Thanks to a kind invitation of the Instituto Geográfico Nacional Tommy Guardia (IGNTG), the SIRGAS 2013 Meeting will be hold in Panama City, Panama, from October 24 to 26, 2013. The main objectives in this year are to report the recent SIRGAS achievements, to evaluate the on-going activities, and to define new actions oriented to take part in the geodetic issues discussed in a global frame. Oral and poster presentations on improvements and maintenance of the SIRGAS reference frame, Earth modelling based on the SIRGAS infrastructure, real time applications in SIRGAS, towards an unified SIRGAS vertical reference system, practical developments for the adoption of SIRGAS at sub-regional and national levels as well as national reports summarizing the most important SIRGAS activities carried out in the member countries during the last year are very welcome. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of SIRGAS (1993-2013), a session dedicated to the original ideas of its establishment and development is also planned. For more details please click here.

The School on Reference Systems, Crustal Deformation and Ionosphere Monitoring is a capacity building activity of the project Monitoring crustal deformation and the Ionosphere by GPS in the Caribbean sponsored by the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) for the term 2012 - 2014. It is addressed to all scientists, professionals, and technicians whose activities are related to the generation, usage, administration and interpretation of geo-data requiring high-precision positions and ionopsheric parameters. The main objective of the School is to strengthen the basic concepts needed for the appropriate generation and use of fundamental geodetic and geophysical data in the Caribbean Region, especially for studying, understanding and modelling deformations of the Earth's surface and features of the atmosphere, in particular the ionosphere. This School will be held in the days before the SIRGAS meeting, in order to facilitate the attendance to both events. For more details, please click here.

Under the umbrella of the project SIRGAS in Real Time, a service called Experimental SIRGAS Caster has been implemented with the main purpose of publishing GNSS data in real time using NTRIP. This caster is hosted by the Laboratorio del Grupo de Geodesia Satelital de Rosario, at the Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Argentina. The identification of the caster is IP: 200.3.123.65 Port: 2101. The data access is free of charge; however, users are requested to fill a registration form out, where they accept the terms of use, and apply for a username and a password to have access to the data. At the moment, observations of some permanent GNSS stations in the region, as well as satellite ephemeris and clock corrections are published in real time. With this, (real time) applications based on relative positioning or on precise point positioning can be performed.Operators of SIRGAS-CON stations or SIRGAS National Data Centres interested in making their data through this caster available are welcome. The corresponding registration form is available at www.fceia.unr.edu.ar/gps/caster.

The installation of this experimental service realises one of the objectives outlined in the SIRGAS Resolution No. 2 of October 31, 2012, about the implementation of appropriate tools for real time data transmission and GNSS services under the umbrella of SIRGAS.

SIRGAS recognizes the support of:

- the Bundesamt für und Kartographie Geodäsie (BKG), Germany, and especially Georg Weber, for the technical assistance to the project SIRGAS-RT and for providing us with the Professional NTRIP-Caster package;
- the Universidad de la República, Uruguay and the Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Argentina, for providing human resources and infrastructure;
- the members of the SIRGAS-RT project for the permanent contribution and help;
- the national institutions contributing to the maintenance and extension of the SIRGAS Reference Frame for subscribing their GNSS stations in the Experimental SIRGAS Caster.