Tuesday 23 August 2005

G5

PT0067
GGOS Working Group on networks, communications and infrastructure: organization
Pearlman, Michael¹, Ma, Chopo², Moore, Angelyn³, Willis, Pascal³, Forsberg, Rene⁴, Pavlis, Erricos⁵, Altamimi, Zuheir⁶, Ries, John⁷, Beck, Norman⁸, Kenyon, Steve⁹
1 Harvard-Smithsonian Center For Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA, USA
2 NASA Gaddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA
3 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, USA
4 Danish National Space Center, Copenhagen, Denmark
5 Joint Center for Earth System Technology, Baltimore, MD, USA
6 Institut Geographique National, Cite Descartes,Champs-sur-marnerance, France
7 Center for Space Research, Austin, TX, USA
8 Geomatics Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
9 National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Arnold, MO, USA
Author email: mpearlman@cfa.harvard.edu
Properly structured ground-based geodetic networks materialize the reference systems to support sub-mm global change measurements over space, time and evolving technologies. Over this past year, the Networks, Communications, and Infrastructure Working Group (NC&I WG) has been organized under the Global Geodetic Observing System (GGOS) to work with the IAG Measurement Services, the IGS, ILRS, IVS, IDS and IGFS, to develop a strategy for building, integrating, and maintaining the fundamental network of instruments and supporting infrastructure in a sustainable way to satisfy the long-term (10-20 years) requirements identified by the GGOS Science Council. The measurement techniques have each maintained their own network and supporting infrastructure, routinely producing data products, but their current configurations and deployed technologies are rapidly becoming obsolete. Furthermore, all of the Measurement Services are suffering from severe budget constraints and deteriorating equipment. This degradation of the reference system technology is occurring concurrently with high value science investigations and missions, such as sea level studies from altimetry missions, eroding the scientific return and limiting their abilities to meet the mission goals. Activities of this Working Group include the investigation of the status quo and the development of a plan leading to full integration of the current networks to support improvements in reference frame establishment and maintenance, gravity field monitoring, precision orbit determination, and other geodetic and gravimetric applications required for the long-term observation of global change. This integration process includes the development of a network of fundamental stations with as many co-located techniques as possible, with precisely determined intersystem vectors. This network would allow us to exploit the strengths of each technique and minimize the weaknesses where possible. This poster will discuss the organization of the working group, the work done to date, and future tasks.

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