Despite technological development addressed to ocean-monitoring has been significantly improved during the last two decades with new platforms, sensors and telemetry systems, there are still many unsolved gaps in terms of data quality, reliability, efficiency and sustainability. Ocean glider technology (including autonomous underwater and surface vehicles) offers a new approach in terms of monitoring capacity and sustainability, enabling to perform observations in spatiotemporal scales hitherto unavailable.
PLOCAN Glider School is a hands-on ocean-glider technology and training forum mainly addressed to ocean-glider technologies and their wide range of monitoring applications learning. Students and professionals from marine and maritime fields interested in learning about this specific and emerging autonomous ocean vehicle technology are truly welcome to join in. The PLOCAN Glider School is a training action promoted by PLOCAN in line with international programs and projects such OceanGliders, EuroGOOS, GROOM-II, among others, that provides a state-of-the-art overview and the operational basis approach to this technology through theoretical and practical teaching sessions in both wet-lab and open waters of Gran Canaria.
Leading corporate partners and key-reference research institutions across Europe and USA closely cooperate with the PLOCAN Glider School by teaching some of the didactical program contents, that includes as main topics (for each glider technology) a technology overview, nuts and bolts: how it works, mission setup and piloting, deployment and recovery in open waters, data management and applications, maintenance, etc.
The present work attempts to summarize the role and contribution summary of fourteen years of PLOCAN Glider School where more than two hundred-twenty attendees from thirty-six countries of the five continents have been trained, in addition to the support by twenty-eight leading companies (as technology developers in this field) and institutions (as leading operators and end-users), enabling new user groups and the international glider-community growth in support to initiatives such EOOS and GOOS aiming to a more efficient and sustainable global ocean-observing strategy based on this cutting-edge technology.
