GROOM Gliders for Research, Ocean Observation and Management Deliverable D1.10 Final report on the conclusion / perspectives about the GROOM activities Due date of deliverable: 31/12/2014 Actual submission date: 27/03/2015 Partner responsible: UPMC Classification: PU Contract Start Date: October 1 st, 2011 Duration: 39 Months Project Coordinator: UPMC Partners: UPMC, OC-UCY, GEOMAR, HZG, AWI, UT, FMI, CNRS, IFREMER, HCMR, CMRE, OGS, UIB, NERSC, CSIC, PLOCAN, SAMS, UEA, NERC. Project website address http://www.groom-fp7.eu
Table of contents I. INTRODUCTION... 3 I.A Contributors and acknowledgments... 3 I.B Objectives... 3 I.C Rationale... 3 II. HOW THE WORK PACKAGE CONCLUSIONS WILL CONTRIBUTE TO THE FUTURE RI?... 6 II.A WP2: Integration in the GOOS... 6 II.B WP3: Scientific Innovation... 8 II.C WP4: Targeted Experiments... 9 II.D WP5: Glider Infrastructure... 10 III. ROLES AND OBJECTIVES OF THE GLIDER EUROPEAN RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURE... 13 IV. A ROADMAP FOR THE GLIDER EUROPEAN RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURE... 16 V. SYNERGIES WITH OTHER MARINE RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURES AND GLIDER RELEVANT PROJECTS... 18 VI. NATIONAL COMMITMENTS ACROSS EUROPE... 20 ANNEX A: STATUS OF THE MAIN NATIONAL GLIDER RIS ACROSS EUROPE... 22 A. Cyprus... 22 B. Greece... 22 C. France... 22 D. Italy... 22 E. Norway... 22 F. Spain... 23 G. United Kingdom... 23 GROOM website address http://www.groom-fp7.eu 2
I. INTRODUCTION I.A Contributors and acknowledgments This report was prepared as part of Task 1.2 (Internal and External communication) of Work Package 1 (project scientific and technological coordination) of GROOM. L. Mortier from UMPC/France, P. Testor from CNRS/France, with the assistance of V. Turpin from CNRS/France and the four WP leaders (Daniel Hayes from OC-UCY/Cyprus, J. Karstensen from GEOMAR/Germany, E. Mauri from OGS/Italy and Karen Heywood from UEA/UK), were the lead authors of this report devoted to the conclusions and perspectives of the GROOM design study. I.B Objectives The deliverable presents the main conclusions and perspectives about the GROOM activities, for a future Glider European Research Infrastructure, hereafter GERI, and is based on the achievements of the four Work Packages WP 2 to 5. This report enlightens the common vision achieved after three years of ever growing cooperation between GROOM s partners and with some main relevant stakeholders like EuroGOOS. The objectives of this report are to demonstrate the necessity of an GERI; to establish a roadmap for its implementation. The deliverable is organized into 6 sections: A general introduction on the objectives of the deliverable and the methodology used; How the Work Package conclusions will contribute to the future GERI; The definition of the future GERI; A roadmap for the future GERI based on the GROOM design study conclusions; An analysis of the synergies with other marine research s and glider relevant projects; An analysis of the European potential for national funding commitment. The roadmap for the future GERI is supported by an analysis of the present national roadmap and level of funding commitments of seven European countries which is presented in Annex A. I.C Rationale During the last two decades, the multiplatform paradigm for in-situ ocean observation has arisen and been consolidated. It was based on observations carried out by Research Vessels (and Voluntary Observing Ships), fixed point observations (moorings), Lagrangian platforms (profiling floats and surface drifters) presenting different advantages in terms of sampling and complementing each other. During the same period, the real time capabilities and efficient data management procedures have also deeply changed the access to data, which are now easily used by a wide range of stakeholders. These changes of paradigm in marine observations benefited the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS hereafter). Based on its observing programs (Argo for profiling floats, Global Drifter Program (GDP) for drifting buoys, OceanSITES for moorings, ships of opportunity Program GROOM website address http://www.groom-fp7.eu 3
(SOOP) and Global Ocean Ship-based Hydrographic Investigations Program (GO-SHIP) for vessels as well as remote sensing programs), GOOS gave rise to mature climate applications and the first operational oceanography (OO) systems. However, GOOS was first targeted to the open ocean at low resolution and mostly physical variables. During the OceanObs 09 conference, the tremendous need for multi-variable observations in particular of the transition between the open ocean and the coastal environment, which is a key area for societal issues and economical applications, was clearly pointed out. At the same time, glider technology was becoming mature and more available. It was soon clear that gliders could provide the capability to access higher spatial resolution and coverage which were missing from the above platforms and programs. Being steered remotely in large numbers over months and thousands of kilometres, these new and small ocean observing robots could continuously perform a large variety of oceanic measurements at high spatial and temporal resolution. As such, gliders could provide the missing information for making substantial progress to answer the needs of the two major scientific objectives in marine sciences: understanding the coupled physical and biological ocean processes, in particular in the coastal-open sea transition zone, and monitoring the ocean, in particular in sub sampled areas, at the right resolution. Mesoscale and submesoscale ocean processes are central to physical, chemical and biological oceanography, but still very difficult to observe over the water column. Gliders, when deployed in large numbers with multiple sensors, were soon thought to be the only suitable platforms able to fill the gaps in timespace, and also gaps in terms of measured variables, left by the other and more conventional observing platforms. Today, there is a general agreement that gliders allow us to enter into a new era of ocean observations. The challenge is to set up and sustain the required glider observations in the GOOS. For this, common protocols and interoperability must be formally established among the glider operators who are world-class expert teams. The glider technology requires a high level of knowhow to master all the scientific and technological aspects and to fully exploit such platforms. To be more generally used for research applications, a sufficient technology readiness level for the vehicles, payloads and software interfaces must be reached. At the same time, to face the global observation challenges for climate, OO applications and services arising from the European Maritime Policies, the needs for adequate Marine Research Infrastructures (MRIs) became rapidly obvious to the member states and to the EC/DGRI. In 2006, the European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) established a roadmap for MRIs devoted to the European contribution to the Argo program (EuroArgo), to bottom and water column fixed point observations (European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water column Observatory (EMSO)) with some link with the OceanSITES program, and for biological observations and biological marine models (European Marine Biological Resource Centre (EMBRC). While strongly supporting the preparatory phase of these ESFRI projects, FP7 had also a voluntary policy to develop a whole range of MRIs projects, including at the regional and coastal levels, by using the I3 frame. It is in this context that the GROOM project has been funded in 2011 as a Design Study to define the functionalities and operating modes of a future GERI. This GERI should address as a priority the challenges Europe is facing today: Mapping the water column of European Regional Seas (including overseas, the coastal and open ocean) at adequate scales and in real time, in terms of Essential Ocean Variables (EOV) and in the framework of the GOOS, for applications related to climate, marine ecosystems and marine services; Advancing knowledge on oceanic physical and biological processes, in particular at small scales of variability and in challenging environments. During the last three years the GROOM partners have worked in two main directions to answer GROOM website address http://www.groom-fp7.eu 4
these issues: investigating the different options for the architecture of the future GERI in terms of financial, legal and organizational aspect by defining its core concepts, boundaries and potential operation; developing and enhancing the technical, experimental and operational tools, products and services that would be highly valuable for the glider community in the framework of a GERI. The following section summarizes the conclusions that support this common vision for the future GERI, organized by WP, the third part of the document explains these roles and objectives of the GERI, and the following parts provide insights for future implement of the GERI in the European and national contexts. GROOM website address http://www.groom-fp7.eu 5
II. HOW THE WORK PACKAGE CONCLUSIONS WILL CONTRIBUTE TO THE FUTURE RI? II.A WP2: Integration in the GOOS II.A.1 Assessment of a glider component in the GOOS Gliders for observation in the GOOS The potential contribution of autonomous underwater gliders as a new sub-system for the GOOS was investigated. It was found that gliders can provide important and complementary information to the existing in-situ GOOS in time/space resolution and parameters. Most of the existing sustained glider observations operate in the transition regions between the open ocean and shelf seas, a focus region, overlapping with Regional Ocean Observing Systems (ROOSs) activities. In most cases, the glider applications address investigations and monitoring of processes across multiple disciplines, making use of the wide range of available sensors. Given the maturity of glider operations and glider data flow, a full implementation of gliders into the global and regional ocean observing systems is worth pursuing. The design of the glider component in the GOOS shall make extensive use of Observing Systems Simulation Experiments and tools for that have been developed by GROOM. A glider operator position in the Joint Commission for Oceanography and Marine Meteorology in situ Observing Platform Support Centre (JCOMMOPS) is the first step to implement gliders as a sustained GOOS platform. In this context, the creation of a GERI is absolutely crucial as it can guarantee the technical capability to support glider sustained observations where needed. Gliders and operational models Glider platforms provide high-resolution observations along oceanic sections from which numerical ocean circulation models can take a large benefit. Glider measurements provide the unique in-situ information for the mesoscale and submesoscale variability in the ocean, which is key for a good representation of eddies and fronts in numerical models. Once in the water, the near real-time availability of glider measurements opens the possibility for further efficient operational feedbacks between models and gliders. While observations can constrain the model in real-time, model outputs might guide the position of future observations, gliders being active platforms that can be steered in real time. While glider-collected profiles of temperature and salinity have been assimilated into operational models regional models, further research and methodologies shall be developed and standardized for efficient data assimilation in regional forecasting systems but also global applications seem feasible. Adaptive sampling strategies for model forecast optimization require a high level of integration between the glider operations and the modeling systems but can result in very much improved forecast, of relevance e.g. for local scale event triggered surveys such as those related to oil spills. These synergies between gliders and numerical models can only be achieved with a high level of coordination, stable data management practices and common standards that a GERI can guarantee. II.A.2 Legal framework From the Law of the Sea and maritime regulations point of view, gliders are presently not GROOM website address http://www.groom-fp7.eu 6
considered. Present practices by GROOM partners are in line with state of the art practices in the fields of AUVs utilization. However, it is recommended that the deployment and operation of GERI gliders is undertaken in line with accepted codes of conduct as published by, e.g., the Society for Underwater Technology. further research is needed to account for the special features of the gliders, which could lead to the adoption of a specific code of conduct to be submitted to the competent organizations such as the IOC by the GERI consortium. The European Research Infrastructure Consortium (hereafter ERIC) framework can best guarantee the GERI functionalities regarding to the European Ocean Observing system (EOOS) and GOOS requirements because of the national commitments it is based on. II.A.3 Financial framework The financial model defined here is mainly inspired by the ESFRI joining process. In that framework, financial maturity and sustainability are major issues for the GERI. Financial maturity has been studied through the analysis of the evolution of the funding over the past couple of years. Stability of the investments from 3 key countries (France, Spain and United Kingdom) has been identified. Other countries give already good perspectives to structure their investment around a national facility (Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Norway). Financial sustainability has been identified as a weakness for the current glider in most countries. This study highlighted the crucial need for consolidating national long term funding commitments on glider activities except for few partners who have already managed to get such commitments. The overall funding dedicated to glider for research from 1) countries with an established national facility (Spain, United Kingdom, France, Norway), 2) countries on the way to establish one (Italy, Cyprus, Greece, Finland) and 3) countries with other financial model (Germany, see part V) is already at a reasonable level. According to our surveys: Gliders: 13 M (93 gliders at that time, no depreciation) Walls: not available Functioning: 4,4 M between 2011 and 2013 (including equipment, running costs) FTE: about ~2 M /year for ~40 FTE (including technician, engineer, IT, management and scientist personnel) Based on the level of maturity and sustainability of funding, the option of a GERI to join the ESFRI roadmap process can be envisaged, contrasting to an unsecured and more simple community based initiative. A roadmap relying on well identified milestones (European project, ESFRI update, and national agenda) has been set up to give a coherent way to the implementation of the GERI and its sustained financial model. The choice of the future organization and its related financial model will depend on GROOM s capacity to be endorsed by ministries for long term national commitments in the framework of the respective national policy for Research Infrastructures. For the benefit of the GOOS, it is now highly recommended to implement a GERI, potentially following the ESFRI process. GROOM website address http://www.groom-fp7.eu 7
II.B WP3: Scientific Innovation II.B.1 New contributions of gliders to marine research Over the past few years, numerous scientific experiments involving gliders with several mounted sensors have been carried out with the aim to better understand the physical and biological interactions at mesoscale and submesoscale in the ocean. The capacity of gliders to measure simultaneously biogeochemical and physical measurements at high resolution is an invaluable tool to study interactions between physical, biological and chemical processes. Individual gliders or groups of gliders ( fleets ) can be deployed depending on the observing needs, By making use of artificial intelligence tools glider fleets can operate in a coordinated and highly sophisticated manner. This opens a new and wide perspective for research on the mesoscale (e.g. frontal monitoring) and sub-mesoscale processes. Achieving such complex experiments needs a high level of cooperation which can be routinely achieved only with fleets of interoperable gliders and stable tools with appropriate human-machine interface features. Convenient tools to use gliders and fleets of gliders must be further developed. They can allow opening wide perspectives for the design of experiments with gliders for fundamental physical, chemical and biological ocean research. Most gliders have an efficient scientific payload architecture allowing hosting a wide variety of sensors. A comprehensive mapping of the sensors available in the market and under development, as well as their readiness for gliders, has been performed (scientific rationale, measured variables, accuracy, quality check methods, etc.). It appears that there is a great potential for many applications (marine research and management) and that sensor sector in Europe is evolving rapidly. It is highly recommended to update such review regularly in cooperation with the appropriate stakeholders and to better share the technological skills needed to mount new sensors of the gliders. A GERI will strongly facilitate such activities by helping to establish efficient and plug-andplay solutions and by coordinating the constant collection of new information coming out of the sensor technology fields. II.B.2 Data flow, data management and processing Data management is one of the major achievements of the GROOM design study. It includes the development of practices at the international level. Data flow and work flow protocols and formats have been developed in line with the Argo practices. Most of the partners are now using these protocols and data are routinely distributed to and by the GDACs. Best practices concern at the moment only a few physical and biogeochemical variables but this will evolve rapidly because there is a strong interest for multi-variable observations. Moreover, a key issue is the interoperability with the other observing platforms. One can foresee evolutions for the global data management about for instance, meta-data, new variables, DOI attributions and the glider data management will have to follow such evolutions, taking into account the specificities of the glider platform. The maintenance of an evolving and common data management is absolutely key for the future. To avoid fragmentation and granularity, this can only be achieved at the GERI level with a high level of cooperation at the international level. As for the ERIC EuroArgo, a GERI, as a single entity in charge of this glider data management, would be the most efficient structure to achieve such tasks. II.B.3 Outreach activities and capacity building Substantial efforts were engaged by the GROOM partners for the promotion and dissemination of the glider activities and their importance as part of the ocean observing systems. A substantial GROOM website address http://www.groom-fp7.eu 8
amount of materials (videos, brochures, websites, glider models) showing the maturity of the technology and its great expectations is available for most of the stakeholders. While outreach must be specific to the targeted audience (age, language, activities ) there are a lot of outreach activities about the oceans that can be shared at the European level for gliders. Moreover, centralizing a part of the glider outreach activities would help to develop a necessary outreach tool that would be concerted with the other ocean observing platforms (profiling floats, moorings ). By sharing and organizing such outreach material and activities, a GERI could substantially increase the overall outreach efficiency and reduce the costs and duplication of effort. II.C WP4: Targeted Experiments II.C.1 Endurance lines and virtual moorings Successes in occupying repeat-sections (so-called endurance lines) in particular regions, such as in the Mediterranean which is a perfectly suited sea for glider repeat-sections, fully demonstrated that the gliders have now come to a mature stage for ocean sustained observations. This includes glider repeat-sections within Observing Systems which are part of ROOSs, such as the Mediterranean Ocean Observing System for the Environment (MOOSE, France), the Balearic Islands Coastal Ocean and forecasting System (SOCIB, Spain), the North Atlantic Current Observatory (NACO, Norway) or the use of gliders in combination with other observing systems (moorings, ships, floats) by developing synergies. Trials to use gliders to replace or supplement moorings along the RAPID Meridional Overturning Circulation monitoring array at 26.5 N in the Atlantic showed promising results and occupations of the Porcupine Abyssal Plain (PAP) OceanSITES moored array showed that this is already achievable. Critical issues for such sustained observations have been identified and the current capabilities and future potential of gliders to meet these criteria have been assessed. This includes: sensors reliability, data quality and data delivery, sampling characteristics, vehicle reliability and cost effectiveness. One of the main roles of the future GERI could be to provide the resources to the glider operators to be able to match these criteria and carry out repeat-sections in the regions that are important for the GOOS. These resources are thoroughly presented in WP5. II.C.2 Planning glider and Fleet missions An essential achievement of the GROOM design study was to design optimal methods for deploying one to a large numbers of gliders together, using numerical and artificial intelligence methods to design the optimal survey topology (see WP5). In Work Package 4, trial glider deployments were undertaken to test and asses the fleet operation techniques designed in WP5. At the time of writing the GROOM proposal, a fleet mission was taken to be one with more than 3 gliders. It is noteworthy that one of the final GROOM glider campaigns, the REP14 mission managed by CMRE in the Mediterranean in 2014, was a simultaneous deployment of 12 gliders of 3 different types. This is an example of the advances that the GROOM design study has stimulated. Routine operation of fleets of more than 10 gliders is relatively uncommon in the world but the advances made during GROOM suggest it is likely that future progress will allow using gliders behaving as swarms, responding to signals inside the swarm or to other events or constraints. For glider and glider fleet mission planning and deployment, WP4 surveys showed that only three GROOM partners can use much more advanced tools than the ones provided by the GROOM website address http://www.groom-fp7.eu 9
manufacturers, which are just interfaces to send basic commands and a first visualization of the mission data. Relatively few partners use mission planning tools for their gliders today, even though most of them can clearly see their advantages. The reason is that the required resources (manpower, computers) to set up such a system in an operational framework, are quite significant. Mission planning tools have been cooperatively developed during GROOM but routine use at the future GERI level and access to them with appropriate human-machine interface must be granted to all users. Improving the functionalities and access to such tools is essential to facilitate single glider mission planning as well as to very complex fleet mission planning. Mission planning tools best illustrate the interest of the modular organization concept in the GERI (see later) because this mainly concerns software and is linked to client-server architecture. The development of such artificial intelligence tools by the different teams and their utilization in an operational framework by others needs the partners to be organized at a structural level and this can only be managed within a GERI. II.C.3 Synergies with other platforms Synergistic aspects with other ocean observing platforms have been explored. This included the testing of new sensors to extend the portfolio of glider possible measurements with comparisons with similar measurements carried out with moorings and Argo floats and an appraisal of the possibility to use acoustics for glider navigation and data transfer in challenging environment (Fram Strait). Several deployments of sensors, at various stages of development were undertaken during GROOM. Some sensors were already tested at sea in gliders, some were deployed previously on other platforms, and some were prototype sensors. Useful resources (documents, procedures) were produced for all in the glider community when deciding whether to invest the time and money in integrating a new sensor into a glider. Sensor development is a branch of marine science that is evolving rapidly. The GERI would efficiently optimize the scientific research and the commercial expertise which is required to achieve the challenge of miniaturising these sensors for the marine environment in such a way they can be used on gliders and profiling floats. Work on this topic is on-going in cooperation with the FP7-NEXOS project and other programmes. The use of acoustics for navigating gliders to inaccessible locations, such as beneath sea ice, is a particularly challenging task that few groups have attempted and only one (USA) group managed to carry out successfully. The GROOM community showed great foresight in including this task. In January 2015 this challenge has been widely recognised through the announcement that the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) is organizing a Polar Challenge competition. WCRP has asked GROOM to help in coordinating an answer to this challenge at the European level and/or in cooperation with USA and Canada. The GERI will have to reinforce the European capacity in this very demanding technological field by involving new partners, for example large companies active in marine acoustics. II.D WP5: Glider Infrastructure II.D.1 Ground Segment Description A major achievement of GROOM is the definition of the general concept of distributed facilities or gliderports. This concept gathers under a single definition the facilities where gliders are GROOM website address http://www.groom-fp7.eu 10
physically present and the ones that serve the glider activities. The gliderport is structured along five main functions, each being subdivided into many specific tasks, all being required for glider operations: hardware calibration, integration and testing, hardware operations and maintenance, data management, mission planning and piloting, public relations. Each distributed facility can implement only some of these functions because not all these functions are needed everywhere. With the flow of information and services between each of the gliderports, this constitutes the overall Ground Segment of the GERI (see Figure 1). The definition of the gliderports and their actual capacity to interact with each other on these five aspects in a common is the core of the architecture of the GERI. Networking has been very active in Europe and the glider activity has reached a high level of interactions between the present European gliderports, progressively providing the actual substance to this conceptual architecture. II.D.2 Mission planning and analysis The Mission Planning and Analysis Tools (hereafter MPAT) contribute to increase the probability for a successful mission. They are used to optimize ocean sampling, to reduce deployment risks, to increase the glider performance and/or to coordinate multi-gliders experiments. The development and implementation of such tools have been widely handled during GROOM. A current version of MPAT is now available. It offers the possibility to automate many piloting tasks, to help for the preparation of the gliders, to calculate the optimal set of mission tracks for a single or a fleet of gliders and combine it with the risks associated. The new deployment capacities offered by the gliders open a very large panel of aspects that could be included in MPAT. Many aspects have been considered by the GROOM partners but from the point of view of a single institution, the development of MPAT covering all aspects is too demanding. There is a crucial need to combine all the efforts carried out so far in that direction in a system that is sustained. In the framework of the GERI, expert teams in various aspects of MPAT will commonly develop and share Mission Planning and Analysis Tools following common standards that will make any improvement extremely valuable for the whole glider community. II.D.3 Estimated set up and running costs Information about the setup and operating costs was collected from partners based on their activities during the previous years. The resulting report compiles this information and indicates the general figures and trends for the glider community. There is a wide variety of operating modes both at administrative and scientific levels, which impacts the cost analysis but it did not prevent to have the right order of magnitude for the costs and draw general conclusions. The numbers used for the possible funding models for the future glider analysed in WP2 are based on the accrued costs compiled in Deliverable 5.7. For its financial model, the future GERI will have to accommodate a wide range of practices concerning accrued cost to allow managing the compensations among the single GROOM website address http://www.groom-fp7.eu 11
components. At a practical level, this information helps new users make plans when considering a gliderport implementation at the institutional level. GROOM website address http://www.groom-fp7.eu 12
III. ROLES AND OBJECTIVES OF THE GLIDER EUROPEAN RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURE The GROOM project has achieved a comprehensive GERI definition. The GERI shall ensure a European capacity to deploy and maintain many gliders at sea 1) for long term sustained observations and 2) to service dedicated scientific process studies or environmental surveys, for public and private organizations. Considering these high level objectives, the GROOM design study led to the following vision shared by the partners and the main relevant stakeholder. The GERI shall coordinate, facilitate and optimize the access and use of the available regional and national glider s and facilities in Europe to guarantee the optimal benefit to the ocean observation community; provide high level services for research (oceanography: ecosystem and climate), operational oceanography (GMES Marine Core Service, GOOS) and broader communities involved in marine environmental management; fully endorse the multi-platform observation paradigm through optimal gliders deployments in combination with conventional platforms and existing systems, and in particular those developed by marine ERIC (Euro-Argo, EMSO, EMBRC); initiate and maintain international cooperation with other initiatives on ocean observations. It shall promote and organize this international cooperation in the framework of Copernicus, GOOS and GEOSS and contribute to the EOOS that is now under definition; promote the glider technology to the wider community, its utilization and new technological developments, mostly in cooperation with SMEs in the frame of the marine technology parks where most existing s are established; promote Blue Growth by creating new knowledge, technologies and services, focusing on social impacts and engaging with local and regional stakeholders. The GERI will help to coordinate and federate the European glider community and its functionalities will be to: define best practices, protocols and standards for the glider activity (operations in lab and at sea, sensors and data management) and support their evolution develop and share tools for mission planning, piloting, data analysis as well as for the preparation, maintenance, deployment and recovery of the gliders provide access to the gliders and facilities, ensure appropriate outreach to all relevant stakeholders, and support the evolution of its services in line with the scientific and societal needs These functionalities will be geographically distributed over a central facility, the different gliderports which actually service the gliders, and other facilities which operate only specific services, like web services for piloting and mission planning. This is the modular organization concept that has emerged from the GROOM design study. The GROOM design study has actually demonstrated that an approach based on number of products and services distributed in different locations for a better coverage, and coordinated at the European level, is an efficient organization for the glider activities. This presents a lot of advantages in terms of logistics, robustness and costs optimization. Each service shall be managed by one or more expert teams and could be combined with other services by defining standard interfaces. Figure 1 illustrates the modular organization concept and the access to the RI with the example of the function mission planning and piloting. Services (mission planning tool, glider fleet piloting tool) and products (risk analysis, deployment optimization, standards and best practices documentations) are developed and maintained by expert groups, and for that they can use various external data (MyOcean, AIS, satellite data ) in addition to internal data from the gliders. Expert GROOM website address http://www.groom-fp7.eu 13
users, who can be from the GERI or expert external users, can access directly these services and products. For non expert users, the services are operated by the GERI and made available to the users by the contact point. In summary, this figure illustrates the organization between the members of the GERI in order to simplify and open the user access to the glider technology. Figure 1: The modular organization concept. Many modules (services and products) within each of the 5 functionalities have already been designed and can be operational in the near future. This concerns the access to specific calibration facilities, mission planning tools, piloting services (fleet coordination, adaptive sampling), data management and analysis. Outreach and communication activities should also be shared and a system to borrow/lend gliders between the partners could be set up to reach a better usage rate. The GERI shall have to develop a compensation system in order to encourage partners to support the modular operational concept. Users, international connections, synergies with other marine ERICs and future projects are outside the boundaries of the RI. The GERI contact point shall coordinate the activity, facilitate interactions with possible external users and stakeholders, and guide them when needed to the right expert groups, products or services offered by the GERI. The central facility will play the coordination role and can actively participate in glider procurement, fleet monitoring and endurance line maintenance. It will also ensure that expertise in all aspects of glider activity is sustained and further developed. Public access to potential external users shall be managed by the central facility. To ensure high quality access, the GERI shall be promoted in major European entities for marine research and sustained observations, including academia, institutes for fundamental and applied research, marine management agencies, marine clusters and the private sector. To guarantee its functionalities, the GERI shall have to be a European legal entity, have an office and set up governance like in an ERIC. Moreover, this legal status is the unique way to facilitate a number of activities. For instance, part of the European gliders could be purchased through such a GROOM website address http://www.groom-fp7.eu 14
central facility and distributed among the glider ports to benefit from scale economy or the legal aspects concerning glider deployments in foreign waters could be better handled. The membership of the GERI will be open to all entities comprised in the ERIC status, in particular public entities or private entities with a public-service mission. Such entities should be beneficial to the GERI if they are committed for the development and sharing of tools and services that are useful for the gliders activities. It must be emphasized that robots like gliders will evolve in the future and the GERI shall be able to accommodate to these evolutions. The line between glider and traditional AUV is already blurring, as hybrid propulsion vehicles have come into use. Moreover, GERI must be able to adapt to the evolution of the marine technology landscape in Europe, where major marine clusters which focus on marine robotics are emerging. This could be developed in particular in the framework of European structural funding which is a serious option for helping to fund the hardware or buildings of the GERI in different locations of the main European seaboards and basins. This has to be explored in the coming years. GROOM website address http://www.groom-fp7.eu 15
IV. A ROADMAP FOR THE GLIDER EUROPEAN RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURE The GROOM conclusions highlight several issues for the development of the future GERI, scientific but mostly technical, organizational and financial. Above all, there is a general consensus on the necessity for the GROOM community to maintain the network and to consolidate the interactions between the partners created during the design study (data management, outreach, best practices, software tools ). Communications between the partners, coordination through a central entity and a common vision is seen as mandatory for all GROOM partners to maintain and develop the European glider capacity and make it open to European scientists, engineers and stakeholders. During the relatively short story of gliders in Europe (started in 2004), the European calendar of MRIs has always been ahead of what glider teams could achieve. The glider community was ready for a Design Study only at the end of the FP7 program and thus, the project results were not mature enough to impact the first programming phase in H2020. Now, GROOM has made very substantial progress, but the European glider community is not yet considered as mature enough to join the 2016 ESFRI roadmap. Despite this, EuroGOOS first has acknowledged the need to help GROOM continuing his work, and a EuroGOOS Glider Task Team will facilitate new progress on some of the WP2 objectives. Key GROOM partners representing their own glider RI are involved in four H2020 projects: JERICO-Next and ENVRI+ as INFRA project, AtlantOS, and BRIDGES in the Blue Growth focus area. These four projects will also allow the glider community (see below) to pursue its organization during the next years. The involvement of glider teams in these EU projects and in several other national glider projects are indeed an adequate context to reinforce some outputs of GROOM, and to further develop its modular organization, making the community mature enough to participate to the 4th update of the ESFRI roadmap project selection in 2017. Figure 2 represents the actions that will be undertaken for the GERI development plan, based on the cited H2020 projects, on already planned national work and possibly on new European initiatives that will emerge in the coming years. The next two years (2015-2016) will be dedicated to the creation of the main technical conditions for running operationally the Research Infrastructure (data flow, monitoring of the fleet ). In addition, work at the national level for funding commitments to make sustained the existing RI which are not yet sustained, will be continued (e.g. Italy, France, Norway) and may start in other countries (see below). The second phase of the process (2017-2018) will depend on GROOM partners capacity to obtain the agreement of their Research Ministries about the necessity for a GERI. As a main option for this, applying to the 4th ESFRI roadmap update (new RI or major update of an existing one) will require dedicated efforts. In that case, the 2018-2019 H2020 programming phase for the preparatory phase will thus be a major step for the GERI implementation. It is also likely that the glider community will be able to answer H2020 calls to consolidate its international dimension as well as a service-oriented dimension in relation with the Copernicus Marine Environment Service. The MoU signed during the GROOM project by all partners is considered by all as a sufficiently binding agreement to keep the glider community as a whole and being represented by GROOM core partners. Now, one of the main objectives of GROOM core partners future work is to place the GERI in the most favourable conditions to join the 2018 ESFRI roadmap. Basically, this means that GROOM core partners have to continue to operationally structure the community in order to better show its maturity and to be part of the next roadmap. GROOM website address http://www.groom-fp7.eu 16
Figure 2: Roadmap for the implementation on the GERI GROOM website address http://www.groom-fp7.eu 17
V. SYNERGIES WITH OTHER MARINE RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURES AND GLIDER RELEVANT PROJECTS European Marine Research Infrastructures will face a deep reorganization in the next decade. The organization into platform-oriented RIs needs to be clarified at a European level. In addition, how platform-oriented RIs will participate in observatory-oriented RIs is a major issue. Several stakeholders are investigating such matters but the organization of the Marine Research Infrastructures is still a hot topic in Europe. In this perspective, it is absolutely crucial for the glider community (more precisely here the present network of the different European Glider RIs) to clarify its position with these stakeholders. GROOM is platform-oriented. The technological issues, the jobs and the developed know-how are directly linked to the particularities of the platform. This will not change in the future because robots will became more and more present in the marine world, and standardization will have to be sufficient to overcome the particularities of the platforms. As demonstrated during GROOM, building a research dedicated to gliders is a crucial issue in order for this technology to become the main tool to make the link between the open ocean and the coastal area and to complement the GOOS, as well as a tool for discovery and fundamental research. On the other hand, the strength of the gliders comes from their complementarities with the other platforms. The complementarities between Argo floats and gliders are obvious. Argo floats are dedicated to open ocean and climate research while gliders focus on the transition from Open Ocean to the coastal shelves. Long term observations carried out by gliders will definitely complement the present Global Ocean Observing System. Synergies between Argo floats and gliders are numerous (cross validation with Argo profiles, filling the gaps left by the Argo array, increase the sampled variables, go deeper). There are also trends toward Bio-Argo floats and more intelligence on board Argo floats with remote control of the sampling behaviour. All this, delineates large commonalities between the present EuroArgo ERIC and the future GERI. Synergies with EMSO (and its water column component developed by the on-going FP7-FIXO3) are also very interesting for ocean science and Observing Systems. First, gliders can replace and supplement moorings when deployed in a virtual mooring mode. Then, moorings face the issue that they provide only time series and ignore the spatial dimension. Considering the oceanic variability, this leads to a difficult interpretation of the measurements and gliders have shown an exceptional capability for solving this problem by criss-crossing around a mooring. Presently, work package 11 of FIXO3 ( Optimisation of ocean observing capability ) is using Virtual Observing Network to work out this question. The GROOM design study has also highlighted interesting complementarities of gliders with EMBRC (European Marine Biological Resources Centre) for biological observations. Gliders are already and will become more and more interesting tools for biologists. The high modularity of the scientific payload of a glider allows the installation of a great variety of biological sensors that can be used to sample the physical and biological environments and contextualize their specific measurements. The creation of a research dedicated to gliders will boost the technology and improve the performances of gliders for marine biology, allow major progress for fundamental marine biology questions and will consolidate the connection with Marine Stations. Some potential synergies between the European glider fleets with fleets of Research Vessels in Europe have been raised. This mainly concerns the access to the s for the public and private sectors through platform time exchanges, potentially by using the Trans National Access (TNA) model already in place in the I3 EuroFleets. However, the glider is a smart technology and has the potential to reach a higher level of integration and interoperability. Considering all the component of European glider fleets that can be concerned by integration and interoperability and the subsequent benefits, it is believed that the more advanced organization than the present European R/V one proposed here above with the GERI is much more suitable to achieve this potential. GROOM website address http://www.groom-fp7.eu 18
Regarding Observing Systems, the GERI is already identified as a key component of the observing system in the open ocean and the coastal area and the transition zone in-between (GOOS). In relation with IOOS in the USA, the Canadian glider facilities, and other partners around this ocean, AtlantOS will implement a sustained glider component of the Integrated Atlantic Observing System. Some of the Mediterranean sub-basins have already a sustained glider observing component, and The Mediterranean Sea is often referred as the paradigmatic sea for glider observations. It is more than likely that an integrated approach will soon be supported by EC in the Mediterranean, and the GERI will have here the opportunity to show its scientific usefulness and give evidence to its organizational maturity. Last but not least, EuroGOOS and the Marine Board have started the EOOS agenda and the coming years will offer a fantastic opportunity to capitalize on a pioneering glider period of ten years concluded by GROOM. To progress toward a glider technology better suited for industry needs and to capitalize on the glider effort done in Europe since 2004, several GROOM partners complemented by European SMEs have successfully proposed the BRIDGES project (Bringing together Research and Industry for the Development of Glider Environmental Services) to H2020 in the Blue Growth focus area. BRIDGES will provide deep and ultra-deep gliders and new sensors for frontier science, improved monitoring, and responsible exploitation of the marine environment while assuring its long-term preservation. In addition to the services already offered by state of the art gliders, BRIDGES intends to propose fit-to-purpose glider services to the oil and gas and the deep sea mining industries. BRIDGES is the clear demonstration that the know-how developed by GROOM has produced the appropriate innovation ecosystem with research institutes and industries, which is one of the main roles of European RIs. GROOM website address http://www.groom-fp7.eu 19
VI. NATIONAL COMMITMENTS ACROSS EUROPE D2.5 highlights that Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Norway, Spain and United Kingdom are probably the first countries able to support the future GERI through funding commitments on their national RIs policy. This statement is based on their present level of investment, motivations and organization. It is noticeable that Germany is not in this list. Even though Germany has invested a lot in the glider technology and produced several major GROOM results, the glider activity in this country is organized at the institutional level with upstream and more general commitments on marine observations from their ministries. Apart from Cyprus, Greece and Italy, each of the listed countries has already established a sustained RI which includes an important glider component (Spain, UK), or has already a glider RI and a clear roadmap to sustain it (France, Norway). Cyprus and Italy are also very much involved in the glider activity and are doing preparatory work for national glider RIs. The objective in the next two years will be to coordinate these countries at the ministry level (three at least) for a common approach toward the GERI. Their commitment should guaranty the sustainability of the national (or regional) and should support the little extra costs of the GERI central services. The GROOM design study has highlighted the necessity of the GERI based on a network of facilities (the gliderports smoothly distributed all over the European coasts and other facilities). The geographical consistency of the first nucleus of countries must be noted here in relation with today s major global challenges (Integrated Observing Systems in the ROOSs, GOOS, Frontier Science ). Only the Baltic / North Sea still deserve more work to fully understand the added value of a glider component in shallow seas. The JERICO projects (FP7 and H2020) will shed lights on this possibility. It must be noted here that gliders are also owned and operated in a sustainable way by universities in some countries independently of the national facility if any. This offers additional resources that a GERI based on the ERIC model shall definitively consider. In the Annex A, the present status of the glider activity of the different countries is described from the perspective of the GERI. GROOM website address http://www.groom-fp7.eu 20