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Transnational Access Activities in FP7. Phil Brown. Transnational Access in FP7. Issues from mid-term review restricted flight time on individual projects Contributions to leading-edge science access for new instruments – certification / installation costs
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Transnational Access Activities in FP7 Phil Brown
Transnational Access in FP7 • Issues from mid-term review • restricted flight time on individual projects • Contributions to leading-edge science • access for new instruments – certification / installation costs • scientific users / groups per project: Cost-effectiveness
Transnational Access in FP7 • Types of TA activity: • Instrument development. Leading-edge instruments can contribute to future science impact. Campaigns need to be “large” in order to justify certification / installation costs • Summer schools. External evaluation of potential value? • Science projects. Bigger field projects likely to have stronger science impact. Encourage clustering with existing projects. Need to avoid double-funding with EU money.
Instrument development work • Analogy to NCAR/NSF IDEAS • Can we make call for cluster of instrument proposals to take place in medium term of project? • Need time to acquire the additional certification / installation funding from alternative sources • Can we pre-allocate an additional slice of hours to one or more aircraft above the initial level allocation? • Would enable specific instrument development call to have max impact
Clustering with existing projects • Successful examples of this in FP6 • OFFGREEN added 10 additional flight hours to GFDEX project already funded on the FAAM BAe by UK academic funding (NERC). • EUFAR user groups have effective access to significantly larger project to enhance science • Transit flying costs can be covered by the existing project • Can the existing project accommodate additional flying hours into its schedule? • Original proposal has probably already requested a realistic amount of flight time from its national funding body and a realistic amount of time in which to accommodate it.
Promotion of TA • Improved impact in terms of proposals from countries without existing facilities (52%) but possibilities for further increase • Uneven take-up of different aircraft categories • Specific promotions for categories that were under-utilized in FP6? • Promotion of activities that involve joint use of different aircraft categories • COPS (summer 2007) involved a whole fleet of aircraft doing different types of measurements directed to common aims
TA workflow and project review • FP7 will start with largely the same process as FP6 finishes with • Any further changes need to be rapidly identified and introduced • Have introduced a number of improvements over the course of FP6 • Science peer review probably remains the most problematic stage – indeterminate duration
Transnational Access in FP7 • Management of TA funding surplus • We have introduced a scheme (at 3rd Man.Mtg) to redistribute funds from aircraft with low take-up to others with higher demand • This has already operated successfully to enable some TA projects to proceed on aircraft that had used their initial allocation • Has potential impacts on the total number of projects and user groups that might be serviced – contract issue. • Scheme for managing this impact by restricting flows of re-allocated funding
Changes to TA funding rules under FP7 • Still restricted to simple User Fee (cost per flight hour) • No option to add separate fees for instrument certification / installation • Restriction to 20% of total activity (including TA activities) • Unlikely to cause problems if calculated over 4yr term with TA access at similar levels to FP6 • Reimbursement according to actual audited costs at the end • But limited to the maximum amount specified in the contract – based on initial estimated costs