Name – Meeting Title – Location, Date

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 surplusWe have introduced a scheme (at 3rd Man.Mtg) to redistribute funds from aircraft with low take-up to others with higher demandThis has already operated successfully to enable some TA projects to proceed on aircraft that had used their initial allocationHas 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 endBut limited to the maximum amount specified in the contract – based on initial estimated costs