Mission & R2R Team

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The Rolling Deck to Repository (R2R) Program provides a comprehensive shore-side data management program for routine underway environmental sensor data collected on vessels of the academic research fleet.

The US academic research fleet represents a mobile multi-platform 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 (https://www.rvdata.us//) has supported 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, storing, and disseminating original underway data and documents;
assessing data quality on select data types; creating select post-field data products
supporting at-sea event logging
developing and promoting best practices for instrument operation and data collections

R2R receives the original complete cruise data distribution directly from vessel operators, and releases data publicly, under the Creative Commons 0, following approval by the cruise’s chief scientist and in accordance with funding agency requirements.

R2R manages data from the US Academic Research Fleet, including the NSF Polar Program vessels and the USCGC HEALY, with majority support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Office of Naval Research and additional support from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). R2R also manages data from other oceanographic vessels available for academic research including the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s RV Falkor and the Ocean Exploration Trust’s RV Nautilus under separate funding.

R2R is a four-institution collaborative led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography and including Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Florida State University, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.