Part II – Additional Information A. List of experts

E. FURTHER REMARKS
• To what extent does the proposed network aim at involving early-stage researchers?
It is clearly apparent that the lack of opportunity for early-stage researchers to develop independent careers and to establish research groups under their own responsibility is a serious problem in European research. Therefore, strong efforts will be directed toward an effective involving of early-stage researchers in the activities of this Action.

A number of early-stage researchers, including Ph.D. students, are already involved in the proposal. The Action Proposer took her Ph.D. in June 2004 (she was an early-stage researcher at the date of submission of the preliminary proposal). Early-stage researchers will be nominated as Chairs of Working Groups, whenever feasible.

The Action will promote the involvement of young researchers in STSMs, Training Schools, Working Group meetings, Workshops and Conferences.

The target attendance to a Training School is estimated at 25 persons and most of the admissions will be exclusively reserved for early-stage researchers. The attendance applications of young researchers will be evaluated and approved on the basis of the expected profit for the attendant’s research projects, Ph.D. work development and for her/his scientific career. The Training School young students will be generally supported with travel grants.

STSMs will be primarily dedicated to early-stage researchers. An important eligibility criterion will be the expected profit for the applicant projects, in view of collaboration with experienced researchers, learning new theory, technique, or technology already developed at the host laboratory, or using the equipment available there.

The Action will always support the attendance of early-stage researchers to Action’s Meetings, Workshops and Conferences and their personal presentation of contributions, as far as the available budget permits.

• To what extent does the proposed network aim at being gender balanced?
The gender balance is a priority of this network. The Action Proposer is a woman. The proposed Action is already quite well gender balanced, as far as the applicants are concerned and efforts will be made to improve this balance. Moreover, gender balance will be as much as possible pursued in the Management Committee membership and in the nomination of Working-Group Chairs.

The Action will take care to ensure that the total of beneficiaries of the STSM scheme is gender-balanced and the same with Training School participants.

In order to make Schools, Meetings, Workshops and Conferences, more accessible to researchers with family duties, they will be planned outside major school holidays (variations across participant Countries permitting). Information will be provided on venues with appropriate rooms. Requests will be collected from participants, on whether childcare is needed. In case of multiple requests, childcare facilities will be arranged at the event venue, otherwise, in case of individual requests, local childcare options will be selected and advertised. Moreover, participants requesting a childcare support will be provided with local emergency and health services numbers and there will be a contact person to assist on a 24 h basis with local language issues, if needed.

Joint activities with IEEE Women in Engineering and EGU Women in Geoscience will be encouraged and promoted.

• Does the number of Countries the Applicants come from reflect a wide European

dimension?
The proposal is supported by individuals representing 15 COST Countries (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom), complemented by valuable involvement of leading laboratories from overseas: Australia and US. Further COST Countries will be invited to join the Action. Thus the wide European dimension is fully assured and Countries from north as well as from south and eastern and western ones, result well balanced in this Action.
• To what extent have provisions been made for monitoring and evaluating the achievement of objectives?
The achievement of objectives will be monitored and evaluated by:

• 
  A regular reporting of the WG progress to the MC. This will be done after WG meetings, which will be held twice a year in conjunction with MC meetings. The MC will evaluate the progress and take appropriate actions where necessary.
  
• 
  Reporting of STSM results to the MC, in the middle and at the end of each mission. The reports will be evaluated by the MC.
  
• 
  Self-evaluation, by the MC and on a yearly scheme, of the overall progress of the Action and of the achieved results.
  
• 
  Annual Monitoring Progress Reports submitted by the MC to the COST Office.
  
• 
  The three Training Schools that will be organized, are also intended to make the Action progress and results available for the external world.
  
• 
  Organization of Annual Events: the Kick-off Conference, two Annual Conferences, an Annual Strategic Conference and a Final Conference, with a goal to disseminate the results achieved.
  
• 
  Monitoring the publications, patents, released software and experimental apparatus resulting from the network.
  
• 
  Preparation, submission and publication of a Final Report. This will be done during the final year of the Action lifetime.
  

Moreover, the following quantitative information will help to yearly evaluate the Action progress:

• 
  The number and kind of trans-national collaborative projects and also of research proposals submitted, focused on the Action topics and including groups participating in the Action.
  
• 
  The number of publications (books, papers on peer-reviewed scientific and technical journals, on conference proceedings and non-technical magazines), on the topics of the Action, resulting from the network.
  
• 
  The number and duration of Short-Term Scientific Missions supported by the Action.
  
• 
  The number of participants from industries and end users in the Action events.
  
• 
  The number of thematic sessions in recognized conferences, organized by each WG.
  

• To what extent have provisions been made for assessing potential application and fostering exploitation, of results?

The Action is expected to have an important impact on Standards, at EU level and at wider international level. The handbook published at the end of the Action, with protocols and guidelines for an effective and efficient use of GPR in several CE applications, will constitute a solid basis for the emission of Standards. The capability to format specific results of the project following ad hoc requests from regulatory bodies is built in the project exploitation policy.

The GPR community will greatly benefit from the freeware software that will be released at the end of the Action. The electromagnetic simulator will allow an accurate characterization of 3D GPR scenarios. The data-processing algorithms will help in the analysis of experimental results. This software will become a reference tool at international level, to assure its exploitation a graphical user interface will be implemented with particular care, a detailed manual will be written and examples provided.

With the novel GPR equipment, it will be possible to construct real-time lane 3D high-resolution images of the investigated areas. This is in accordance with the future demands on professional GPR prospection, in civil engineering as well as in archaeology and other fields: the equipment ability to cover large areas in a short time and with low cost, with high spatial resolution and accuracy and with a reduced need of the ‘experienced eye of the geophysicist’ to read the data.

Not only CE will take advantage of this Action innovation, but also rover-based planetary exploration, archaeological prospecting and cultural heritage diagnostics, detection of explosive remnants of war and humanitarian demining. Moreover, it is worth noting that a 3D electromagnetic simulator for subsurface scenarios is a valuable tool not only in the GPR area, but also in many other branches of science. It can be very useful in acoustics, microwaves and optics studies and applications. It will be possible to employ the Action simulator to study the communication through the earth, the scattering by composite structures, the electromagnetic behaviour of artificial media, to solve compatibility problems and to investigate chaos and localization phenomena in electromagnetics. Clean-room monitoring and quality control of silicon wafers manufacture could benefit from this software, as well as bioengineering and scattering microscopy. Disseminating and promoting the software in all the potentially interested audience will be part of the project exploitation policy.

Liaisons with other projects and international organisations active in the field of the Action will allow a mutual exchange of knowledge and results, facilitated by Short-Term Scientific Missions and organization of workshops and set a pan-European forum, also using web based resources, for discussions on themes related to the Action topics. This will enable other potential applications and exploitation of the Action’s results to be identified.

Of course, it is hoped that this Action will inspire the researchers to apply or further develop new GPR techniques and that it will open new areas of research in academia. It is expected that small and medium enterprises will develop new GPR activities and at a higher level, thanks to this Action. During the Action, Public Agencies will be stimulated to make a more extensive use of the GPR in the management and maintenance of structures and infrastructures.