Environmental Data Management at NOAA Archiving, Stewardship, and Access (2007) / Chapter Skim
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4 Data Stewardship
4 Data Stewardship
Pages 41-54
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From page 41... ...
While there is general agreement that sustained data preservation and effective data access require careful stewardship, the term tends to be used somewhat differently in different contexts. We propose the following definition, which is adhered to throughout this report: Data stewardship encompasses all activities that preserve and improve the information content, accessibility, and usability of data and metadata.
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From page 42... ...
Even though our definition of data stewardship spans a broad range of data management activities and responsibilities, the remainder of this chapter focuses on three fundamental stewardship functions: data and metadata preservation, scientific assessment and improvement, and data support services and tools. In combination, these fundamental stewardship functions ensure that the archive is maintained and that the flow of
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From page 43... ...
Effective metadata management could thus be expected to help NOAA meet the challenge of increasing data volume and diversity. NOAA's data management system should also be designed to facilitate the sharing of metadata across systems, disciplines, and programs to build more complete data catalogs.
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From page 44... ...
It is encouraging that the NOAA National Data Centers and CLASS have already adopted the OAIS model to guide their archive development. We recommend that NOAA and its partners make the OAIS model even more of a standard across their data management enterprises and routinely assess their practices against community-developed reference models.
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From page 45... ...
The digital preservation infrastructure for a longterm environmental data archive should therefore be able to handle the following requirements: • Each preserved digital object should contain sufficient information to enable the application of long-term preservation policies and to handle its life cycle management (that is, an Archive Information Package, as described in the OAIS Reference Model)
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From page 46... ...
Thus, the archiving procedures of NOAA and its partners should include storage in multiple independent locations, regular tests on fixity information, and disaster recovery exercises that certify system reliability. Systems that track changes made to digital objects, often used in software development, are also applicable across data and metadata management, and they can be used to guard against irrecoverable errors.
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From page 47... ...
Of course, these repeated improvements tend to exacerbate the challenge of increasing data archive volumes, particularly with multiple reprocessed data sets. Chapter 5 contains guidelines that can help data managers deal with this issue, noting, for instance, that demand will typically be far greater for the most recent version of each data set and so it may not be necessary to provide immediate access to older versions.
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From page 48... ...
The instruments and satellites used to collect passive microwave data constantly evolve, making it difficult to construct consistent time series or climate data records, so NSIDC documentation includes detailed information on the known errors and uncertainties in the data. For ex ample, in 1999 NSIDC was notified by a user of errors in the latitude, longitude, and pixel area files supplied with some of the passive microwave data.
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From page 49... ...
Those involved in data support services at NSIDC have also been quite active with sea ice data sets. NSIDC archives several dozen sea ice data sets, one dozen of which are derived from passive microwave remote sensing.
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From page 50... ...
As an example, consider a data steward who comes to recognize that a particular data set has broader relevance than is currently being realized and collaborates with other data stewards to achieve wider data distribution. These stewards might work together to transfer the data from one of NOAA's centers of data to one of the National Data Centers, either once or on a routine basis if the collection is continuously growing.
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From page 51... ...
The same principles used to transfer data from investigators into the NOAA archive system should be applied and formalized for the cases where data from centers of data need to be transferred to one of the three NOAA National Data Centers. Since data stewards are the primary contact point for information entering and exiting the archive, they should be familiar with the full spectrum of capabilities and standards of the archive and access system, as well as all legal, mission, and administrative requirements (see Chapter 2)
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From page 52... ...
Finally, data stewards need to collaborate with their counterparts at other agencies and international groups to ensure that all important environmental data are archived and made accessible. Guideline: Decisions to upgrade legacy data support systems should be thoroughly planned, in consultation with users, with particular attention paid to preserving Web-based metadata.
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From page 53... ...
Such a common understanding, coupled with a goal of being good stewards, can help guide NOAA in making appropriate data archiving and access decisions. Box 4-2 illustrates the potential benefits of an effective data stewardship program.
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From page 54... ...
More than 40 year ago, long before data stewardship became part of the data management vocabulary, Roy Jenne, then at NCAR, and other like-minded data managers and providers at NOAA and NASA began sharing, collecting, documenting, and preserving a wide variety of in situ and satellite observations of atmospheric conditions. These data and metadata preservation activities estab lished long-term collections that ultimately became a major input data component for the data assimilation and forecast processes used to create the NCEP–NCAR Reanalysis.
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