During our visit at Kiev's Lab., we discussed also very much about a possible
future of this team, linked to the seismic data processing with new technologies.
The view point of our KIEV Partner, regarding their future activities,
is similar to the MOSCOW's one, after a common discussion there, last July.
Their raw plan can be summarized as follows:
this one-year infrastructural Action (our technological establishment of
the two dedicated EDP Centers) has filled up the technological gap with
Western geophysical Institutes, and helped the two Centers to solve their
informatic needs;
after this completion and the acquisition of the whole know-how, the real
production phase can be stated. And because of the big amount of the seismic
paper-records to process, this phase will be necessarily very long in time
(as Kiev estimated: in a 3-years period of full activity, about 4,000 paper-records
will be acquired, that means their 50% of data!);
so, and taking into account the actual and near future economic trend in
the NIS Countries, some other possible international sponsor must be found,
in order to complete (or at least to continue in the right direction...)
their common efforts on seismic data processing;
these various possible scientific Associations could be, for instance:
a) INTAS, b) NATO, c) other EUROPROBE
Projects, etc. Let's explain a little. For instance, let's assume another
Intas contribution for a 3-year period, of the same amount already obtained
this year: that means 180,000 ECU (60.000/Year). Subtracting the normal
amount of 20% due to the two Western partners, this means about 150,000
ECU for the two NIS partner, i.e. 50,000/year, 25,000 each. With this 25,000
ECU/year, the two Centers could complete very well their 3 years job, with
a substantial increase in the acquired seismic digital data. A raw costs
estimation of the annual costs could be the following (the unit-cost are
similar in the two Centers): Labour costs: 12 - 15,000; Overheads:
1.5; Networking expences: 3.0 - 5.0; one dedicated server for network:
3.0; Consumables: 1.5 - 2.0; Travel: 1.0 - 1.5; for a total of
21.0 - 25.0 KECU/year. That's congruent with the Intas possibilities.
In other cases, for instance the NATO CLG Grants,
some modifications in the estimated costs have to be done, due to different
fund possibilities. In any case also this opportunity has to be carefully
examinated.
It follows that a strongest link with the European scientific Autorities
must be realized in a near future. But, first of all, a general open discussion
between the four Intas-IA-96-03 Partners is recommendable, even using E-mails
and/or other communication tools.
So, back to the two Western Partners (Milan and Paris, ex Uppsala) please,
let's start to introduce this hypothesis between our activity plans for
the future... At the moment, I can only say that we'll study very
well this point, without forget the deadlines (for our Projects and for
the next Intas Calls 1999). It's time to think and ponder....