Council guidelines on distribution of computer resources

1. At least 25% of the supercomputer system shall be made available to the Member States, as well as sufficient resources for data storage to support each Member State's work on the supercomputer system (however, the total data storage for Member States should not exceed 10% of the total data storage at any one time).
    
2. A maximum of 10% of the computer resources available to the Member States may be allocated for Special Projects, approved by Council except as under (iii) below.
    
3. 20% of the maximum available Special Project resources shall be set aside; this proportion shall be allocated directly by the Centre to applicants from the Member States, after consultation with the Chairmen of the SAC and TAC. Applications should be submitted via the Director of the relevant national meteorological service. Awards should subsequently be reported to the Council. In deciding these awards the following guidelines will be followed:
    
   1. priority will be given to new applicants, but existing oversubscribed projects could be given further support later each year;
   2. any new projects so supported should have a scientific content consistent with that expected of Special Projects, as laid out in the guidelines for the assessment of proposals.
    
4. After computer resources have been allocated to Special Projects (up to the 10% maximum allowed) 35% of the remainder will be allocated equally among the Member States and 65% allocated proportionally to their financial contribution to the Centre.
    
5. Each Member State should submit an estimate, by 30 April each year, of its computing requirements on the ECMWF computing system for special projects.
    
6. The allocated capacity should be used evenly throughout the year. The allocation will be nominally divided pro rata into 13 four week periods. In the event of very heavy usage, the Centre is authorised to restrict a Member State to twice its pro rata allocation in any given accounting period.
    
7. Unused resources should be at the disposal of the Centre.
    
8. An interactive service shall be made available to Member States to provide job preparation and output inspection facilities.
    
9. No charge should be made to the Member States for use of the Centre's computer resources