Organisation

The COST Action is led by a Management Committee (MC). Responsibility for detailed planning, execution and documentation of the individual activities will be delegated by the MC to a Steering Group (SG), consisting of the Chairperson of the COST Action, the Vicechairperson, the Working Group Coordinators and, when necessary, others through appointment by the MC. Where possible, the MC or SG meetings will be organised in connection with Working Group meetings, workshops and conferences to minimise the costs involved in the coordination of the COST Action.

The main activities of the COST Action are to be carried out at the Working Group (WG) level. The WGs will act as links between the COST Action and existing research programmes, and will be the fora for intensive interactions between the involved stakeholders and the research community. WG meetings for sub-groups or for the entire WG will be organised as and when required within individual activities. Exchange visits of scientists, especially young scientists, within the short-term scientific mission scheme will be encouraged by the MC in order to foster collaboration between the institutions of the participating COST countries.

The Action will be structured in Working Groups that will meet in a series of workshops, covering each of the topics identified in the previous sections:

Working Group 1: Inventory and review of existing models (WG1)
Working Group 2: Underlying concepts and theories, model extensions (WG2)
Working Group 3: Data-model interactions (WG3)
Working Group 4: Applying models at different temporal and spatial scales (WG4)

Working Groups 1, 2, 3 and 4 will be responsible for tasks 1, 2, 3 and 4 respectively. Task 5 will be a collective effort by the plenary group.

The work of the Working Groups will be supported by the following events:

1. Kick-off meeting, held at the beginning of the Action: the objective of the kick-off meeting will be the assignment of tasks and the designation of a small Task Group that will prepare the discussion papers around which the workshops will be undertaken.

2. Three workshops, annually at the first quarter of the 3 last years of the Action, covering the topics already listed in the scientific program. All the Working Groups will be present in the workshops but each Working Group will have separate sections dealing with a specific topic. Each workshop will be supported by the work of a small Task Group that will prepare a discussion paper or make a review according to the workshop topic. A plenary session will take place at the closing of each workshop. Table 1 lists the discussion papers/review and Table 2 the topics for discussion in the workshops in relation to the Working Groups.

3. An open scientific conference will be organized at the end of the Action, providing a comprehensive state of the art, and presenting and disseminating the results of the Action. It is anticipated that the open conference will be supported by IUFRO Division 4 within the series of the conferences related to Forest models for Sustainable Management that have been organized by IUFRO during the last decade.

In order to keep the contact among the participants, a web page will be set up from the beginning with an intranet accessible with password where all the relevant information such as discussion papers, databases, etc, will be posted.