STRATEGIES FOR LONG-TERM PRESERVATION: DATA SALVAGE AND COLLABORATION

The National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) is leveraging resources from multiple projects and partnerships to rescue and digitize historic analog marine geophysical and geological data, while collaborating with partners around the world to plan for long-term preservation of current and future data streams.

A key resource for digitizing historic analog data is the Climate Database Modernization Program (CDMP) operated by NGDC’s parent organization, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). To date, CDMP has enabled digitization of over 450 gigabytes from NGDC’s analog data holdings and more than 720 gigabytes of data from partner institutions. Another 1.6 gigabytes of data have been digitized in support of the interagency effort, lead by the U.S. Department of State to establish the outer limits of the U.S. Extended Continental Shelf (ECS).

In addition to data salvage efforts, NGDC is reaching out to partner institutions, agencies, and projects to ensure long-term preservation of marine geological and geophysical data from new programs. NGDC is working closely with the Rolling-Deck-to-Repository (R2R) program to safeguard raw data streams as they come off ships, before they are parsed or processed, and is helping to plan a parallel, NOAA “R2R” program to accomplish similar goals for agency-collected data. Collaborative tools for future data preservation include design of common data protocols, metadata templates and vocabularies and implementation of data submission agreements.