Methods for the deployment of a swarm of wave gliders to monitor tropical cyclones

Traditional methods for collecting in situ air-sea interaction data from tropical storms have limitations, leading to the exploration of alternative platforms such as wave gliders. Wave gliders are ocean drones that use wave energy to move and gather data and have been used in several tropical cyclones, demonstrating their robustness. However, the data gathered had limited spatial and temporal resolution, which could be addressed by deploying a swarm of wave gliders along the predicted trajectory of the storm. In this paper, we explore the idea of planning the deployment of a swarm of wave gliders by simulating their dynamics and considering short-term and long-term deployment strategies. We quantify the outcome of each deployment using two distance-based performance metrics to assess the swarm’s capability in tracking the eye of the storm. Furthermore, the risk involved in deploying the swarm from a service vessel is quantified in terms of the maximum sea state encountered by the service vessel. Our experiments demonstrate methods for simulating different swarm deployment strategies and methods to quantify the outcome, allowing for the identification of optimal deployment configurations to monitor tropical cyclones effectively.