Making the optimal sampling of the ocean simpler: An automatic tool for planning glider missions using forecasts downloaded from MyOcean

This paper presents a tool recently developed at the Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (La Spezia, Italy) to support the planning of missions involving a fleet of underwater gliders. Since the fleet of vehicles has to collect measurements of ocean variables in meaningful spatial points, following the optimal sampling paradigm, ocean field forecasts are used by oceanographers in order to run an optimization procedure before actually starting the mission. This work streamlines the whole involved chain: i) the automatic download of ocean field forecasts from MyOcean; ii) the graphical support for the specification of the region of interest and the mission constraints; and iii) the run of an optimization algorithm for optimal sampling.