Program Update: Interagency Ocean Observation Committee – September 2012
IOOS Summit 2012 will take place November 13-16, 2012 in Herndon, Virginia. The Summit Steering Committee and Co-Chairs are in the process of building out the structure and format for the event. Meanwhile, all 103 Community White Paper (CWP) submissions, along with the seminal community references, are posted on the Summit website here. Federal agencies and other interested parties are highly encouraged to comment on these CWPs. This ongoing opportunity to comment on the CWPs and interact with the Proceedings Chapter authors is one of the primary mechanisms to shape the IOOS Summit Proceedings. Approximately 200 community representatives will be able to attend the Summit in-person to contribute to the ongoing discussion. For more information and to submit an expression of interest, please click here.
Following the Summit, the draft IOOS Summit Proceedings, including all 103 CWP submissions, will be publicly available for final review. Meanwhile, CWPs will be receiving a friendly peer review to assist all authors in finalizing their contributions to the IOOS Summit Proceedings.
The IOOS Summit Proceedings will be divided into five chapters. The Steering Committee selected individuals to lead those chapters and are in the process of receiving confirmation from those individuals. The draft Summit Proceedings will
become available for comment/review on October 12. The Chapters are:
- Highlighting the Past Decade
- User Requirement: Revisiting/Updating
- Observing System Capabilities: Gap Assessment
- Integration Challenges and Opportunities
- Vision for Next 10 Years
The IOOC Support Office set up a general email account that community members can use for any questions regarding the summit at iooc@oceanleadership.org. We will continue to provide reminders and updates via email to the IOOC, however, if you would like to keep up with the latest Summit updates ‘like’ us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.
The final Independent Cost Estimate (ICE) was completed by NASA JPL and briefed to SOST Co-Chairs who authorized it to move forward. The next step was sending it to the agency heads of NOAA (Dr. Jane Lubchenco) and NSF (Dr. Subra Suresh). Suzanne Skelley briefed Assistant Administrator, Kathy Sullivan, and the feedback was largely positive. The ICE was then briefed to the full IOOC at the last meeting on August 13; however, it needs to remain internal to the federal government until it is transmitted to Congress. NOAA set a target to provide the ICE to Congress in August; however, NOAA has not received the green light to deliver. IOOC members requested that the support office work with the Co-Chairs to draft a letter of appreciation to NASA JPL for the work they completed.
DMAC Steering Team members and invited stakeholders attended the meeting at the Consortium for Ocean Leadership in Washington, D.C. on September 5-6. The meeting included a presentation by EPA’s Kevin Kirby providing useful insights into EPA’s progress and challenges per managing observations data and enabling access and analysis. Discussions focused on defining a series of practical and executable tasks to advance DMAC priorities recommended in the ST’s CWP submitted for the upcoming IOOS Summit. On the morning of Day 2, the team also discussed options with IOOC co-chair David Legler per his request to the ST to conduct a DMAC-based assessment of relevant Summit white papers that could also provide a foundation for a DMAC break-out discussion at the Summit. The team outlined a candidate approach for the breakout session. Ken Casey (NOAA/NODC), Rich Signell (USGS), and Charly (DMAC ST Chair) drafted a short concept for the break-out session and discussed this with NFRA’s Josie Quintrell and NERACOOS’s Ru Morrison. ST members were assigned to taking the use cases forward.
On August 29–30, the newly established U.S. IOOS met for the first time. Dr. Kathy Sullivan kicked off the meeting by swearing in new members, and provided them with a charge from NOAA as the Lead Federal Agency for U.S. IOOS. The IOOC Co-Chairs and IOOC Senior Agency Leadership spoke about the importance and challenges of implementing IOOS, and engaged in substantive discussion with the Committee. Rick Spinrad, Oregon State University, is the Chair and Tom Gulbransen, Battelle Memorial Institute, was elected as the Vice Chair. The Chair, the DFO (Zdenka Willis), and the Committee members all agreed the meeting was a great success and all left energized and ready to work. The Committee expects their next meeting to be in the Denver, Colorado area in January 2013. All presentations and relevant post-meeting materials will be posted shortly on the IOOS website here.
The next full membership meeting takes place on Monday, October 22, 2:00-4:00 p.m. EST at the Consortium for Ocean Leadership. This was rescheduled due to the upcoming MTS/IEEE Oceans 2012 conference in Virginia Beach.
More information about the IOOC can be accessed on the IOOC website, which contains updated information regarding commenting opportunities on committee activities, information on upcoming and past events, and relevant scientific, technical, and policy publications.
