LINK TO NEW ALADIN WEB
Lampe ALADIN
 ALADIN Consortium
 ALADIN Documents
 ALADIN Model

The organisation of the ALADIN project

The organisation of the ALADIN project changes according to the evolution of the project (see also the history of the project) :
  • 1991 - 1995 : gestation
  • 1996 - 2001 : decentralization and formalization through the 1st MoU
  • 2001 - 2005 : 2nd MoU with enlarged definition of the ALADIN partnership, guidelines for the commercial use, creation of a Technical Cooperation Standing Committee (TCSC)
  • end of 2005 : the 3rd MoU defines the current organisation ... see details below

  • Current organisation (updated on September 10, 2007)

    The new organisation is defined by the 3rd MoU and was precised by the General Assemblies :
  • the purposes and objectives agreed by the Parties for ALADIN cooperation
  • the condition of membership, the rights and obligations of the members
  • the governance and the management : General Assembly (with its Chairperson and Vice-Chairperson), Program Manager, Policy Advisory Committee, ALADIN Local Teams Managers, Program Team, Committee for Scientific and System/maintenance Issues, System/maintenance and Scientific Coordinators, Support Team
  • the co-operations
  • the resourses : manpower and ALADIN Annual Budget
  • the information exchange within the Members and towards users
  • ownership and property rights
  • the conditions for access to and implementation to the ALADIN system
  • ownership, availability and commercialisation of ALADIN products

    Please consult the complete MoU document for details.

    For a quick view, please consult the Members map, the matrix schematically describing the bodies/entities established by the new MoU and the 2007 positions, the Governance Map (AG, PAC, PM, CSSI, etc ... : who does what ?), the PAC's Terms of reference, the LTM's Terms of reference and a summary of the consortium resourses (more details for ALADIN correspondants on Partners pages).


    History of the organisation

    1991 - 1995

  • From September 1991 until end of 1995, work on ALADIN centered around visits to Toulouse of scientists of all partners, their ALADIN-related work at home being mostly conditioned by the tasks they had been performing in Toulouse.
    The number of hours of work shared in Toulouse with colleagues of all origins allowed a homogeneous and united team to be formed.
    The main difficulty of the set-up was the financing of the travel and visits. Generally speaking, travel was provided by the partners and the grants for the stays were funded by Météo-France or by French ministries or raised in competitive applications by either all partners or by Météo-France and one partner for bilateral support or directly financed by partners. The number of different sources gives an idea of the complexity of this financing scheme.

    1996 - 2001

  • With the transition to multiple operational status thanks to a "standard open" code, the situation changed.
    The manpower involved in the development of ALADIN has kept
    increasing and covers now not only centralized actions of research and source code maintenance in Toulouse but also deported work in NMS, related to the implementation of local versions of ALADIN, the exploitation of the model outputs, the verification of forecasts and local research developments.
  • The necessary formalization of the project before its decentalization was completed by the signing of a firt Memorandum of Understanding by all partners.
    It layed down he principles observed by ALADIN since the beginning, the choice of software, conditions of its use by the partners and of membership of, admission to, and withdrawal from the ALADIN "club".
  • The 10-years ALADIN anniversary was celebrated in Paris on May 31st, 2001 and a booklet was printed.

    2001 - 2005

  • A second ALADIN Memorandum of Understanding was signed on May 31st 2001 with mainly:
    - an enlarged definition of the ALADIN partnership, with three levels of "rights versus duties" : Full Member, Associated Member, User;
    - more precise guidelines for the commercial use of ALADIN products;
    - stricter rules for the registration of the manpower dedicated to ALADIN;
    - creation of a Technical Cooperation Standing Committee (TCSC) of for members (Météo-France, a LACE representative, a SELAM representative, a representative of the other partners), in charge of the routine project coordination. This TCSC was replaced by a 6 permanent members working group "Science and Strategy Committee" during the Assembly in Casablanca (2002) : the purpose of this old SSI was to supervise priorities and co-operation with other SRNWP groups, to follow AROME project and to report to the Assembly on progress of the scientific plan.

    Statistics

  • Statistics about the manpower involved in ALADIN are regurlarly produced thanks to the ALADIN work accounting realized by the ALADIN correspondants following the rules defined in the MoU.
  • Different sorts of publications and a documentation have been developped around ALADIN.