Standing Committee Meeting Report COCOM

November 2004

CoCom Recommendations to ExCom

IBM Palisades Executive Conference Center
Palisades, NY
November 4, 2004

Carryover 

Four carryover items that involve reprogramming of funds from the original budget include:

DMS

$108K in salary and equipment savings will be reprogrammed to various pieces of additional hardware and a little software development.

E&O

$79K in salary and consulting savings will be reprogrammed into a teacher workshop and 6months of a new software/webmaster person at HQ.

GSN

$21K in cumulative savings from various activities will be reprogrammed into purchase of microbarographs for some sites.

PASSCAL

$115K of consultant/travel funds will be reprogrammed to Auxiliary DAS memory to aid field experiments.

 

General CoCom Recommendations

USArray Promotional Material

IRIS should be more proactive about developing one-pagers and other promotional material for USArray.  In addition, these should be shared with EarthScope office and distributed on the USArray web page.

Looming O&M Proposal for USArray

CoCom requests ExCom guidance on the appropriate role for CoCom/ExCom members in preparation and review of this proposal given its potentially quick deadline.

IRIS should consider including the recommendations of the Active Source subcommittee report as part of the O&M proposal.

PASSCAL Instrument Use Policies

CoCom recommends that recent new PASSCAL policies be widely advertised ASAP so PIs can consider them when preparing Dec. 1 proposals to NSF.

 

DMS Recommendations

Data Archival Fees for Non-IRIS Members

The DMSSC recommends instituting a nominal fee for archiving data from non-IRIS institutions.  Recommended fee would be $1000 per terabyte initially and reviewed periodically.  CoCom has some concerns about this procedure and how it could be fairly implemented.  Concerns were also expressed NSF’s view of this.  More study is required.  ExCom should provide an indication of their desired approach.

 

E&O Recommendations

New Educational Affiliates

The E&OSC recommends Bridgewater University, Moravian College and College of Charleston as Educational Affiliates.  ExCom vote is required.

Educational Affiliates Workshop

The E&OSC recommends holding an Educational Affiliates workshop the day before the IRIS Annual Workshop and encouraging the Affiliates to attend the main workshop.

New E&O Position at HQ

Creating a new E&O position at HQ to provide additional web expertise.  The new person would be a software engineer similar to Russ Welti with strong web programming skills and an ability to handle the web needs of E&O and HQ, including USArray responsibilities.  They would work closely with Russ, Gayle Levy and Jason Mallett on web programming and design projects.   The E&O budget can handle adding a whole person this year, though we are still working with HQ to see if at least part of the position could be covered by the Corporate budget.

New Subawards

New subaward to move US Educational Seismology Network (USESN) forward ($50-80K).  A USESN subaward is in the current budget but the university wasn't specified.  COCOM expressed concern that the details of the award have not been worked out and if a more general RFP should have been used.

New subaward to ASU to lead university siting efforts in Arizona/New Mexico (<$30K).  COCOM sees this as a good prototype for a future USArray siting/permitting approach.

 

PASSCAL Recommendations

RT125 (Texan) Service Policy

The PASSCAL Standing Committee approved a policy whereby once per year the equipment is scheduled for up to 1 month of maintenance at PIC.  The PIC will utilize discretionary travel funds to provide a maintenance crew that could be dispatched to the field to do in-situ maintenance between field experiments.  CoCom agrees that this policy is necessary.

USArray Data Policy

The PIC has tuned the USArray Data Policy, especially regarding the Flexible Array.  CoCom supports these changes and recommends they be forwarded to “the proper authority”.

Antarctic Support

PIC supports several Antarctic field campaigns each year. These experiments required a significant amount of specialized testing and equipment, and disproportionately utilize PIC resources. Furthermore, PIs are often reluctant to request PIC field engineers due to expense. Therefore, to better support PASSCAL experiments in Antarctica, PIC would like the SC to recommend that IRIS discuss with OPP the funding for 1-FTE for Antarctic support. This FTE would be responsible for developing and testing specialized and off-the-shelf equipment for Antarctic deployment and for providing support at a McMurdo Sound based huddle and repair facility.

Active Source Committee Report

The Standing Committee accepted the report from the Draft Report from the Active Source Committee and is passing it on to the ExCom for consideration. Some aspects of this report could be considered for funding during development of the USArray O&M proposal.

Africa Array

The committee approved in principle the release of 10 old instruments to the Africa Array project.  However, the committee felt that the staff of the Instrument Center is over committed and charged Jim Fowler to work a way to do this with minimal impact to the PIC staff.  It was agreed that up to $10k should be used to get Reftek to re-condition instruments for Africa Array and make an assessment of the nominal cost for refurbishing other instruments. In the meantime a formal policy needs to be in place for disposal of up to 600 old instruments as we get the final deliveries of new units.

 

GSN Recommendations

GEOSS

CoCom strongly supports IRIS’ participation in GEOSS and requests that ExCom give Rhett Butler the green light to pursue this with the formal letter and comments that he has drafted.

Backbone STS1-STS2 change

A “Change Order” is in preparation to formalize this decision.  CoCom feels that all necessary technical and scientific implications of this have been considered.  When the final wording is worked out, Owens can sign it without further CoCom consultation. 

Instrument Committee

Sensor Workshop

The committee requests funding of $15,000 for a joint DoE/IRIS workshop on seismometer testing, to be held in early 2005.  CoCom supports this request. 

 

New Standing Committee Members

Recommendations for new Standing Committee members were forwarded to ExCom.

DMSSC members rotating off are: Dodge, Okaya and Garnero. 

Kafka and Aster are the only E&O SC members due to rotate.  The committee would like to keep its current membership due to the fact that it has just now met in full.  Kafka has agreed to serve another 3yr term and Aster has agreed to stay on for one more year as Chair.  No new members required.

GSNSC members rotating off are: Tromp, Creager, Laski, along with Fischer and Lay potentially moving to BoD. 

PASSCALSC members rotating off are: Collins and Sheehan.