EUFAR's annual General Assembly took place in Warsaw from 14 to 17 February 2017. Hosted and organised by EUFAR partner, University of Warsaw, the meeting was held on the beautiful main campus of the university in the heart of the city.
Apart from the usual presentations dedicated to each activity, the meeting also included a session dedicated to EUFAR’s technology transfer activity and a special session dedicated to the “Future strategy of EUFAR” with invited members from EUFAR’s Strategic Advisory Committee (SAC). 36 participants attended the meeting including invited guests and SAC members, representing 18 of the 24 EUFAR’s partners. A special thanks goes out to the University of Warsaw/Institute of Geophysics for its hard work in the local organisation and in ensuring the smooth running of the meeting.
The gathering served as an important occasion to review the past three years of activity in the current EUFAR project (2014-2018), and present each activity’s objectives for the remaining life time of the project, which is set to end in January 2018. There have been a number of remarkable achievements since the start of the project which have only been made possible by the continued commitment and hard work of the EUFAR steering committee and activity leaders.
Some achievements include the successful clustering of EUFAR funded flight campaigns with multinational campaigns (e.g. DACCIWA, ICE-D), the launch of the new EUFAR website end of 2015, the EUFAR SWAMP training course in July 2015, development and launch of 14 software tools serving to improve processing and interpretation of airborne hyperspectral imagery and laser scanning data by the joint research activity HYLIGHT, advances in the calibration of airborne trace gas measurements from the joint research activity TGOE, tools developed by EUFAR’s standard and protocols’ team (airborne science mission metadata and EUFAR metadata creator), the EUFAR flight finder tool to locate flight data within the EUFAR data archive, various expert working group workshops which have resulted in publications such as contribution to a book on “Ice formation and evolution in clouds and precipitation: Measurement and modelling challenges” and a paper on atmospheric correction of remote-sensing data. A full list of these achievements up to date can be found here.
One area in which EUFAR continues to face significant obstacles concerns the technology transfer activity; a new and challenging task taken up at the start of this contract, seeking to support the transfer of technology between EUFAR experts in airborne measurements and industry partners, and further support their partnership by providing expertise on issues related to exchange of knowledge. Currently, a number of promising technologies developed by EUFAR partners have been identified through this activity, resulting in the publication of a technology booklet, however, a number of setbacks have been experienced such as the delay in presenting these technologies to potential industry partners and failure to bring on board technology transfer offices of EUFAR partners. The strategy of the activity was discussed in detail during the meeting along with some new ideas to push this activity forward. With one year left to go, the activity will aim to commercially exploit 2/3 technologies developed within EUFAR before the end of the project.
Exciting activities coming up include the three EUFAR training courses set to take place over this summer (EASI (Ireland), STANCO (UK) and RS4forestEBV (Germany)) as well as EUFAR’s 2nd International Conference on Airborne Research for the Environment (ICARE 2017) to be held at the German Aerospace Research Centre (DLR) in mid-July this year. Furthermore, three expert workshops on stratospheric remote-sensing aircraft, processing of cloud particle measurements and aerosol chemical compositions will be held in the course of the year.
After three full days of presentations and intense discussions, the general assembly adjourned with the promise of another packed and stimulating year ahead.
For more information on the event and to access the meeting presentations and report, click here.
Group photo outside the Auditorium Minus at the University of Warsaw's main campus
General Assembly meeting session
Auditorium Minus at the University of Warsaw's main campus
