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Environmental Data Management at NOAA Archiving, Stewardship, and Access (2007) / Chapter Skim
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3 Overarching Principles
Pages 32-40

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From page 32...
... and, in the final chapter, the need for a formal ongoing planning process to integrate these elements into an effective end-to-end data management system. The nine principles offered in this report, including the five overarching principles introduced in this chapter, are numbered sequentially for convenience, but all nine should be regarded as equally important for effective environmental data management.
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From page 33...
... NOAA's mission is "to understand and predict changes in the Earth's environment and conserve and manage coastal and marine resources to meet our nation's economic, social and environmental needs." Since the Earth and its environment represent a complex, interconnected biogeochemical system, describing the current state of the system or its variability over time requires a large number of observations, and predicting its future behavior often demands the use of models built around a detailed understanding of various system components. Thus, any observational data stream, model output array, or other environmental data set that contributes to the description, understanding, or prediction of the Earth system (including derived products)
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From page 34...
... , compared to $69 million for all of NOAA's data management activities combined (although some of the satellite observing system funding is spread out over several years to support data acquisition, processing, analysis, and distribution) . For digital data, hardware for data storage and for data distribution constitutes a sizable fraction of data management costs, but funding to support data management personnel is also critically important.
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From page 35...
... A number of previous reports, including many of those summarized in Chapter 2, have highlighted additional benefits that might be realized when sufficient resources are available to support effective and proactive environmental data management. Despite these demonstrable societal benefits, ensuring adequate and sustained levels of funding to support data management activities remains a major ongoing challenge for both NOAA and other agencies and international groups involved in archiving and providing access to environmental observations, model output, and other environmental information.
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From page 36...
... However, for environmental data, both user needs and the data themselves are constantly evolving. Thus, all environmental data management activities, including data archiving and access decisions for specific data sets as well as the development of the overall data management system, should incorporate substantial and ongoing user input.
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From page 37...
... Any environmental data management planning process or system needs to include substantial coordination and agreement among the relevant federal agencies and international partners in order to achieve maximum cost-effectiveness and to ensure proper data stewardship. NOAA should take steps to improve its relationship with several important partners and consider taking a leadership role in archiving and p ­ roviding access to a broad range of environmental data, including data not traditionally regarded as falling under its operational mission.
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From page 38...
... At the very least, NOAA should work to improve its relationship with its agency partners to ensure that all environmental data derived from publicly funded research are archived and made available to users. Inventories and formal agreements can be time consuming and difficult to complete, but they form the foundation for all future data management decisions.
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From page 39...
... This situation raises seri ous concerns about the stewardship and long-term preservation of data that are critical for global change research but which NOAA does not consider relevant to its mission. While NOAA's decision to archive and provide access only to data directly relevant to its operational and climate monitoring activities may be based on very real funding constraints, federal agencies should not be forced to rely on ambiguous, nonbinding 15-year-old agreements to make critical data management decisions.
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From page 40...
... The contents and utility of metadata for data stewardship, archiving, and access are described in additional detail in Chapters 4, 5, and 6, respectively.
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Key Terms

  • management activities
  • data archiving
  • providing access
  • societal benefits
  • model output

  • effective data
  • including data
  • individual data
  • access decisions
  • data access

  • critical data
  • support data
  • data stream
  • data streams
  • specific data

  • future data
  • data users
  • data stewardship
  • management planning
  • management decisions

  • management enterprise
  • adequate resources
  • sufficient resources
  • ongoing planning
  • overarching principles

  • user feedback
  • demonstrable societal
  • operational mission
  • include adequate
  • user engagement


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