Banner
ALADIN
High Resolution Numerical Weather Prediction Project
Website of the ALADIN Consortium
History of the governance : 1991-2016
Article published on 21 July 2008
last modification on 6 October 2016

by Patricia

The organisation of the ALADIN project changes according to the evolution of the project (see also the history of the project).

 1991 - 1995 : gestation

  • From September 1991 until end of 1995, the 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.

 1996 - 2001 : decentralization and formalization through the 1st MoU

  • 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 decentralization was completed by the signing of a first 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 : 2nd MoU with enlarged definition of the ALADIN partnership, guidelines for the commercial use, creation of a Technical Cooperation Standing Committee

  • 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.

 end of 2005 : the 3rd MoU defines the new organisation

  • the governance and the management are adapted: 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 MoU defines more precisely the relationships between governing bodies with a proposed way of circulating information, request and decision between GA, PAC, PM and Directors on one hand, in consistency with HIRLAM and with ECMWF

 end of 2010 : the 4th MoU defines the organisation for 2011-2015

  • The evolution of the content from MoU3 is mainly a better balancing within the management entities (LTMs more active in planning and reporting, CSSI more involved in applications) and the harmonisation with HIRLAM, including the possibility to temporarily and jointly active “task-forces†.

 beginning of 2016 : the 5th MoU defines the current organisation

The differences from the 4th MoU concern :

  • the introduction of the notion of Canonical Model Configurations (i.e. AROME or ALARO)
  • the new half-time ALADIN funded position for a Code Architect
  • the increase of the flat-rate ceiling to take into account the CA funded position
  • some changes in the article 11 about "Ownership, avalability and use of ALADIN products".
    the ALADIN-HIRLAM cooperation agreement was removed from the MoU text and remains as a stand alone document that is to be renewed and signed with HIRLAM consortium.