Research
Standards for Long Term Archiving Complex Scientific Data
Scientific instruments, experiments, and numerical simulations generate extremely large quantities of data, some of which is collected in large repositories. Much of this data could be valuable for many decades to come, e.g., to investigate climate change or other long term phenomena.
Today, accessing and using the data requires specific computer equipment and software. Given the rate of technological change, data cannot be maintained in their original format forever. In the case of scientific data, it is especially important to be able to distinguish changes that represent real physical phenomena from artifacts of technological evolution. How can we make it more likely that data will be usable after the systems that created it are gone? We propose to lead an effort to define an appropriate standard for archiving complex scientific data.
Our research plan includes a comprehensive background study: