GGOS Bureau of Products and Standards: Recent activities and future plans

Abstract

The GGOS Bureau of Products and Standards (BPS) supports the Global Geodetic Observing System (GGOS) of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG) in its goal to provide highly accurate, consistent, and long-term stable geodetic products needed to monitor, map, and understand changes in the Earth’s shape, rotation, and gravity field. A key objective of the BPS is to keep track and to foster homogenization of adopted geodetic standards and conventions across all IAG components for the generation of geodetic products. This includes the interaction with the IAG Services and other entities that deal with standards and conventions, such as the Conventions Center of the IERS (International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service), the Commission A3 ”Fundamental Standards” of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and the Technical Committee 211 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO/TC 211).This contribution presents the structure and role of the BPS. It highlights some of the recent activities, which are focused on the updating the BPS inventory of standards and conventions used for the generation of IAG products, the revision of the IERS Conventions, mainly related to Chapter 1 ”General definitions and numerical standards” as well as the description and promotion of geodetic products published at the GGOS website (www.ggos.org). The BPS also contributes to the generation of GGOS outreach material, such as videos, brochures, social media posts, etc. to make other disciplines and society aware of geodesy and its beneficial products. Finally, planned activities of the BPS according to the new GGOS Strategic Plan 2024-2034 are provided.