Submission of Expressions of Intent reach the 1000 mark

Thank you! The Expression of Intent exercise which closed on Jan 14 has prompted enormous interest from the community with around 1000 submissions made by the deadline. This clearly demonstrates the substantial enthusiasm that exists for an International Polar Year and illustrates the scale of the planning challenge. The Joint Committee wishes to thank everyone who contributed an Expression of Intent.

All submissions should have received an email acknowledgement by now and we intend to mount a list of all EoI's on the website at the end of January so that individuals can check that their submission is there. At present the EoI's are being loaded into a database and individually checked before they are loaded onto the website. This latter task will take some time but you will be informed when it is complete. Again we will look to receive your comments on any errors but it will also provide an opportunity for project consortia to look for possible links to other proposals and thus scale up the level of activity. National Committees and polar operators will be provided with the results of database searches to assist their planning.

The Joint Committee will assess how well these EoI's match the IPY criteria and provide feedback as appropriate after their meeting in Paris on March 7-9. The Open Consultative Forum will meet in Paris on March 10-11 and will also get to discuss the EoI analysis.

For more information, please contact Cynan Ellis-Evans email jcel@bas.ac.uk .