It is my pleasure to welcome you all, dear visitors of the IAG website, or readers of the IAG Newsletter. It is a great honor for me to serve as IAG President for the period 2019-2023, and to work with the members of the Executive Committee to advance geodesy and our association.
During the IUGG General Assembly in Montreal the IAG Executive Committee (EC) established a new IAG Inter-Commission Committee on "Geodesy for Climate Research" (ICCC) to enhance the use of geodetic observations for climate studies. The goal is to establish a systematic and comprehensive approach among the various geodetic communities, but also to establish and foster links to climate science.
The new geodetic Earth observatory built by the Norwegian Mapping Authority (NMA) in Ny-Ålesund, 79 degrees north, was successfully inaugurated 6 June.
"This is certainly a good day for geodesy", says Gary Johnston, one of the two co-chairs of the subcommittee.
Last August the United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) decided to elevate the Global Geodetic Reference Frame (GGRF) Working Group to a permanent Subcommittee on Geodesy.
NASA and the Norwegian Mapping Authority are partnering to develop a state-of-the-art satellite laser ranging station 650 miles from the North Pole that will produce high-precision locations of orbiting satellites, help track changes in the ice sheets and improve the efficiency of marine transportation and agriculture.
IAG welcomes the participants of the IAG-IASPEI Jouint Scientific Assembly! Conference website is available.
The Onsala Space Observatory, Chalmers University of Technology, and the International VLBI Service for Geodesy and Astrometry (IVS) are proud to announce the ceremonial inauguration of a new pair of Twin Telescopes for geodetic and astrometric VLBI. More than 200 international and national guests, including veterans of the first transatlantic VLBI observations in 1968 as well as the regional governors and representatives of Chalmers, participated in the festivity on Thursday, 18 May 2017.
The United Nations General Assembly adopted the resolution on a Global Geodetic Reference Frame for Sustainable Development (A/RES/69/266) on February 26, 2015. The purpose of this document is a description of the Global Geodetic Reference Frame (GGRF), along with a brief description of its key components, as a realization of the Global Geodetic Reference System (GGRS).
The UN calls for enhanced cooperation on global geodesy. At the UN-GGIM sixth session in New York in August, the UN Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management endorsed the GGRF Roadmap and decided to establish a permanent Sub-Committee on Geodesy.
2nd IVS Training School on VLBI for Geodesy and Astrometry – Frank Lemoine, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center