CZEN Site Selection Procedure The Procedure The CZEN site selection committee comprised five scientists familiar with the CZEN project. Some were academicians and some hailed from governmental organizations. A sixth senior scientist was asked, and agreed, to act as a consultant to the committee; this person did not vote.
Committee members had no personal or professional interest in seeing any of the sites selected for inclusion in the CZEN project. Committee members attended the CZEN site proposal presentations given on the morning and early afternoon of October 26, 2005. Some committee members did have to leave early in order to make flights and these people missed some of the late morning and early afternoon presentations. But other committee members and the consultant remained for all 23 presentations. Presentations were later posted on the WSSC web site for all committee members to review (http://www.wssc.psu.edu/).
Sites were initially scored for compatibility with the CZEN project by committee members - using the Criteria for CZEN Site Components (Oct. 24-26, 2005) as a guide - as High=3; Moderate=2; or Low=1. Eight sites with an average score of 2.4 to 3.0 were ranked in the top tier; seven sites with an average score of 1.8 to 2.2 were ranked in the middle tier; and eight sites with an average score of 1.0 to 1.6 were ranked in the lowest tier. These rankings, plus comments, were compiled by the Chair and sent back to each committee member to consider. After several days of emails back and forth, a second round of selection occurred in which each committee member numerically ranked his or her eight top choices, (from 1 to 8, with 1=lowest and 8=highest) to produce the ranked top third of sites. A conference call then took place on November 16th and all rankings were discussed by the five committee members and confirmed. The consultant's comments were summarized for and reported to committee members by the Chair during the conference call. Following the conference call each committee member ranked his or her next seven site choices (from 1 to 7, with 1=lowest and 7=highest) to produce the ranked middle third of sites. Following this the Chair sent committee members the final rankings in spreadsheet form for review and confirmation.
After committee members expressed satisfaction with the selection process and the results, rankings were forwarded to Sue Brantley.
Proposals now reside at http://www.czen.org/biblio/type/1005?sort=type&order=asc
