Information for Potential WInSAR Host Organizations and Request for Letter Proposal

WInSAR is a consortium of universities and research laboratories established by a group of practicing scientists and engineers to facilitate collaboration in, and advancement of, Earth science research using radar remote sensing. WInSAR helps coordinate requests for data acquisition and for data purchase, aiding individual investigators by simplifying interactions with data providers and with government agencies funding science, including NASA, NSF, and the USGS.

Since its inception in 1999, WInSAR has been administered by the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) at USC. Support for WInSAR comes from NASA, NSF and USGS. Essentially all funds are used to acquire InSAR data at low cost from ESA and other agencies flying SAR satellites and making these data available to all institutional members of WInSAR. WInSAR science spans earthquake and volcano hazard research, hydrology, environmental sciences, and glacial studies. Institutions with a basic research mission are eligible to join WInSAR. Individuals or groups using radar data for commercial or operational purposes are not eligible. Access to WInSAR resources is strictly limited to WInSAR members.

EarthScope has generated new needs for data necessitating an increase in WInSAR's current capabilities. While WInSAR (Western North America InSAR) initially had a regional focus, upon request by our sponsors we anticipate to adopt a global perspective: That is, we will acquire over regions outside of the original western North America focus and provide these data to scientists with broader research interests. Accordingly, WInSAR is investigating opportunities to move its organizational home.

We request proposals from organizations willing to host WInSAR. The WInSAR membership will make a decision about its future status, based on the following guidelines:

1. WInSAR should retain, as its first priority, the goal of obtaining any and all needed data for the radar remote sensing community in the most cost-effective and readily-available manner.

2. WInSAR should retain an independent voice representing radar remote sensing scientists and their need for data, and not be subsumed into another organization. This implies that WInSAR would retain a separate steering committee.

3. While a large part of WInSAR's administrative structure will likely be housed in one organization, WInSAR aims to remain active within all groups of scientists, engineers, and government agencies in which our community has an interest.

4. WInSAR aims to continue its broad support from and close interactions with NASA, NSF and the USGS.

Proposed Host Organization Activities

WInSAR's mode of operation has been to submit proposals to funding agencies, negotiate purchase prices or other means for the acqusition of data requested by its members, and serve these data online to the science community. While WInSAR is somewhat independent in pursuit of these goals, we rely on the host organization to facilitate each of these tasks. In particular, the WInSAR host organization currently submits funding proposals to federal agencies, manages the funds, and provides administrative and logistical support for WInSAR activities and meetings. At a minimum a new host organization would provide these, and in addition may be asked to provide additional services such as listed below.

Base activities

1. Shepherd proposals to funding agencies.

1a. Physical submission of data proposals to agencies.

1b. Finessing/multiplexing how funds arrive from different agencies, e.g. NASA to NSF, NSF to WInSAR

2, Manage WInSAR finances

2a. Keep the books

2b. Pay bills as they come due.

3. Provide administrative and logistical support for WInSAR activitities as needed

3a. Arrange telecons and annual meeting during AGU

3b. Maintain paperwork for membership

3c. Run elections

The additional activities that the host organization may wish to provide would include:

4. Data acquisition activities

4a. Serve as the point of contact for sending data order requests to the data provider agencies

4b. Receiving these data physically (via CD/DVD/FTP)

4c. Ingesting data into the archive

4d. Paying the data providers (international)

5. Hold a complete copy of the archive (e.g., serving as a master WInSAR node by providing ~10TB online disk space)

6. Maintaining the WInSAR website in collaboration with WInSAR members

Funding for WInSAR

WInSAR is self-supporting in that our data costs are borne entirely by proposals written by the WInSAR membership and submitted to funding agencies and data providers. WInSAR has been highly successful in obtaining data and funding for several reasons, but one strong argument in favor of our proposals is that we have been able to maintain a low-overhead cost structure. Our data proposals fund only the acquisition of data, with very low or no associated costs.

Under SCEC and USC stewardship, WInSAR has been able to devote 85% or more of the sponsors' funds directly to the purchase of data, in contrast to the 50% or less available through most university cost structures for faculty and staff. In addition, through SCEC WInSAR has been able to receive $20-25K per year to obtain and maintain hardware for hosting the archive, as well as partially support programming expertise to run the web service. A successful partnership for WInSAR and any host organization will rely on similar arrangements, and we request potential hosts to consider these matters as well.

Summary

WInSAR looks forward to a collaboration with a host organization that maintains WInSAR's self governance by facilitating activities that require formal organizational management as described. While our present model has served the community well, we entertain any discussions or proposals for future organization of WInSAR.

Proposal Schedule

Letter proposals are due to the address below by September 30, 2005. Our evaluation schedule is to have the WInSAR Transition Committee review and seek any further needed information during October, and present its recommendation to the full WInSAR membership for ratification at WInSAR's annual meeting to be held in conjunction with the AGU Fall Meeting, 2005.

Interested potential host organizations should submit a letter of interest to Howard Zebker, WInSAR Chair, Dept. of Geophysics, Mail Code 2215, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305-2215.