1. Welcome
2. Agreement on agenda
3. Items arising from the inaugural Board meeting (University of California,
Davis, 15 August 2000)
a. increasing international representation
b. new appointments to the Board
c. personal vision statement from the President
4. President's remarks
5. Board Procedures and Terms
a. Assignment of Board members to groups to rotate off
b. Conduct of future elections
6. ICUC-5
7. Urban climate web sites
8. IAUC logo
9. Other business
a. Call for ICUC-6 proposals
b. Co-sponsorship of ICUCs
c. Association bank account
d. Scope of IAUC and rules/constitution
e. Use of IAUC list of members
f. journals
g. training in urban climatology (WMO)
h. Update on 2004 AMS Urban Environment meeting
Present: Arnfield
(Sec.), Bornstein, Eliasson, Grimmond, Klysik, Mayer, Oke (Pres.), Roth, Voogt.
Also present was Krzysztof Fortuniak representing the Local Arrangements
Committee for ICUC-5 (Lodz, Poland).
Not Present: Bitan, de Dear, Nakamura.
The meeting was opened at 6 p.m. After a brief interval
to
record the event photographically , the meeting proper began.
Tim Oke welcomed Board members to the meeting.
John Arnfield reminded those
present that the minutes of the last meeting in Davis, CA, had been accepted
previously by email exchanges among Board members.
Item 9h was added to the agenda by Sue Grimmond. Bob Bornstein proposed a
motion to accept the revised agenda (seconded by Sue Grimmond). The motion was
carried unanimously.
Sue Grimmond, Chair of the
Increasing International Representation Committee, explained the function and
organization of this committee, which is charged with getting news of IAUC
events and business out to under-represented geographical areas and acting as a
conduit for ideas from those areas. A motion to formally adopt the committee
organization and activities established by Sue was proposed by Ingegärd Eliasson
(seconded by Bob Bornstein) and passed unanimously.
In accordance with provisional
Board procedures, Tim Oke reported that the local organizer of the Sydney,
Australia, ISB-ICUC conference, Richard de Dear, has accepted an invitation to
join the Board to provide additional expertise in regard to ICUC-5.
Tim Oke reported that the IAUC has
received informal recognition from WMO, including acceptance of IAUC's adoption
of the name International Conference on Urban Climate (ICUC) as the name for our
conference. Kenneth Davidson (Chief of the World Climate Programme at WMO) is
the contact person at the Organization, but it has not nominated anyone for the
Board. Davidson will not formally be a member of the IAUC Board but will be
added to the email list (buco) that is used for IAUC Board discussions.
Tim Oke indicated that distribution of his personal vision for IAUC has been
delayed by technical problems but that it will be distributed to the Board for
comments before being made available to the membership at large. [Tim's
personal vision statement is included below as Addendum A
(Sec.).]
Tim Oke reports as follows. Since
last meeting, IAUC has achieved steady progress. We have agreed on the location
of ICUC-5 and preparations for that are proceeding well; we have gained
recognition from WMO and their interest in co-organizing the meeting; WMO also
asked us to nominate representatives to CClXIII the core meeting of the
Commission on Climatology; they asked me as President to give an overview of the
field for the Technical Conference on Climate Services for the 21st Century;
several of our members have been invited to serve on the WMO Expert Team on
Training in Urban Climatology; the AMS agreed to our co-sponsorship of their
Symposium on the Urban Environment in Virginia; the IUGG recognised us as the
source of a recommendation for an invited speaker for their Congress in Sapporo.
Such recognition of the field and IAUC's leadership of it, by major
international agencies is very healthy and should be built upon.
The Procedures and Terms for the
Board of the IAUC require that elected Board members will be rotated off at
staggered yearly intervals to ensure continuity. Because all current elected
Board members began their terms simultaneously, with the founding of the IAUC in
2000, current members' terms must be of unequal length to initiate the process
of overlapping terms. To facilitate this, those elected members present drew
lots to determine the year in which their term would end: absent members Arieh
Bitan and Yasuto Nakmua were represented by Tim Oke and John Arnfield,
respectively, in this process. The results were as follows:
• Terms ending 2003: Eliasson, Roth
• Terms ending 2004: Grimmond, Mayer
• Terms ending 2005: Bornstein, Nakamura
• Terms ending 2006: Bitan, Voogt
The Board discussed the document
"Draft Board Procedures and Terms" (version dated May 23, 2002), which governs
the constitution of and election procedures for the IAUC Board. Suggestions for
modifications were made by various Board members and it was agreed that a
revised draft would be prepared by the Secretary and circulated to the Board for
final approval.
Kasimierz Klysik and Krzysztof
Fortuniak presented an update on arrangements for ICUC-5 at Lodz, Poland and
provided copies of brochures describing the event. The Board expressed its
pleasure over the appearance and scope of the brochure. A wide ranging
discussion on various aspects of the arrangements for the conference ensued in
which several issues were explored. These included the following.
(a) A differential fee structure to encourage Eastern European and Third
World participation.
(b) The possibility of pruning some of the included social events and to use
the money saved to fund small travel grants.
(c) The possibility of offering reduced fee registration and help with
accommodation for participants from "states in transition".
(d) It was suggested that employed registrants from countries able to afford
standard registration fees should be charged an amount in the vicinity of US$280
(with a US$40 discount for early registration) and that student fees would be
US$100 (US$80 for early registration).
(e) Wilhelm Kuttler is to be invited to join the local arrangements committee
given his special expertise as the successful organizer of ICUC-3 and his
knowledge of European sources of support.
(f) Handling the registration fees creates some problems for the local
arrangements committee because of local laws governing income for University of
Lodz sponsored events. It was suggested that the registration fee income would
best be handled outside Poland and payments made to the local arrangements
committee to cover expenses as needs arise. It was suggested that university
foundations might be available to handle registration fee income and might also
be able to offer web-based registration with fees paid by credit card and other
payment conveniences. Bob Bornstein and Jamie Voogt agreed to look into this.
[Subsequent to the Norfolk, Virginia, board meeting, it was established that
the San Jose State University Foundation could provide an account for the IAUC
and such an account was established, under the direction of Bob Bornstein.]
(g) A US$50 nonrefundable abstract submission fee was deemed essential to
minimize "no-shows" of presenters at the conference, with this amount being
applied to the registration fee.
(h) The need for practical assistance to participants in handling
transportation from arrival points in Poland to the conference site in Lodz
(e.g. pick up and travel by bus etc).
(i) Advertizing for the conference is critical. The conference web site will
be linked to the IAUC site and notices will be distributed on urbclim and
CLIMLIST. John Arnfield offered to send notices to selected journals if Board
members would suggest appropriate outlets and provide contact information.
Distribution of brochures is to be facilitated for North America by Bob
Bornstein, for Southeast Asia and Japan by Matthias Roth and for Europe by
Ingegärd Eliasson and Helmut Mayer.
(j) In the event that the conference makes a loss, this will be underwritten
by the University of Lodz and IAUC will have no responsibility. If the
conference were to make a profit, this would create difficulties under Polish
law but, if funds are held outside of Poland (see item (f)), such a profit could
assist in providing start-up funds for ICUC-6.
[Board members were joined by
Andreas Matzarakis for discussion of this issue.]
There are currently three general urban climate-related sites on the web. These
are IAUC's own site, the Urban Climate Network (run by Benjamin Hertzberg) and
Urban Climate/Stadtklima (run by Andreas Matzarakis). Recently, Benjamin
Hertzberg offered to IAUC the domain names for the Urban Climate Network site,
as well as any of the content on that site that the Association might want to
use. This would be advantageous to the Association since it would give us
access to a domain name (urbanclimate.org) that is consistent with our name and
objectives.
John Arnfield conducted a web-based survey of the IAUC membership seeking its
views both on the idea of rationalizing the various sites' offerings and on
which types of content were felt to be most useful. The results of this survey
were described indicating that the membership supported the idea of
collaborative endeavors among the sites and showing most interest in content
relating to urban climate conferences and events, a searchable bibliographic
database on urban climate articles (with abstracts), IAUC administrative and
contact information, urban climate news, and links to urban climate related
websites.
The Board agreed to take over the urbanclimate.org domain name and to use the it
as the "official" IAUC site, superceding the current Ohio State site. This
would promote flexibility for future IAUC webmasters once John is no longer on
the Board. Initially, the
urbanclimate.org site would be physically located on the Ohio State Geography
server but shifts to another server later can be achieved transparently by
altering the domain name-IP number mapping. John agreed to consult with
technical staff in the Department of Geography at OSU to work out details for
transferring documents and to ascertain what costs are associated with the
domain name registration etc.
The content of the site was discussed: Board members agreed to spend time
carefully reviewing the contents of the current urbanclimate.org site and
suggesting which items should be retained under IAUC management and to report
their preferences to
John Arnfield.
Andreas Matzarakis agreed to work with the IAUC in coordinating and
rationalizing the offerings of the two remaining urban climate web sites
following this change, including the provision of links between the two.
It was suggested that, if a more complex IAUC site entails a greater workload,
an "editorial board" might be established to maintain the site.
Matthias Roth presented samples of
possible logos for the Association. Given the shortage of discussion time
available, it was agreed that the Board members would communicate any strong
feelings about the logos to Roth and that a vote of the membership on a culled
set would be held at a later date.
Tim Oke suggested that the time is
approaching when proposals for the ICUC-6 should be requested. If the choice of
location for ICUC-6 is completed by September 2003, the chair of the local
arrangements committee for ICUC-6 would be invited to join the Board when
Richard de Dear (representing ICUC-4) moves off.
Tim Oke indicated that he would
write to several bodies that share our ideals to invite them to co-sponsor
ICUC-5. A discussion followed as to what co-sponsorship would imply and agreed
it was essentially limited to such items that we can reciprocate - advertising
of meetings in organs of the body (web, bulletins, email lists, at conference
desks etc.) and that we might earn a reduction in registration fees, as we had
done with AMS for the Virginia meeting.
The Board discussed the notion of
having an IAUC bank account because funds would naturally accrue from
Association activities. Experiences were explored on how to do this with least
fuss, including revisiting the trust account option. No decision was made: this
should await the reports from Jamie Voogt and Bob Bornstein (see item 6(f)).
The issue of a formal constitution
for IAUC was discussed. This issue was raised by Arieh Bitan through
correspondence with Tim Oke. Arieh feels the need for more formal rules and
regulations to guide IAUC activities. Discussion in his absence showed no wish
for increased formalism at this point and the matter was deferred by unanimous
consent.
No discussion.
Tim Oke reported briefly that
individuals had been approached about the need for a separate urban climate
journal (e.g. web-based one such as that mooted by Matzarakis) or recognition by
Agricultural and Forest Meteorology that urban-focused articles would be
welcome. However, the latter appears only want urban papers with biological
emphasis and this would not meet the needs of IAUC members in general.
Tim Oke indicated that WMO was
putting together a team for urban climatology training that would include
members of IAUC, and that he had been asked to help to suggest additional
appropriate scientists. That WMO sees training in urban climate to be a priority
is very significant given the diminished programme of the WMO CCl and the
competition for resources.
Sue Grimmond reported that the 2004
AMS Annual Meeting will have a cross-cutting theme "Forecasting: Urban to Global
Scale". The AMS Board on the Urban Environment will be involved in the meeting
and Bob Bornstein and Walt Dabberdt have agreed to act as co-convenors of
sessions with an urban theme at the meeting.
The meeting adjourned at 11:20 p.m.
Respectfully submitted by John Arnfield (Secretary)
Addendum A
Personal Vision of Ideals of IAUC
by
Tim Oke
IAUC is the outcome of a steady process I started back in the mid-1980s. My wish
was to bring together the field of urban climatology. At that time research
conferences were being held separately by WMO, IFHP and CIB, with occasional
interest from IGU and individual Japanese and Chinese groups. Hence
meteorologists, geographers, architects and planners shared a common interest
but did not meet together. This was inefficient, frustrating and intellectually
sub-optimal. A meeting to discuss the possibility of cooperation was held in
Geneva with the main players. It was agreed to hold joint conferences with each
group taking the lead alternately. IFHP did it in 1989 in Kyoto, WMO in Dakha in
1993 and the IFHP Secretary plus a consortium of industries led the 1996 Essen
meeting, and ISB and WMO led in 1999 in Sydney.
The process helped develop a sense of community. There was a shared ideal that
the group wanted to keep meeting like this, perhaps without the budgetary
vagaries that threaten societies and agencies and hence may cause the meetings
to default. They also didn’t seem to want another scientific body with
dues and political hassles.
At this point we got cheeky and decided to build on this loose group of players
and make it into an organization. Nobody gave us the authority to highjack the
conference sequence as ours but we did, and it seems the original organizers are
happy to let us do so. In so doing we have democratically acquired the right to
speak on the behalf of many colleagues, and by extension wield the power of
their interest in attending meetings, or supporting journals or any other
purpose we deem appropriate to the central goal of IAUC which is: “to foster
cooperation and the free exchange of ideas and information about the climates of
cities and their significance” – the primary medium of achieving this is to
arrange for international conferences to be held every few years when the
membership desires. Secondary ways of doing so involve hosting an e-mail list
for exchange of information of interest to urban climatologists and to provide a
web presence in support of similar goals.
Clearly my vision is one of a low key, low maintenance, low administration and
near zero cost organization, with a nearly virtual presence but significant
influence. It also includes almost no rules, except those that govern the
running of the Board in a democratic way. IAUC should be collegial and the
organization should belong to the members.
At present it owns no funds yet it has the leverage to “arrange” conferences,
funded by third parties, almost purely for the benefit of the membership.
Inevitably funds will come into our possession – as a result of a profit-sharing
arrangement with a conference organizer, or through bequests from members, etc.
We shall not try to make money out of our members, but it may be seen to be
helpful to the other objectives to amass a small amount as ‘seed money’ or a
cushion to facilitate future conferences or other activities.
To date much of this is eventuating. The success may well breed desires to take
on other goals and the common trappings of a scientific society. People may wish
to receive regular missives rather than quietude and the expectation that
someone is working towards their best interests. That will be for the Board to
decide in conjunction with the membership. At this point I prefer to let it grow
organically. Clearly our central focus now must be ICUC-5 and the meeting beyond
that. ICUC-5 will provide a forum where the membership can make their views for
the future known and to indicate their willingness to make it happen by donating
their time and enthusiasm.
Tim Oke, May 2002