Rudolf Staiger, FIG Commission 5 Chair, attends the24th General Assembly of IUGG International Union for Geodesy and Geophysics, Perugia, Italy

Perugia, Italy, 2-13 July 2007

On the 4 -8th July FIG Commission 5 Chair Rudolf Staiger attended the General Assembly of IUGG as the official FIG representative.

The IUGG Conference takes place every 4 years and IUGG consists of 7 International Unions all
dealing with Earth Sciences, from which IAG – the International Association of Geodesy is
directly related to FIG.

The General Assembly of IUGG was attended by about 4000 scientists from all over the world
and 450 were registered as IAG participants. Although Perugia is a nice historical Italian city
situated on top of several small mountains, its infrastructure (hotels, public transport, etc)
struggled to handle such a big event. The General Assembly was held at the University of
Perugia whilst the meetings and technical sessions were convened all over the city of Perugia.
This made it difficult to meet, network and interact with delegates. The registration cost was 550
€ and did not including the proceedings ( note - proceedings attract an additional fee and will be
available in the next few months, possibly in Spring)

Rudolf Staiger was very well received by Chris Rizos the outgoing President of Commission 4 (Positioning & Applications) and the incoming Vice-President of IAG. Mr Rizos invited Rudolf to the IAG
reception and to a Commission 4-reception. He also attended several technical IAG sessions,
which were mainly Commission 4 related.

During his stay Rudolf had the occasion to have two short discussions with the incoming President
of IAG Mike Sideris (Canada). Furthermore he met the outgoing president Gerhard Beutler
(Switzerland), the outgoing secretary general C.C. Tscherning (Denmark) and the new chair of
Commission 4 Sandra Verhagen (Netherlands) and all the working group chairs of Commission
4. He introduced himself to the new Secretary General Hermann Drewes (Germany).

Rudolf Staiger had intensive discussions with Chris Rizos, Ruth Neilan (USA) and Richard Wonnacott (Republic of South Africa) on possible future cooperation.

IAG comprises of 4 Commissions and the structure for 2007-11 is as follows :

IAG President M Sideris Canada
IAG Vice-President C Rizos Australia
IAG Secretary General H Drewes Germany

President of Commission 1 (Reference Frames) Z Altamimi France
President of Commission 2 (Gravity Field) Y Fukuda Japan
President of Commission 3 (Earth Rotation and Geodynamics) M Bevis USA
President of Commission 4 (Positioning and Applications) S Verhagen The Netherlands

Members at large
(2 to be elected)
R Wonnacott South Africa
K Heki Japan

Service Representatives
(3 to be elected)
M Rothacher Germany
S Kenyon USA
R Neilan USA

President of the COB (Communication and Outreach J Adam Hungary
Branch)

The IAG Commissions which have similar activities to FIG Commission 5 are Commission 4 –
Positioning and Applications, and Commission 1 – Reference Frame.

The most important project within IAG is GGOS – the Global Geodetic Observing System.

Commission 4 consists of 4 Sub-Commissions (SC) and is further divided into working groups
(WG). The Sub-Commissions are:

SC4.1 Multi-sensor Systems
SC4.2 Applications of Geodesy in Engineering
SC4.3 GNSS Measurement of the Atmosphere
SC4.4 Applications of Satellite & Airborne Imaging Systems
SC4.5 Next Generation RTK

There are also four Study Groups (SG):

SG4.1 Pseudolite Applications in Positioning & Navigation
SG4.2 Statistics & Geometry in Mixed Integer Linear Models, with Applications to GPS
& InSAR (joint with ICCT)
SG1.1 Ionospheric Modelling and Analysis (joint with Commission 1 & IGS & COSPAR)
SG1.2 Use of GNSS for Reference Frames (joint with Commission 1 & IGS & IERS)

For more information on the other IAG Commissions refer to the IAG website http://www.iag-aig.org/index.php

The IAG technical program in Perugia consisted of 4 sessions (about 15 speakers) and many
Poster Sessions. Commission 4 had approximately 140 posters. Although the papers /
presentations primarily had a scientific focus rather than a practical application theme, there was
still a variety of papers and presentations relating to

• the state of the art, future projects or special studies
• hypothetical and theoretical methodologies
• projects and /or research from academic institutions

As previously mentioned the proceedings will be available by end of spring but will incur a fee.

Overall, it was a worthy event to attend and a great opportunity for FIG to be officially
represented. Meetings held with the new IAG President Mike Sideris and Vice President Chris
Rizos on our future co-operation were very open and constructive.

We as a sister organizationare considered to be, at least in certain areas, an interesting and potential partner for future projects, like AFREF, common conferences on Geodesy for Engineering, etc. IAG is a purely scientific organization without financial background and without staff employed. A lot of key
persons see the advantage of a professional organization, like FIG as they have a better financial
background.

 


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