A first draft of the MoU (called “second” and not “new”) will be prepared according to this report and will be sent on March the 23rd, 2001. The deadline for comments will be April the 27th, in order to give chance for a second round of calls for comments, if necessary.
The second ALADIN MoU will be valid 4.5 years (until the end of 2005) to ensure the coincidence of the signature of a (potential) third MoU with an ordinary Assembly of Partners.
1. Preamble
The history will be kept and completed.
The RMDCN role will be introduced.
The agreement with the Vienna Assembly requests and the humanitarian
policy will be reaffirmed.
The candidacies of Bosnia, Egypt and Luxembourg will be noted.
2. B
Will be modified following the conclusions of the working group on the ALADIN statistics.
3.
The list of configurations will be actualised.
4. A
Will be harmonized with the ALATNET contract: activity of non-ALADIN members via ALATNET project.
5. G
Introduction of ALATNET.
6.A & D
Different and/or identical acceptance/exclusion and veto procedures will have to be explicited for Full Members and Associated Members.
MoU and ALATNET
The accordance between the MoU and the ALATNET contract will be verified. In particular, in 4.A, the activity of non-ALADIN members in ALADIN via the ALATNET project will be considered.
Membership
3 categories (Full Member, Associated Member, User) and 2 areas (A and B) wil be defined. A one year “stage” in one category will be mandatory before any new change. The map of area A/B is defined for the MoU duration (not renegotiable during the lifetime of the MoU).
Full Member
-a FM is in area A,
-a FM is a National Meteorological Service,
-a FM agrees with the relevant part of the MoU,
-a FM has some manpower dedicated to ALADIN tasks of common interest in a manner controlled by the Assembly of Partners,
-a FM has voting rights,
-a FM can handle Associated Members and Users.
Associated Member
-an AM in area A is a meteorological organization with “civil service type operational duties” (if it is not a NMS, one should verify that it is allowed to sign that sort of MoU) that does not fulfill all membership conditions (may be only for the time being),
-an AM in area B is a National Meteorological Service that has some manpower dedicated to ALADIN tasks of common interest in a manner controlled by the Assembly of Partners,
-an AM agrees with the relevant part of the MoU,
-an AM cannot have Users,
-an AM is associated to the Assembly of Partners, without voting rights and without financial returns,
-an AM cannot be part of Météo-France’s agreement with ECMWF (no access to ECMWF through ALADIN but it could have access through its NMS basic rights),
-an AM not doing development has no access to the code,
-an AM pays a contribution in a manner decided by the Assembly according to its economiocal situation (EUMETSAT example) and/or its level of involvement as well as the reasons why it is not a FM; a guideline for the order of magnitude of the annual fee will exist, but shall not be part of the MoU.
Users
-in area B, when not fulfilling the conditions to be AM, you are Users,
-in area A, universities, clients, merely commercial organization, ... i.e. all organisations that are not NMS and that have no “civil service type operational duties” can only be User
-a User has not access to the code,
-a User cannot have Users,
-a User pays according to the commercial guidelines, but in a manner that should not make it more advantageous than being an AM (especially for area B).
Admittance (and transition AM=>FM)
-for FM, the admittance procedure is unchanged,
-for AM, the admittance procedure is a simple weighted vote with conditions related to the aboved mentionned particularities of the country.
Exclusion (and transition FM=>AM)
-a FM becomes an AM if a double 2/3 majority of FM agrees to the proposition of at least one FM,
-if a User or an AM does not pay, a simple letter from the FM in contact with it is enough to exclude it.
Area A
-Euro-Mediterranean area: Europe limited to countries without extension well outside the high resolution area of ARPEGE and countries with a Mediterranean/Black-Sea facade. This definition will be replaced by a map in the MoU.
-The confomrmity of this definition with ECMWF likely policy should be verified beforehand to avoid as much as possible the future embarassing situation of “contradictions”.
Financial aspects
ECOMET
The practice of non-internal competition within the ALADIN group will be adapted to the ECOMET principles. In preamble and/or section 4, it will be indicated that "the parties agree in principle to follow the objectives of ECOMET in this respect".
INTERNET & 4.E
"Each partner is granted to use ALADIN products on an open internet site for its national territory. Beyond the partner’s national territory, the use of ALADIN products on an open internet is restricted to the ECMWF practice at the time of signing the MoU."
ALADIN pricing policy
In appendix A, after the first sentence, add: "following the example of ECOMET (like for ECMWF), under the control of the Assembly of Partners".
The example of the agrement between Slovenia and Friouli could be added to the preamble.
In appendix A, the rules to deliver the royalties will be explicited: the royalties (raised to 40% of the price payed by the client) will be calculated respectively to the latest "Participation in the ALADIN Project" in Appendix B. Once a year (middle), each FM handling a client will send a letter to every FM with the amount of money he will receive if and when he sends an invoice (banking costs will be payed by the Partner who will receive the money).
The appendix C will be modified following the relevant practice.
The issue of the link between operational and research/development (R&D) structures
The ALADIN community will encourage groupings (existing or future) to take in their hands the necessary links in order to avoid the burden of direct members’ requests to Météo-France to grow out of control, especially with the forthcoming emergence of variational data assimilation applications.
Météo-France commits itself to a minimum transversal level of support but cannot stretch itself to give support to more ambitious projects that should be sustained, whenever feasible, by groupings having the critical mass for doing so.
This dual process is ensured by (i) a full new writing of the additional paragraphs to the preamble and (ii) the proposed creation of a standing committee with full mandate from the Full Members for maintaining the right balances between rights/duties, ambition/forces. The standing committee will regulate operation versus research basic problems and will be the "watchdog" in charge of responding to urgent difficulties. The standing committee will originally be composed of 4 representatives : 1 representative for LACE, 1 representative for SELAM, 1 representative for Météo-France and 1 representative for all other FMs not belonging to a grouping. In case of new groupings being formed this membership structure will be reassessed by the Assembly.