Abstract

The National Research Council (NRC) impaneled this committee to provide high-level advice on how to archive and provide access to the broad range of environmental data collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its partners. The data managed by NOAA provide a broa... Show moreThe National Research Council (NRC) impaneled this committee to provide high-level advice on how to archive and provide access to the broad range of environmental data collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its partners. The data managed by NOAA provide a broad range of benefits to society, but rapid increases in data volumes, as well as demand for these data, have created a first-order data management challenge. NOAA has asked for principles and guidelines to help them identify the observations, model output, and other environmental information that must be preserved in perpetuity and made readily accessible, as opposed to data with more limited storage lifetime and accessibility requirements. This report offers nine general principles for effective environmental data management, listed below, along with a number of guidelines and examples that describe and illustrate how these principles could and should be applied at NOAA. This guidance is based on the following categories of information reviewed: NOAA's legal and administrative mandates; the data archiving requirements and access capabilities required by NOAA's mission objectives; the findings and recommendations from many previous reports; the documents and feedback received from NOAA, its agency partners, and its data users regarding current and planned data management activities; and the knowledge and experience of the members of this committee. Show less