The Australian Coastal Ocean Radar Network (ACORN)

A new approach to funding research infrastructure has been adopted by the Australian Federal Government. This approach focuses on a quality assured, easily accessed data archive as its output and requires that all planning, activities and instrument deployments funded through this initiative be geared towards producing the archive and promoting its use by researchers. An integrated marine observing system forms approximately a one-tenth part of the overall program, and within the marine section there are four facilities (out of a total of eleven) which have current measurement as a substantial part of the approved plan. One of these facilities is the Australian Coastal Ocean Radar Network which consists of five HF radar pairs and one triplet to be deployed at key locations for research around the Australian coast. A hub model is being used for data flow and quality assurance as well as for installations and maintenance. The end result is a quality assured, metadata stamped archive of surface currents every hour in near real time over the areas monitored. Wave and wind data are archived when the radar system provide those data.