N.Z. convener of world polar meeting

Press, 4 June 1982, Page 7

N.Z. convener of world polar meeting

The superintendent of the D.S.I.R.’s Antarctic Division, Mr R. B. Thomson, will convene an international polar logistics symposium in Leningrad this month. The symposium is being held by a working group of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (S.C.A.R.). It will be held in the week preceding the biennial S.C.A.R. conference.

The last logistics symposium was held in 1968 although the group, whilph has been chaired by Mr Thomson for six years, has met at least every two years since then.

The symposium will be very full, according to Mr Thomson, who expects about 140 papers to be presented by delegates from 17 nations. A topic on the agenda is transportation. Delegates are expected, to discuss new types of aircraft landing aids, ground facilities, sea transport (including polar ship design), new navigational aids, and snow vehicles.

Buildings will be another topic, with most countries currently involved in building programmes. This will include discussion on insulation, waste disposal, fire hazards and distillation plants. . Under the heading of energy, delegates will look at wind and solar energy, new types of clothing and field equipment. Telecommunications will also come under scrutiny at the symposium. Mr Thomson said that it was important for countries to report not. only their successes but their failures as

well, that expensive mistakes were not necessarily repeated.

"Without some means of exchanging information like this, our ability to update designing and everything else would be behind by years,” Mr Thomson said. “Our effectiveness would drop 50 per cent.”

At the S.C.A.R. conference after the symposium. Mr Thomson will be New Zealand’s alternate delegate. The normal delegate, Professor G. A. Knox, is president of S.C.A.R., although he will relinquish this position at the conference, after a four-year term. .

The Leningrad meetings will come soon after an Antarctic conference being held in Wellington. This conference is being held to discuss guidelines for oil and mineral exploration and exploitation in the Antarctic.