A European committee to review the R&D effort for future projects

Introduction
High Energy physics relies heavily on detector R&D developments. Every significant improvement on detection techniques opens a new area for fundamental physics. The R&D effort for new detectors is an important part of all the experimental laboratories and university teams activities. A considerable amount of manpower and financial resources are committed to this field across Europe and all around the world.
R&D programs related to approved and well established scientific projects and collaborations, e.g. LHC, are evaluated and followed up by well-known and existing committees, run naturally by the host laboratories. This is not the case when an important large scale project is in its preliminary and preparatory phase, not yet approved and supported by a unique leading or host lab. As an example the ILC European community is heavily involved for many years in an ambitious R&D effort, although the construction of a linear collider is not yet approved, and many host sites are envisaged. Although DESY PRC had until now successfully reviewed a large part of this R&D program, having a truly European committee, which covers projects beyond ILC, is clearly desirable.
The idea of creating a European R&D evaluation and follow up committee (EDRDC) emerged from discussions among the RECFA members in November 2009.


The committee
The mandate of the committee is:
Receive R&D proposals and make recommendations after evaluation. Evaluate and monitor the progress of R&D programs on request. Help to create a coherence of the global R&D effort by encouraging synergy between different activities and advising funding agencies.
• The committee has only a reviewing and advisory role and does not initiate or assume any coordination of the R&D programs.
• The committee is primarily concerned with large R&D projects involving many laboratories and requiring significant resources.
• The committee reports to ECFA and the ECFA chairman informs of the R&D activities to the European session of the CERN council.
• The committee primarily examines R&Ds related to accelerator experiments. However it may expand its field of expertise to R&Ds on non accelerator particle physics detectors, if requested.
• After the presentation to ECFA, committee’s reports become available to the public including funding agencies.
• It is proposed to form a single committee composed of world detector experts. The chairman as well as its members are to be nominated by RECFA. The committee should be hosted and operated by a European laboratory.