Ideas for IPY

The IPY Planning Group has issued two invitations to the Research Community to submit ideas for activities that could form a component of the Polar Year programme. The Planning Group also encouraged the creation of National Committees to promote IPY and encourage the involvement of their country’s researchers. The response has been substantial with over 600 ideas submitted from35 countries and the formation of national committees in many of these contributing countries. Where committees have not yet been formed, National Points of Contact have been established.

Each National Committees has adopted its own strategy for passing ideas to the Planning Group. Some have simply asked for all ideas to be channelled through the committee. Others have allowed ideas to be submitted independently and focused instead on developing themes to help guide the development of ideas by their country’s researchers whilst yet others have allowed independent submission and have concentrated on using the committee’s polar expertise to propose large ideas to submit to the Planning Group. Some committees have taken the ideas to a further stage by linking them to logistic requirements and committing the country to contributing research in nationally defined areas that relate to the broad themes of the IPY Planning Group.

It is planned to put all these ideas in a fully searchable on-line database but initially a somewhat simpler mechanism is being employed.

Three pages are provided here which group the ideas into:

A) those submitted individually.

B) those ideas channelled through National Committees/Points of Contact or proposed by the Committees and

C) those submitted through or by International Organisations.

The lists provide an ID number for each idea, a contact name, a code relating to which Planning Group theme the idea most closely relates and an idea title.

Some contributions submitted several ideas at once and these are shown as (ID number)a,b,c,d,…etc., but are kept together in the original file for that idea.

The first name on each idea is generally given as the contact person.

Each theme is identified by a number 1 to 5 which relates back to the theme descriptions

Some ideas do not appear to readily fit the suggested five themes (1-5) but are nevertheless listed here (as Code U- unclassified) as it is not the brief of the Planning Group to accept or reject ideas.

Some ideas (Code E) appear appropriate to likely outreach initiatives in IPY and a small group of suggestions to document historical aspects of IPY are identified by Code H.

A full copy of every idea is available on this site. Each idea has been converted into pdf format and each pdf file identified as Idea(ID number), e.g. Idea112 refers to ID 112.

It is hoped that all the submitted ideas have been captured in the listing but given the proximity of the submission closing date, complexities of the submission process and severe time constraints in assembling the ideas in time for ASSW there may be some omissions or errors.

Please contact via the contact form if your idea does not appear to be represented.