The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) is funded for the period 2003-2013, and is now starting to plan for ocean drilling beyond 2013.
A community-wide (USA, Europe, Japan, Asian and Oceanian countries), major conference - INVEST IODP New Ventures in Exploring Scientific Targets - addressing all international IODP partners is planned for 23-25 September 2009 in Bremen, Germany (More information at http://www.iodp.org) to discuss future directions of scientific ocean drilling.
The outcome of the conference will be a contribution to a science plan that will be drated in 2010 to define new goals and strategies to effectively meet the challenges of future ocean drilling.
At its last meeting, ESSAC (ECORD Science Steering an Advisory Committee) discussed the opportunity to organize a Session of the EGU General Assembly 2009 in Vienna, Austria (april 2009), followed by a 1-2 days workshop specifically addressing the future of European scientific drilling research with the objective to sharpen the European interests in the future IODP and to prepare the INVEST Conference. The key items that should be addressed during the EGU Session and the workshop should especially include :
(1) The future of ECORD (science, technology, management).
(2) New research initiatives and emerging fields in scientific drilling
(3) Relationships between IODP and other programs (e.g. ICDP, IMAGES etc).
(4) Collaboration between academia and industry.
(5) New technologies and the Mission Specific Platform approach.
and additional topics to be defined based on participants' propositions.
This EGU session and the related workshop are open to all scientists with an interest in scientific drilling and to representatives from industry.