New Year 2023 – Report and Outlook

The year 2022 was a very successful year for GGOS with a wide range of activities. This article provides a brief overview of these and shows the outlook for 2023.

GGOS Film

It began with the publishing of the short film “Discover GGOS and Geodesy“ which was viewed more then 10,000 times so far on Youtube. It is now available in 11 languages: English, Spanish, French, Arabic, Portuguese, German, Farsi, Japanese, Italian, Dutch and Bulgarian. The response to the film was so great that we have decided to produce more short videos about geodetic products this year. A video about the “Terrestrial Reference Frame” will be released soon.

GGOS Events

Beside a own GGOS session at the major geoscience conferences (EGU General Assembly 2022 in Vienna, Austria and AGU Fall Meeting 2022 in Chicago, USA), GGOS (co-)organized three major events this year:

All details and documents (presentation slides, recordings, reports, …) can be found at the event websites.

Community Survey & New Strategic Plan of GGOS

As GGOS reaches this year its 20th anniversary of service to the IAG and global geodesy community. In order to obtain the opinions of GGOS and IAG members as well as those “outside” of IAG (e.g. UN-GGIM and non-geodesists) the GGOS Strategic Plan Survey was initiated to develop a new GGOS Strategic Plan. In the period of July 11, 2022 to September 30, 2022 all together 70 people participated in this survey. GGOS used that as a basis for discussions during the GGOS Strategic Plan Workshop on November 16-17 in Munich, Germany. A draft document was worked out with redefined goals and objectives of GGOS. It is planned to finish it within the next few months. Then it will be approved by the GGOS Coordinating Board and the IAG Executive Committee.

GGOS in 2023

Despite the many innovations and activities in 2022, there will be no less in 2023:

  • Due to the end of the 4 years IUGG period the acting people in GGOS will change. After the IUGG General Assembly in July 2023 in Berlin, Germany, the election process of the GGOS Consortium, Coordinating Board and Executive Committee will start. Beside of this, during the IUGG General Assembly the new GGOS president will be elected.
  • The new Strategic Plan of GGOS will be published after confirmation of the GGOS Coordinating Board and the IAG Executive Committee
  • Two of the three GGOS Focus Areas (Geohazards and Unified Height Systems) will be successfully finished and will act in future as a product center. New topics for GGOS Focus Areas are being sought. Suggestions are very welcome.
  • The GGCE (Global Geodetic Center of Excellence) will come alive this year. A close cooperation with the IAG and GGOS is highly appreciated.
  • Outreach: It’s the plan to extend the outreach activities in 2023 and to work closer together with the IAG COB (Communication and Outreach Branche) to merge common efforts. There will be a focus on producing short videos about geodetic products. In addition it is planned to start the activities on a revival of the GGOS-Portal, a metadata portal about geodetic observations, products and data (see presentation at GGOS Days 2022).

Many more activities will take place in 2023. If you don’t want to miss any of them, please keep up to date by subscribing to the GGOS newsletter or the GGOS social media channels (Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook).

GGOS wish all of you a happy, healthy and successful New Year 2023.

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