US Underwater Glider Workshop

The U.S. Underwater Glider Workshop was convened on January 18-19, 2017 at the INFINITY Science Center, Mississippi to serve as a forum to strengthen coordination of underwater glider activities across the United States and beyond. The workshop was attended by 90 national and international glider experts from government agencies, universities, nonprofits, and industry. The major goals of the workshop included:

Exchanging information on advances in glider capabilities, operations, and data processing;
Demonstrating how gliders enable new scientific breakthroughs;
Identifying gaps and coordination opportunities for planning, operations, and resources;
Assessing best practices for observations, operations, and data management; and
Designing the scope and aims for a coordination mechanism.

Attendees participated in a high-level plenary by federal agencies, scientific poster presentations, and guided discussion in breakout sessions on Sustained and Event Ocean Monitoring, Harmonizing Glider Efforts, and Developing a Glider User Group. The workshop resulted in executable recommendations broadly presented as:

Initiate a US Underwater Glider User Group;
Increase glider data assembly center robustness;
Explore and encourage asset and platform sharing;
Improve data and information services; and
Engage international underwater glider groups.

Subsequently, a report on workshop findings was developed by the IOOC Glider Task Team. The report includes high level summaries of the workshop, breakout sessions, and recommendations to the IOOC for sustained coordination of US and international underwater glider activities.