Global Coordination: What are the Next Steps?

Extract

From the transit expeditions of 1761 to JWST, ALMA, and the SKA, international projects have played an important role in driving astronomy and heliophysics. Over the past two decades, the increasing complexity and cost of new facilities, the constrained amount of funding available from individual sources, and the rapidly increasing volume of data produced by newer facilities have made international collaboration on large ground- and space-based facilities essential to moving the fields forward. As international cooperation becomes commonplace, data-sharing policies have become ever more important. All IAU members have a stake in the policy decisions made by nations and various scientific consortiums concerning data access and international collaborations. This focus meeting provided a forum to discuss how to improve coordination of global strategic planning in astronomy, astrophysics, and heliophysics in order to maximize the scientific return from research facilities.