Fifth Meeting of the Board
of the
International Association
for Urban Climate
Sunday, 11 June 2006
Wallenberg Conference Centre, Göteborg
University, Göteborg, Sweden
Agenda
1. Welcome
and agreement on agenda
2 President’s remarks
3. ICUC-6 – update on conference
4. Treasurer’s report
4.1
Closing of SJSU bank account
4.2 Interim account in Singapore
5.1 Presentation by potential candidate
sites
5.2 Discussion
5.3 Registration fees
6. Committee reports and issues arising
6.1 Awards
6.2 Bibliography
6.3 International Representative
6.4 Membership
6.5 Nomination
6.6 Teaching Resources
6.7 Newsletter
7. New Business
7.1 IAUC
as a registered charity
7.2 Archiving practice/policy
7.3 IAUC
website
7.4 Fund raising
8. Other business
Minutes
The meeting was opened at 3 pm.
Present: Arnfield (past sec.), Bitan, Bornstein (treasurer), Grimmond (pres.), Kanda, Lindqvist (organizer ICUC-6), Mills, Roth (sec.), Salmond and Voogt
Late: Dousset (new member as of Aug 06)
Absent: Barlow, Emmanuel (new member
as of Aug 06), Fortuniak, Gallo (new member
as of Aug 06), Klysik (past organizer ICUC-5), Kuttler, Oke (past pres.),
Quorum is 6 voting members (7 are in attendance).
1. Welcome and agreement on
agenda
Sue Grimmond
opened the meeting by welcoming all Board members in attendance. The agenda for
the meeting was approved and adopted.
2. President’s remarks
Sue Grimmond
thanked everyone for attending and welcomed Jennifer Salmond to her first Board
meeting.
Sue Grimmond in particular thanked Sven Lindqvist and the local
organizing committee for their great effort organizing ICUC-6, Matthias Roth
for his work leading up to ICUC-6 and the Board meeting, Gerald Mills for his
fantastic effort in putting together, editing and publishing the Newsletter,
Janet Barlow and Dale Cunningham (at Reading University) for their work
regarding the membership database and urbclim, James Voogt for his help on the
website and ensuring the smooth transition in the location of the website from
IU to KCL, Bob Bornstein for his role as chair of the Awards Committee and
Treasurer, Jennifer Salmond for her role as the chair of the Bibliography
Committee and for leading the Awards Committee during ICUC-6, Arieh Bitan and
James Voogt in their role as inaugural Board members who will be leaving in Aug
2006 and all Board members for various activities during the last few years.
Sue Grimmond mentioned that it is important to get more people involved
in general IAUC activities and suggested to actively recruit people willing to
contribute.
Sue Grimmond raised 2 important long-term issues which need to be
considered:
(i) Fund raising. At present many activities
are carried out by dedicated members at the expense of considerable time and
energy – a situation which is not sustainable in the long run. Sue Grimmond
cautioned that any potential fund raising activity need to be evaluated
carefully as not to expend more effort than will be gained in return. Research
Assistants are a potentially viable solution.
(ii) Archiving. IAUC has and will be
generating documents which need a physical home.
Sue Grimmond
once again thanked everyone for attending and those who have written reports
for their submission.
3. ICUC-6
– update on conference
Sven Lindqvist
gave a brief overview of the ICUC-6 pre-conference organizational status. He
reported that:
(i)
The
last 3 years were an interesting journey and more work was involved than
anticipated.
(ii)
After
initial difficulties everything fell in place with the great help of his daughter
(Maria Lindqvist), Jenny Linden which was paid through RA funds and Sofia
Thorsson an ex-PhD student who came back to help out.
(iii)
All
last-minute technical glitches should be fixed by now.
(iv)
Because
of the tight scientific program the session chairs should be reminded to keep
time.
(v)
Evening
(social) program has been ready for about one month and has been reviewed.
(vi)
More
than 290 delegates are expected. More student attendees are expected that
anticipated with the consequence of fewer full-paying delegates and hence less
income from registration costs. The University agreed to pay for the rental of
the conference facilities which will offset the short-fall in registration
income and a balanced conference budget is expected.
(vii) The total conference budget is expected
to be around US$100,000 (excluding help by University staff).
(viii) The University will cover an
eventual loss.
Bob
Bornstein asked about the possibility of PowerPoint files of presentations
becoming available on the web as is increasingly the case for AMS conferences.
4. Treasurer’s
report
4.1 Closing
of SJSU bank account – see report attached
Bob Bornstein explained that San Jose State University could no longer
host the IAUC account and needed to be closed at relatively short notice (<
2 months). His attempts to persuade SJSU Foundation to keep the account open
were unsuccessful as were other efforts to find a new location for the account
within the US, primarily due to fund transfer restrictions imposed after 9/11.
Sue Grimmond asked Bob Bornstein to check the origin of item 1.b.i
(contribution from UN or NOAA?) and the various fees in the final summary (see
attached report).
Sue Grimmond noted that the “Telecommunications” charge (Final Summary,
Item 4; see attached report) was for the IAUC web domain name registration.
4.2
Interim account in Singapore – see report attached
Matthias Roth provided details about the rationale of transferring the
funds from SJSU to a joint personal account in Singapore. This solution became
necessary in the absence of any other viable option and is expected to be
temporary until a more permanent place for the funds can found.
5.1 Presentation
by potential candidate sites
Each candidate/representative gave a 10-15 min overview and answered
questions.
5.2 Discussion
After a brief discussion the Board decided that all three proposals
should be pursued at this stage and the sponsors be invited to provide further
clarifications. To aid in a fair comparison among the proposals, the Secretary
was asked to work out a template to be given to all sponsors which addresses
the following points: (i) Budget should be in 2009 US$ and include costs of
program and extra fee to support IAUC activities; (ii) Budget to be worked out
on the basis of 1/3 student and 2/3 full-paying attendees, respectively and
consider lower fees for students and retired people; (iii) Registration fee to
include book or CD-ROM of proceedings and abstract fee if paper is accepted;
(iv) Profit/loss statement (100% of profit should go to IAUC); (v) Number of
parallel sessions and distance between lecture halls; (vi) Conference theme;
(vii) Statement why proposed location is a good choice; (viii) Plans of local organizing
committee to interact with other cognate societies.
The board further decided that the detailed, final budget of ICUC-5
should be given to all sponsors to help in the financial planning.
5.3
Registration fees
There was a clear consensus that the abstract fee should be discounted
from the registration fee if a paper was accepted. Arieh Bitan suggested to introduce
special fees for senior or retired attendees at the same level as student fees.
Sue Grimmond cautioned that this would have to occur at the expense of all
paying attendees who would likely see and increase in their fees.
The meeting
was halted at 6 pm and re-convened at 7 pm in the Hotel Vasa (minus Arieh
Bitan).
6. Committee
reports and issues arising
6.1 Awards
– see attached report
Bob Bornstein gave a brief overview of recent activities as outlined in
the attached report. Sue Grimmond noted that the new chair will be Manabu Kanda
not Jennifer Salmond as indicated in the report and that the Nomination
Committee will be soliciting nominations for the 2006 Luke Howard award rather
than the Awards Committee.
Gerald Mills informed about his efforts to have the three volumes of
Luke Howard’s books re-published and have copies bound to be given to the Luke
Howard award winners. He further suggested that IAUC takes control over
publishing the books. Sue Grimmond thanked Gerald Mills for his idea and effort
regarding the Luke Howard books and asked him to pursue publishing options.
The number of awards offered by IAUC was briefly discussed with some
members suggesting a reduction.
Sue Grimmond reminded all Board members to support the Nomination
Committee by also actively soliciting nominees for the 2006 Luke Howard award.
6.2 Bibliography
– see attached report
Jennifer Salmond reported that at present the committee consisted
primarily of her alone and that it would be helpful if a working committee
structure could be implemented. She also noted the need to find a new chair
within one year because she will assume a new role as Secretary by August 2007.
James Voogt informed that it was possible at the University of Western
Ontario to use students needing financial assistance to help out as research
assistants on international projects. This could be an avenue for additional
help for simple but time-consuming tasks.
In an effort to increase graduate student involvement a suggestion was
made to have two co-chairs for the committee of which one would be a graduate
student (Heather Thompson) and the co-chairs would report to the Board in
writing before Board meetings.
6.3 International
Representative – see attached report
See report
6.4 Membership
– see attached report
In order to better advertise IAUC activities it was decided to produce a
1-page leaflet that can be downloaded from the website, printed and distributed
as needed.
Janet Barlow suggested to merge the Membership Committee (MC) and International
Representative Committee (IRC) (see report). Instead of the MC which at present
is only one person, this member could sit on the IRC as the Membership
Secretary. An additional person (preferably located in another time zone) could
act as the co-approver of urbclim submissions. James Voogt volunteered to act
in this capacity.
6.5 Nomination
– see attached report
See report
6.6 Teaching
Resources – see attached report
Gerald Mills described his activities as detailed in the report. Sue
Grimmond informed about potential teaching avenues which exist for IAUC: NATO
(Krzysztof Fortuniak suggested
that IAUC could organize a NATO ASI workshop/school on urban climate for a
young researchers.),
WMO, National Weather Services, etc. She suggested that the people involved
should develop specific teaching modules which can be offered to the various
organisations or end-users.
6.7 Newsletter
– see attached report
Referring to his report Gerald Mills remarked that he would like to see
more project reports from “low-tech” projects, i.e. particularly those based on
observations from less developed countries.
Gerald Mills noted that editing the newsletter was very time consuming
and he would eventually like to give up this task. He would prefer to
concentrate more on the development of teaching resources which he promised to
do some time ago but with less progress than hoped for because of other
activities.
7. New
Business
7.1 IAUC
as a registered charity
With the closure of the IAUC account at SJSU Foundation it was necessary
find a new location for the bank account. During the search it became obvious
that the best way to proceed would be to register IAUC as a (non-profit)
organization or society.
John Arnfield explored possibilities to register IAUC as a charitable
organization in England/Wales and explained the pros and cons of such a status.
He informed about the various requirements (need for Trustees, income >1000
Pounds/year, constitution under laws of England/Wales, legal responsibility of
trustees, etc).
7.2 Archiving
practice/policy
Sue Grimmond stressed the need for an archiving strategy. As IAUC
expands and develops it is necessary to keep proper records of correspondence,
e-mails, notes, etc. It would help to engage someone with relevant experience
to advise on appropriate procedures (what to archive and how).
John Arnfield volunteered to contribute to the technical aspects of the
archiving procedure.
Post-meeting note: Sue Grimmond spoke to Midge Oke about this and was told we need to talk
to an archivist not a librarian.
Ø
Action
item: we need to identify a person or book to help us get started.
7.3 IAUC website
The issue was raised whether it will be possible to keep the IAUC
webpage hosted at a University website or if a commercial arrangement will be
necessary in the long term.
7.4 Fund
raising
It will be necessary to acquire funds to be able to e.g. hire research
assistants which can help with the more time-consuming tasks of running IAUC.
In this respect Sue Grimmond thanked Benedict Dousset who arranged
NOAA’s 1000 US$ contribution to IAUC.
8. Other
business
Bob
Bornstein mentioned that a conference with the theme “Coastal Urban Processes”
is planned for the second week of September 2007 in San Diego (US).
Gerald Mills suggested to conduct a survey of members about a number of initiatives that the IAUC was
undertaking with a view to getting some feedback.
The meeting adjourned at 21:20.
16 August 2006
IAUC Committee Reports
Compiled and formatted by
Matthias Roth (Secretary)
8 June 2006
IAUC Account – before April 2006 (Treasurer: Bob Bornstein)
- Revenue
- ICUC5
i. Reg Fees $18820.00
ii.
WMO Support $ 1508.70
iii.
IAMAS Support $ 500.00
- ICUC6
i. UN Support $ 1000.00
Total $21828.70
- Expenses
- ICUC5
i. Printing $12775.00
ii. Bank Fees $ 825.10
iii. Student Awards $ 1000.00
iv. SJSU F&A $ 478.25
- ICUC6
i.
None
Total $15078.35
- Balance $ 6,670.96
Final Summary of IAUC SJSU Account:
up to 6/7/06
Date and Item Debit $ Balance $
1. Balance forward $6,670.96
2. 5/31/05 NOVA
fee -$ 43.61
3. 5% fee on
Item 2 -$ 2.18
4.
5. 5% fee on
Item 4 -$ 43.61
6. 4/18/06
Close account transfer to M. Roth -$6270.81
7. 4/18/06 Wire
fee for close account transfer -$
35.00
8. 5% fee on
Items 7 and 8 -$ 250.00
9. Closing
Balance $
1.75
Bob
Bornstein
IAUC Account – post April
2006 (Matthias Roth)
All
values in Sin$; multiply by 1.58 to obtain approx US$.
1. Revenue
Initial
cash deposit to open account 3,000.00
Transfer
of IAUC funds from SJS university account (6,270.81 US$) 10,011.35
IAMAS
support (500 US$) 778.12
IAUC
awards
Lowry
Memorial Awards (700 US$) 1,072.45
The
Japan Prize (20,741.68 US$) 32,595.55
Interest 6.03
Total 47,463.50
2. Expenses
Account
fees 34.00
Total 34.00
-
.
3. Balance as of 07/06/06 47,429.50
Matthias
Roth
Awards Committee (Chair: Bob Bornstein)
- Charges
a. To recommend person for annual IAUC Luke Howard Award for continued significant contributions to the field of urban climate.
b. To organize committee at ICUC meetings for following awards: best student papers, Japan Prizes, and Lowery Awards.
- Recent Activities
a. Luke Howard Awards for 2004 (to Tim Oke) and 2005 (to Ernesto Jáuregui) will be awarded at ICUC6
b. ICUC6 award competitions will be coordinated by Jennifer Salmond, with awards announced after conference closes (in fairness to papers in final sessions)
c. New Chair: Jennifer Salmond takes over at ICUC6
d. Nomination Committee formed (Tim Oke, Chair) to separate Luke Howard nomination process from selection process
- Items for Consideration
a. Plaques for Howard Award winners: cost at SJSU is about $35
b. Reduction in number of ICUC awards
c. Nomination for 2006 Howard Award (by end of summer): how to increase number of nominations
Bob
Bornstein
Bibliography Committee (Chair: Jenny Salmond)
Over
the last three years we have seen an increasing amount of support from the IAUC
community for the bibliography section of the IAUC newsletter. I now receive
regular emails informing me of papers recently published, which combined with
journal alert services means we can regularly feature twenty or more papers per
issue.
I
would like to suggest that with the turn over of committee members this year we
try to involve increasing numbers of graduate students. My experience is that
these members have the time and enthusiasm to commit to the project and they
benefit from the exercise and increased exposure.
Preparing
the bibliography is a time consuming exercise and I would like to resign as
Chair when I take up position as IAUC secretary. However, until then I will
work with the new members of the committee to get the system up and running.
Thanks
to everyone who has contributed for all their hard work.
Jennifer
Salmond
International Representative Committee (Chair: Krzysztof Fortuniak)
There’s effectively not much to report. The
committee members have been asked to disseminate information about IAUC in
their geographic regions and to encourage membership. They have also been asked
in some cases to contribute to the Newsletter. I think more targeted activities
may be in order and I’d recommend discussions about the specific tasks of the
membership committee and international representation committee, especially now
that the nominating committee has also been created.
Sue Grimmond
Membership Committee (Chair:
Janet Barlow)
1.
Current status of membership
Total membership of the IAUC currently stands at 1058, an increase of 26% since the last Board meeting on 18.08.04:
|
|
18.08.04 |
05.06.06 |
% increase |
Total
|
839 |
1058 |
26% |
|
Female + Male |
214 + 625 |
286+772 |
34%+24% |
|
Student |
194 |
287 |
48% |
|
No. of countries |
73 |
86 |
18% |
2.
Response to emergency shutdown of list
In November 2005 it became apparent that the list urb-clim based at Ohio University had been mistakenly erased. After establishing that it was impossible to reinstate the list, steps were taken to create a new list (met-urbclim@lists.reading.ac.uk) administered using Mailman software. The new list was set up within 24 hours of the problem arising.
3.
New membership system (action arising from item 5.3 of Fourth Board Meeting)
The main aims of the major redesign of the membership administration system were a) to move the email list away from Ohio, following John Arnfield’s retirement, and b) to reduce the amount of effort required to process members’ subscriptions. A technical description of the new system is given in Appendix A. Dale Cunningham at Reading University must be thanked for his considerable efforts in writing the database scripts. As the membership system is accessed primarily through the IAUC website, there appears to be no practical difficulty about keeping the Membership system at Reading. The technical staff there are happy to support the presence of the list, and JFB will remain as list owner, whilst day to day administration can be done remotely, and be passed on to subsequent Membership Secretaries.
The email list went live in November 2005; the website front end went live in March 2006, both following testing by members of the Board, which was much appreciated. Advantages of the new system are:
a) automated entry of subscription data into database (reduces 1hour’s work to 1 minute!)
b) database and email list are automatically synchronised.
c) list administrator can easily moderate list postings, change list settings via website portal. This facilitates sharing of membership duties.
d) bounce processing is now automatic, whereas before it was manual and unmanageable.
e) list postings are archived, and members can access the archive on entry of their password.
Potential developments are:
a) remote access via password protected webpage to database for Board Members (relatively easy to do).
b) automatic checking of voter emails (requires considerable development).
Janet Barlow, 5th June 2006
4.
Suggestion for restructuring of Membership and International Representation
Committee.
Recruiting new members for the Membership Committee has been
problematic. After several appeals in the newsletter, I have gained no
volunteers. This may be because it is unappealing(!). Since the last meeting,
none of the suggestions for widening membership have been achieved (see item
5.3.3 from minutes of 23.08.04 Fourth Board Meeting). This has been
frustrating, but over the next year might be improved due to a) considerable
reduction in administration from new membership system, and b) merging
Membership Committee with International Representation Committee (IRC).
Quoting from Sue Grimmond’s email 27.04.06:
The specific objectives of this committee
[IRC] are to: a) let others know about IAUC; b) Send messages to the Urban
climate email list with details on local/regional/national/international
urban climate related activities, such as conferences, publications, proposed
field campaigns/studies, etc.; c) Provide suggestions on how we can enhance
IAUC.
My
proposal is:
1. To disband the Membership Committee, and make the
Membership Secretary (MS) sit on the International Representation Committee.
Existing tasks of the Membership Secretary:
i) maintain IAUC database and urbclim email list (approve
membership changes; deal with technical problems; deal with queries about
membership)
ii) moderate postings to met-urbclim list
iii) check newsletter and conference attendees for IAUC
membership and send invitations to join if needed
iv) target organisations/institutions with invitations to join
IAUC.
Task
i) has been dominant until now, and task ii) essential. Task ii) in particular
requires cover when MS away, which is now very easy and web-based under the new
system.
Tasks
iii) and iv) are compatible with objective a) of the IRC.
If
the MS were transferred to the IRC, they could work with the IRC Chair to
v) monitor membership
vi) provide statistics (e.g. which countries in database) and
emails where appropriate (e.g. from a specific country).
Both tasks would not necessarily add burden to the MS if wider
access to the database is developed via web-access, i.e. anybody on the Board
can access latest statistics on the membership database if required.
Write-access to the database would be retained by the MS alone, and they would
still be an essential point of contact for queries.
2. Would the IRC need a name change to reflect absorption of
the Membership Committee? Or would a restatement of its objectives be
sufficient…? I feel neutral about this.
3. A minor
point for consideration wrt objective c) of the IRC – one useful way to enhance
IAUC membership might be to have a short leaflet, which could be printed out
and left at conferences, etc. This incurs printing costs which might be an
issue, and may not be judged useful! What do the Board think?
Janet Barlow, 6th June 2006
Technical description of new membership database
and email list
1. Overview
New members
New members register through the Database webpage on IAUC
website by filling out a webform. For a new registration, this triggers an
email to a) the database website and b) the Mailman website (new members
awaiting approval). The list administrator will then have to check both the
database and Mailman webpages to approve new members.
Once approved, members are sent a welcome email. This tells
them where the database and Mailman websites are. From then on, they have
control over their database details by use of a password, subject to approval
by the administrator. The password is automatically emailed to all list members
on the first day of each month.
New Members who sign up via the Mailman website will be
encouraged to go through the IAUC database webform instead, so that the
database and urbclim list remain identical.
Changes to members’ details
If a member wishes to change details of their subscription,
or leave the IAUC, they should go to the Database webpage and fill out a
webform, having entered their password. This triggers an email to the
administrator to approve the change. Once the administrator has approved the
change, an email is automatically sent to the member to notify them of the
change
2. Email list
The new urbclim email list is called met-urbclim@lists.reading.ac.uk.
The homepage of the list is at http://www.lists.rdg.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/met-urbclim,
with password protected administrative access from this page. The software used
is Mailman, which is clear, powerful and allows administration of the list
through a webpage rather than email commands. Reading University is happy to
administer the list in perpetuity. Janet Barlow (j.f.barlow@reading.ac.uk) is the
list owner within the University – if there is a change to circumstances then
the support might need to be renegotiated. Dale Cunningham (d.s.j.cunningham@reading.ac.uk)
within the Department of Meteorology has been instrumental in setting up the
new database and its link to the Mailman listserver.
An archive of previous postings to the list is easily
accessible from the Mailman webpage. Members need to enter their address and
password to access the archive as it is not publicly accessible.
3. Database
The new database is written in Microsoft Access.
4. Webpage layout
Access is via the IAUC website, under the heading
Membership.
1) Database webpage, via link “IAUC Membership page”:
http://www.metnt.rdg.ac.uk/Scripts/ucmaillist/
from which one can sign up, edit account or unsubscribe. The
last two actions require entry of the password. All three actions have to be
approved by the administrator at:
http://www.metnt.rdg.ac.uk/Scripts/ucmaillist/ApproveMembers.asp
Only thereafter will emails be triggered to Mailman with
appropriate commandlines to enable changes
The administrator can also search the database for emails
using:
http://www.metnt.rdg.ac.uk/Scripts/ucmaillist/ListMembers.asp
This may be extended in scope to include searches on
country, student status, etc in the future.
2) Mailman webpage via link “met-urbclim page”:
http://www.lists.rdg.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/met-urbclim
The administration page is:
http://www.lists.rdg.ac.uk/mailman/admin/met-urbclim
which requires an administrator password.
Janet
Barlow
Nominating Committee (Chair:
Tim Oke)
In March 2006 it was decided that IAUC should establish a Nominating Committee. The President asked Tim Oke (Canada) to propose a draft set of Terms of Reference for such a Committee and to suggest a list of potential committee members for consideration by the Board. This was done and the proposals ratified by the Board in April, 2006.
The terms for the Committee indicate the prime functions are to encourage and assist wide participation by IAUC members in the workings of the Association, and recognition of deserving members for awards. Through its workings the Committee should try to ensure there is at least a minimum slate of nominees standing for election to the Board for the Association’s awards. In addition it is to advise the President and Board regarding appropriate persons to be invited to serve in non-elected positions of IAUC (e.g. Webmaster) and as members of non-elected Committees (e.g. Awards, Bibliography, Membership, Newsletter, Teaching Resouces).
The inaugural Committee members and their terms are:
Yinka Adebayo (Nigeria & WMO) [ends Jan 2010]
Helen Cleugh (Australia) [ends Jan 2010]
Eleonora Sad de Assis (Brazil) [ends Jan 2009]
Rohinton Emmanuel (Sri Lanka) [ends Jan 2009]
Takehiko Mikami (Japan) [ends Jan 2008]
Tim Oke (Chair) (Canada) [ends Jan 2010]
Janos Unger (Hungary). [ends Jan 2008]
The role of the Committee is not necessarily to nominate but to encourage others to run and to raise awareness of elections and opportunities to contribute to the business of the Association.
The Committee quickly got to work and assisted in making sure there was a healthy slate of nominees for vacant positions on the Board. In this regard it was very effective. The next order of business is to focus on trying to encourage nominations for the next Luke Howard Award. The deadline for such nominations is October 2006.
Report submitted by the chair on behalf of the Committee, June 2006.
Teaching Resources Committee
(Chair: Gerald Mills)
In a previous report, I outlined the path
that I had established for this committee. Essentially, it exists to produce
materials that can be used in the classroom to support the teaching of urban
climatology. Initially, it was felt that the best way to progress would be to
develop a series of short pieces that would represent the ‘state-of-art’ in the
field of urban climatology. After some discussion these statements were divided
into a number of categories:
Urban Climate: State of the Field
- Temperature
- heat island.
- Humidity
- Precipitation
- Radiation
- Wind
- Air
quality
- Energy
budget
- Urban
street climates
Urban climate tools
- Remote
sensing
- Observations
- Urban
climate zones
- Biometeorological
Indices
- Numerical
Models)
- Physical
Models
Climate and Urban Design
- Applied
Urban Climate
- Urban
planning and climate
- Tools
for applied urban climatology
- Air
quality management
- Case-studies
I
have little progress to report on this topic. Thus far just one Resource has
been completed, that of the Canopy Layer Urban Heat Island. I had hoped to use
this as the template to complete others however I have had little success in
progressing this project. I have sketched out others and have nearly completed
another but my progress on this issue has been poor. I hope to make significant
inroads into this project over the year to come and I ask the IAUC’s boards
indulgence to continue.
Gerald
Mills (June 2006)
Newsletter (Editor: Gerald
Mills)
The 18th edition of the IAUC
Newsletter has just been completed and published. The Newsletter was first
published in August 2003 following a decision to establish a communication
outlet at ICUC-5 in Lodz, Poland. It is published bi-monthly and usually
appears within ten days of the beginning of a month. Over the three-year period
it has published a range of articles, which are generally written in a
non-academic and accessible format. In any given period, there is sufficient
diverse information to produce a Newsletter of between 16 and 22 pages in
length. The information is received by email and is formatted using Publisher.
It is finally ‘printed’ as a PDF document which is emailed to IAUC members and
is available at the IAUC website.
Despite the variety
of material received, most of the items published can be divided into two
categories: Country Reports and Urban Project Reports. Both have proved very
successful with the latter gathering information from 15 countries. These
reports are particularly important as they connect researchers working in very
different environments. One of the attributes of the IAUC is its genuine
international membership, it is important to maintain these reports. The
projects are extremely varied in content and have shared information on the
most scientifically significant urban climate projects. However, so far, these
reports do not share the same geographic variety as the country reports. I
think that we need to encourage more reports from projects in less-developed
parts of the world and broaden the scope of the projects to include those
completed with relatively primitive instrumentation. In addition, many of the
reports are of capital intensive and group research work. We need to broaden
this range to include short reports completed by individuals or those who are
actively engaged in graduate-level research projects. I hope that the addition
of a postgraduate editor that this aspect can be developed.
Other articles on a
variety of topics have also been published. I have classified these under
‘Other’ as there are insufficient numbers to create a category for any one. For
example, the software reports have not extended beyond two that were published
early in the series.
Perhaps the area
that has greatest scope for development is ‘Urban Climate in the News’ – I have
listed some of the items published in Table 2. At the moment the items received
under this heading are very wide-ranging and it is difficult to establish a
‘core’ theme with each Newsletter. However, this section of the Newsletter
could occupy at least four pages with each issue. In many instances a single
item in a newspaper can become an inspiration for gathering other materials.
For example, consider the materials on rainwater harvesting in Chennai, India.
As with other items in the Newsletter, the challenge (I think) is to ensure
sufficient geographic variety to make it of interest to our readership.
Alongside this, the inclusion of research images sent by members is a great
addition.
Other items in the
Newsletter are the reports of committees. Of these the Bibliography Committee
consistently generates three pages of materials.
Opinion
Personally, I am quite happy with the status
of the Newsletter but I think that some aspects could be improved. For example,
I am not convinced generally of the conference pages – with the exception of
information on the ICUC. I am a little worried that we do not get project
reports (particularly those based on observations) that originate from less
developed countries. Currently, the reports are of very sophisticated projects
that are difficult to reproduce. There is a need to obtain reports on projects
that require fewer researchers and simple instrumentation.
I would suggest that, at this time, we seek
feedback from the membership about the direction of the Newsletter and evaluate
the function that it serves in the IAUC. Perhaps we could ask this as part of a
larger survey on the IAUC.
Gerald
Mills (June 2006)
|
Urban Climate in the News Examples |
|
Challenges in Urban
Meteorology Gridded Building
Morphological database Atlas – Tropical urban heat
islands Space-based urban
thermometers Climate – Urban Development
Booklet Helsinki Urban Modelling Workshop Urban environment and
precipitation World Environment Day – San
Francisco Nature in the Metropolis Climate Change Information
Resource City Summit in London on
Climate Change Tokyo’s Thermal Map New York City Heat Island Urban Rainwater Harvesting
– Chennai, India Eco-friendly buildings –
India Urban skywalks Hurricane Katrina A new urban flux site in
Italy – Firenze MILAGRO Field Campaign Houston Environmental
Aerosol Thunderstorm Project World Urban Forum Rain gardens and
storm-water management |