Rolling Deck to Repository (R2R): Information Management for Research Vessels

Karen I Stocks1, Suzanne H O'hara2, Robert A Arko2, Cynthia L Chandler3, Dru Clark1, Jocelyn Lee Elya4, Vicki Lynn Ferrini5, Kevin McLain2, Christopher Jackson Olson1, Cynthia J. Sellers3, Shawn R Smith6, Laura Stolp7 and Suzanne M Carbotte5, (1)Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, CA, United States, (2)Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, NY, United States, (3)WHOI, Woods Hole, MA, United States, (4)Florida State University, Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies, Tallahassee, FL, United States, (5)Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, United States, (6)Florida State University, Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies, Tallahassee, United States, (7)Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, United States
Abstract:
The US academic research fleet represents a mobile observatory, with regional, ocean, and global class vessels routinely surveying ocean basins and supporting a suite of geophysical, water column, and atmospheric sensors operating near continuously. The data from these "underway" instruments provide characterization of basic environmental conditions over and within the oceans and are valuable for building global syntheses, climatologies, and historical time series of ocean properties.

Since 2009 the Rolling Deck to Repository (R2R) program (www.rvdata.us) has been supporting acquisition, documentation, preservation, and enhanced usability of this underway environmental sensor data for the US academic research fleet. R2R provides a set of data services including: publishing an online, searchable and browsable master cruise catalog; minting cruise and data set DOIs; organizing, archiving, and disseminating original underway data and documents; assessing data quality on select data types; creating select post-field data products; and supporting at-sea event logging. Recently, R2R has begun to work with vessel operators and scientists to develop best practices for instrument operation and data collections; a best practices document for transmissometers is the current effort.

Furthermore, while vessel data has traditionally been viewed in the context of a single expedition, assembling and aggregating metadata and documentation about these data systems for the fleet has enabled the R2R Program to develop a holistic perspective on sensors and data acquired across not only multiple expeditions, but across multiple vessels. This enables the rapid evaluation of the variety and trends of data formats and instruments across the fleet. This information is useful not only for domain specialists using specific data types, but also for archivists and program managers interested in long-term trends and needs with respect to assets and usage.

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