Initiative #9: Deepwater Horizon Institutional Repository

Preserve data and information related to the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill and make them available to the public and to other agencies as well as to scientific and academic communities.

Other Information:

Overview: The Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill forced multiple agencies to work together, creating unprecedented volumes of data and information across disparate communities and operations. NOAA’s stewardship mission and role in the DWH response placed a complex array of data and information within its domain and custody. Consistent with its core mission and obligation to public transparency, NOAA is working to preserve these federal assets and make them available to the public and to other agencies as well as to scientific and academic communities. Although most of this data and information is being preserved and made publicly accessible, it can require expert knowledge to find and use data from a single agency, with even more skill required to search across multiple agencies. To improve access and usability, NOAA is publishing a searchable index of all DWH data and information preserved within NOAA National Data Centers (NNDC) and NOAA Central Library (NCL). NOAA has partnered with the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) to develop a DWH Institutional Repository (DWH-IR) to support online discovery and dissemination of NOAA’s DWH data and information in digital form. Impact and Benefits: The DWH-IR is designed to be scalable and reproducible in order to serve all DWH community members, including federal, state, and local governments, and academic and scientific institutions. The model enables each agency to maintain ownership and management of its data and information, with the IR providing a common point of access with standardized access tools. A fully functioning DWH-IR will result in: * Increased public transparency by preserving and publishing soft information such as analytical reports, public briefings, images, and videos in addition to observational data * Increased efficiency for answering customer inquiries by combining soft information with hard data in a comprehensive, cross-referenced, searchable index * Reduced direct customer contact for FOIA and, potentially, eDiscovery requests by providing easy-to-use self-service tools for online access to publicly cleared records. Key Milestones and Timeline: • Phase I funding received by OCIO and NCL and planning began on DWH IR Pilot – 5/27/2011 • Signed NOAA NTIS MOU and began ingesting DWH files from NCL into DWH-IR – 8/12/2011 • Launch DWH IR Phase I Pilot Site – 10/14/2011 • Phase II funding and planning – Q1 FY2012 • Begin Phase II – Q2 FY2012 • Multiple levels of restricted access • Multiple agency holdings • Initial Phase II release – Q4 FY2012

Stakeholder(s):

• National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration


• Scientific Community


• Academic Community


• NOAA National Data Centers (NNDC)


• NOAA Central Library (NCL)


• National Technical Information Service (NTIS)

Objective(s):

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