The data was gathered by Ifremer, SHOM and IRD oceanographic vessels.

The data was controlled and validated by SISMER according to a pre-defined protocol.

The data is processed using CASCADE (Automated chain for following embedded acoustic Doppler current meters) software. CASCADE is a piece of validation and visualization software for ADCP hull measurements initiate in 1998 at LPO (Laboratory of Ocean Physics - Ifremer) to meet its research needs to processing and analyzing ADCP measurements and has been updated regularly. It was then implemented operationally by the SISMER data centre.

It is comprised of a set of matlab programmes.

Once the ACDP data has been processed by the CASCADE software, the data is made available and can be downloaded in Netcdf format.

For a given campaign, there will be :

1) 2 Netcdf files (or more, if various acquisition modes were analysed with CASCADE)

- 1 file of raw data *_0_osite.nc : This is a concatenation of STA (or LTA) files from VMDAS. The currents are absolute or relative, expressed in the geographical and geo-referenced point of reference. They are supplied along with additional measurements making it possible to evaluate the data

(amplitude of the echo received, an estimated error rate, measurements relating to the vessel's direction and speed, speed on the sea floor, etc.).

- 1 file of validated data *_fhv*.nc : This represents the data which has been validated, corrected and identified as quality information (flag).

2) 1 compressed file (UNIX.tar format) of figures created by CASCADE : this file contains figures (in .png format) of vectors, bathymetry, routes and other various paths

These figures are also presented in the ship’s report document and by the year relating to the data.