iag/. In order to secure a close contact with the members and to promote the work of IAG in general a so-called ‘‘Out-reach branch’’ has to be established. The Outreach branch will have the following responsabilities:
Membership development and maintain current members’ contact information Publication of electronic newsletter Promotion of IAG (at meetings and conferences) Development and maintenance of the IAG Web-page Promotion of IAG activities: Schools, meetings, publications Promote contact to national survey organisations, universities, private companies and international organisations. The branch should be able to operate with a minor financial contribution from IAG. (To be negotiated). IAG is interested in offers, which could assure the operation of the Branch for a longer period (8 years). The president of the branch will become member of the IAG Executive Committee (due to confirmation of the IAG Council) and will work under supervision of a directing board which includes the Secretary General of IAG and the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Geodesy as members. For more information contact the IAG Central Bureau, e-mail iag at gfy.ku.dk. We request contintgent responses to this call to be received at the Central Bureau before April, 1, 2002. C.C. Tscherning Secretary General
Meeting report Minutes of IAG Council Meeting, Budapest 8 Sep. 2001
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]
Agenda: 1. Adoption of Agenda. 2. Changes of statutes and By-Laws. 3. Any other business. Present: IAG EC members: F. Sanso (President), G. Beutler (1. Vice-president), C.C. Tscherning, Secretary General, I. Mueller (Honorary President),
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K.P. Schwarz (Past president), Xuanxi Yang (Secretary Section IV). National delegates: Dr. Petr, Holota, Czech Republic, Prof. Dr. Iginio Marson, Italy, Prof. Mikhail T. Prilepin, Russia, Prof. Dr. Jozsef Adam, Hungary, Dr. Alain Geiger, Switzerland, Prof. Dr. Bernhard Heck, Germany, Prof. Dr. Shuzo Takemoto, Japan, Prof. Athanasios Dermanis, Greece, Prof. Jan Krynski, Poland, Prof. Miguel J. Sevilla, Spain, Prof. Dr. Lars E. Sjoeberg, Sweden, Prof. Dr. Ing Heinz Henneberg, Venezuela, Prof. Dr. Thomas A. Herring, USA, Prof. Jianguo Hu, China, Dr. Frede Madsen, Denmark, Dr. Emin Ayhan, Turkey, Dr. Ladislav Brimich, Slovak Republic, Dr. Roger G. Hipkin, United Kingdom, Assoc. Prof., Dr. Chris Rizos; Australia, Dr. Donald Grant, New Zealand, Prof., Director General Risto Kuittinen, Finland, Dr. Dag Solheim, Norway, Dr. Joao Manuel Agria Torres, Portugal, Prof. Charles L. Merry; South Africa, Prof. Klaas J. Villanueva, Indonesia, Dr. Erhard Erker, Austria, Eng. Luiz Paolo Souto Fortes, Brazil, Dr. Spiros Pagiatakis, Canada, M. Tonie M. Van Dam, Luxemburg, Dr. Bert Vermeersen, The Netherlands, Dr Claude Boucher, France, Lieutenant Colonel Rodrigo Barriga, Mrs. Laura M. Sanchez, Colombia: The president opened the meeting and welcomed the delegates. The delegates were asked to identify themselves according to IUGG member country. The secretary general confirmed that a quorum was reached. However a number of delegates had to leave the meeting before it was closed. This did not affect the quorum. 1. Adoption of agenda. The agenda was adopted. 2. Changes of statutes and by-laws. The president recalled the resolution passed by the council in Birmingham, 1999, which requested that a revision of the statutes and by-laws was made., A draft version was send out in April, and comments had been received, from 3 countries (PR China, Czech Republic and New Zealand). The Executive Committee had considered these comments at its meeting Sept. 4, and many of the comments had resulted in changes to the draft send out earlier. The changes proposed by the EC was marked by a grey-shading in the version distributed at the beginning of the meeting. The president then called for further comments by the Council. A number of inconsistencies in the draft proposal was noted by several delegates, and proposals for the amendment of these inconsistencies were put forward. A number of further modifications were also proposed. All the proposals were then discussed in a sequence according to the sequence of the paragraphs of the statutes and the by-laws. For the final adopted version, see the Statutes. (on the IAG homepage).
Para. 2. It was decided to add ‘‘by stimulating technological development’’ to the mission statement. As a consequence of this a further amendment was made to Para. 3.d., so that not only space technologies should be stimulated and developed. In Para. 5.3.1. it had been proposed to restrict the council delegates to ‘‘Members, Candidate Members, or Fellows of the Association’’. The council decided by a vote with 15 for and 14 against to change this so that the delegates are restricted to persons who have previously participated in an IAG activity. By Laws. Para. 1.2.1. It was decided to change the name of Commission 1 from ‘‘Geometric reference Frames’’ to ‘‘Reference Frames’’. A clarification of point a) was made to the description of the tasks of the commission. The delegate of Russia proposed to remove the term ‘‘Earth Rotation’’ from the title of Commission 3 ‘‘Earth Rotation and Geodynamics’’. It was not seconded. A minor change to the description of the commission was adopted. The delegate of Turkey proposed a change of the title of Commission 4. It was not seconded. Para. 1.5.1. A minor clarification was made. Para 2.1. The delegate of Turkey proposed that the applications for membership should pass through the National Committees. The proposal was not seconded. Para 2.2. Clarifications were made as to who prepares various agendas of meetings. Para 2.3. A clarification of point b) was made. It was decided to add a new task of the Council. The council must approve the establishment of inter commission committees and IAG projects. Para 2.5.3. A clarification was made as to who prepares and distributes agendas and minutes. Para 2.8. Point b). It was added that elections shall be made by majority vote in order to avoid misunderstandings. The president then asked for a vote on the amended statutes and by-laws. They were adopted unanimously. The president then thanked the Council and the Revision Committee, who had prepared the proposal for the new structure, especially its president G. Beutler. 3. Any other business. None. The president then closed the Council meeting and thanked all for a very fruitfull discussion. C.C. Tscerning Secretary General
Meeting announcements Celebrating 50 Years of Geodetic Science at Ohio State University: A Look to the Future Weikko A. Heiskanen Symposium in Geodesy (1–4 October 2002), and Duane C. Brown Summer School (2–5 October 2002)
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The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA Website: Web: http://geodesy.eng.ohio-state.edu/ 50_years 3rd Meeting of the International Gravity and Geoid Commission Thessaloniki, Greece, August 26–30, 2002 Website: http://der.topo.auth.gr/GG2002 International Workshop on Satellite Altimetry for Geodesy, Geophysics and Oceanography, September 8–13, 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 Second Announcement now available on web Website: http://info.tuwien.ac.at/ingeo/sc4/berlin.html Eleventh General Assembly of the Wegener Project, June 12–14, Athens, Greece Website http://www.survey.ntua.gr\wegener
geodetic services working with space observations; each technique has its own rank deficiency leading to a particular definition of reference systems; estimability problems and combination methods are methodologically of the greatest importance; also with the ‘‘height’’ coordinate a similar problem is present and a realistic description of the corresponding reference system definition is under debate. 3) Deterministic and stochastic field theory in geodesy and sister sciences. Potential theory is the basic theoretical background of the problem of determining the earth gravity field; traditionally this has generated a number of B.V.P.’s which recur as a backbone in theoretical geodesy; the need of performing suitable approximated solutions has given rise to a number of original techniques, like Tychonov approximation, collocation theory etc., which are still under development; open problems need to be clearly formulated, classified and, possibly, solved. Fernando Sanso, olitecnico di Milano DIIAR – Sezione Rilevamento P. zza L. da Vinci, 32 I-20133 Milano (Italy) Tel.: +39-02-23996504, Fax: +39-02-23996530 e-mail:
[email protected]
Fifth Hotine-Marussi Symposium on Mathematical Geodesy Matera, Italy June 10 – 14, 2002 (see below) IUGG General Assembly June 30, July 11, 2003, Sapporo, Japan Assembly website: http://www.jamstec.go.jp/jamstec-e/ iugg/index.html
Book Review
Call for Papers Fifth Hotine-Marussi Symposium on Mathematical Geodesy, Matera, Italy, June 10 – 14, 2002 The V Hotine-Marussi Symposium is continuing the tradition of Symposia on Mathematical Geodesy initiated by the two famous geodesists in Venice in 1959. As it is tradition these Symposia provide an open forum to the discussion on any theoretical problem in geodesy and this tradition will continue with the V Symposium. We have only chosen, to help focusing the attention, to propose four main items, on which some presentations will be invited: 1) The analysis of geodetic data: methods and numerics. The variety of data and models in geodesy is increasing fast with new technologies and computing facilities; yet the wealth of methods applied to analyse and reduce our data is not keeping the pace with the new challenges; new theoretical work is needed in this area. 2) The theory of geodetic reference systems. The concept of global geodetic reference systems has become a reality with an unbelievable accuracy due to the large number of systematic observations by
title: author: publisher:
Radar Interferometry – Data Interpretation and Error Analysis Ramon F. Hanssen Kluwer Academic Publishers – Dordrecht/Boston/London
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ISBN: year: price: pages: size: details:
0792369459 2001 US69 308 16.5 · 24.5 cm hard cover
Radar interferometry is a new technique entering into the geodetic arsenal during the last decade. As it happened many times (maybe too many) in the past, for a certain period the technique as such has superseeded the importance of the geodetic interpolation of SAR data but, as it is getting apparent in these days, this technique with its inherent ability to determine digital terrain models, digital deformation models as well as the water vapor content in the troposphere is becoming one of the focal interests of the geodetic community. On the other hand not only the final goal of SAR data analysis but also the necessity of properly georeferencing the data as well as the possibility of integrating this technique with others, like GPS, has urged the scientific SAR community to come closer to geodesy. This book is a timely response to this process in an attempt of summarizing results of recent research, framing them into a standard model of geodetic data analysis. The author is already known to the geodetic community for his studies on radar altimetry and the contiguity of this item has made of him an obvious candidate in the effort of bridging SAR from e.m. transmission theory to geodesy. According to the author’s program of work the main purposes of the book are: –
to set up a general data analysis model introducing all variables that influence the SAR observables, basically the phase differences of parallel interferograms, writing carefully the observation equations. Particular attention is paid to the correct modeling of deterministic and stochastic variables, as well as to the sensitivity analysis to understand
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under specific circumstances what parameters can and what cannot be estimated, to demonstrate through the analysis of recent experiments, the capability of interferometric SAR methods of detecting surface deformation. This is done both with ad hoc experiments employing corner cubes and ground leveling to control the results, and with other data sets related to geophysical events like the co-seismic relation after the Izmit earthquake, to study in detail the effects of the tropospheric delay on radar signals, proving a clever synthesis of classical literature on refractive media to reach a kind of standard stochastic model for this disturbance on phase interferometric observations, to propose the SAR as one tool to analyze mesoscale meteorological phenomena, possibly integrating other meteorological sensors as well as GPS information.
The book drags through the items providing quite deep and technical information, proving most of the formulas but those typical of transmission engineering, although a wide and detailed bibliography can help any nonspecialist student to get acquainted with the main problems of radar signals manipulation. The flow of the arguments is very well organized and illustrated and in particular the chapters dealing with atmospheric delay are one of the strong points of the book. So much so that a careful study of these chapters seem to provide a very sound way to enter into the realm of actual research on meteorological applications. I guess that new developments will come along in some years and new books will be written on SAR, yet I think this book will be very useful in these years to help geodesists to master the subject. Fernando Sanso` Politecnico di Milano/Italy