EPOS - European Plate Observing System

• Mission & Vision
  • The concept
  • Impact
  • History
• Objectives
  • e-Science
• Architecture
  • e-ICT infrastructure
  • EPOS History
• Community
  • EPOS PP Founding Partners
  • International initiatives
  • National initiatives
  • Events
• Preparatory Phase
  • Overview
  • Governance
  • Partners and Associates
  • Working Packages
  • Working Groups
• Data Products
  • Seismic Networks
  • Laboratories
  • GPS networks
  • Volcano observatories
  • Data Processing and Archives

Governance

The EPOS general concepts for management, advancement, direction and organization will be clearly set out during the preparatory phase (PP). The PP started on November 1st, 2010, and it will last four years.  The EPOS-PP will address the following issues:

• Principles, structure and organization of the project governance

• Structure and organization of the management (budget control, strategic planning, reporting, committees, decision making processes)

• Quality management of project organization

• Review processes

The management of the EPOS-PP is organized with the following structures:

The Project Coordinator (PC) is Massimo Cocco. He is responsible for the global coordination and organization of the activities and chairs the EPOS PDB. His activities are supported by the EPOS PP Project Mangement Office.

The Project Development Board (PDB) is the EPOS executive branch. It is composed of the Project Coordinator and the Working Package Leaders. Its role is to monitor and govern the development of the project and to translate the strategic decisions made by the Inter-Activity Preparatory Council (IAPC) and the Board of Governmental Representatives (BGR) into executive decisions. The Project Coordinator chairs the EPOS PP PDB. The PDB also benefits from the evaluation and scientific support of an external Advisory Board (AB). It consists of external members chosen among international outstanding scientists, representatives from global scientific integrated projects, stakeholders, funding agencies.

The Inter-Activity Preparatory Council (hereinafter the Council or IAPC) is composed of one representative for each contracting partner (that is, signatory to the EPOS PP contract) and one representative for each associate partner. Contracting partners only may vote on matter of the EPOS PP contract; otherwise, all partners will vote on all matters. The Council maintains an overview of the EPOS project and its progress toward the construction of the infrastructure. The Council, chaired by Kuvvet Atakan and Jan Zednik, meets at least once a year and it establishes appropriate guidelines for each of the participants as well as the rules for integrating the partnership addressing and evaluating the requests of new Partners to join EPOS.

The Council is be the main discussion table for the consensus-generation concerning the EPOS legal, governance and financial structure. It is in charge of:

• Approving the documents periodically produced by the PDB through the Project Management Office by reaching an agreement and voting

• Deciding on the strategic issues arising during the Preparatory Phase conduction

• Deciding on the integration of new partners and/or removal of existing ones

Board of Governmental Representatives (BGR). One of the main tasks of the representatives of the Council is to convince their respective funding agencies and governments to support the EPOS construction phase.

The Advisory Board (AB) represents the external evaluation and support body to the management and Preparatory Phase governance of the EPOS infrastructure. It consists of external members chosen among international outstanding scientists, representatives from global scientific integrated projects, stakeholders, funding agencies. It is composed of members that focus on the Science and Technology implementation plan of EPOS, as well as of members that evaluates and control the outreach activities. The AB supports the experts in the different reviews that will be performed within the preparatory phase. The Advisory Board is in charge of:

• Overseeing the project development advertising on the progress (S&T);

• Overseeing all the various outreach and dissemination activities;

• Providing expert opinions and support on specific issues (for both S&T and Outreach);

  Supporting the establishment of effective links with other initiatives worldwide;

• Contributing to the promotion of the Research Infrastructure.

The Provider’s and User’s Commission supportd the management of the research infrastructure to promote open access to all the interested users and evaluates the integration of data providers and the services provided to users.

The ICT Board provides expert support and evaluate the e-infrastructure implementation plan as well as it will oversee the development of an architectural model for the EPOS infrastructure. In particular, the ICT Board evaluates the data flow organization, the workflow management and the user interface definition and services.