64,752 research outputs found
A framework for whole lifecycle cost of long-term digital preservation
Digital preservation, also known as digital curation, is the active management of digital information, over time, to ensure its accessibility and usability. Digital preservation is nowadays an active area of research, for many reasons: the rapid evolution of technology, which also results in the rapid obsolescence of old technologies; degradation of physical records; constantly increasing volumes of digital information and, importantly, the fact that it has started to become a legal obligation in many countries.
This research project aims to develop an innovative framework estimate costs of long term digital preservation. The framework can lead to generating a cost model that quantifies costs within different business sectors, while capturing the impact of obsolescence and uncertainties on predicted cost. Case studies from financial, healthcare and clinical trials sectors are used to prove the framework concept. Those sectors were chosen because between them they share all file types that are required to be preserved and all are either obliged by European or local laws, e.g. EU Data Retention Directive (2006/24/EC) and/or UK Data Retention Regulations 2014 No. 2042, or interested in preserving their digital assets.
The framework comprises of three phases: assessing digital preservation activities, cost analysis and expansion and cost estimation. The framework has integrated two processes that will enable the user to reach a more accurate cost estimate; a process for identifying uncertainties with digital preservation activities and a cost modelling process. In the framework cloud computing was used as an example for storage and compute technologies.
Combining different research methodology techniques was used in this research project. Starting with conducting a thorough literature review covering digital preservation and cost modelling. Following the literature review; is a combination qualitative and quantitative approaches, using semi-structured interview technique to collect data from industry experts. Industry experts were chosen from companies, firms and government bodies working with or researching digital preservation. Finalising with validating results by real-life case studies from businesses in selected sectors and experts’ verdict.
Comparing the output of the framework to real-life case studies, demonstrated how companies/firms, who target to preserve their digital assets, can utilise it to predict accurately future costs for undertaking such investment. By applying industrially-based cost modelling approaches the framework generates a cost model that predicts single-point and three-points cost estimates, an obsolescence taxonomy, uncertainties identification process and quantifying uncertainties and obsolescence impact on cost prediction. Providing decision makers with all the framework outputs, will provide them with quantifiable information about their future investment, while remaining clear to understand and easy to amend. This makes the framework provide long-term total cost prediction solution for digital preservation to firms; helping, guiding and adding insight into digital preservation added value
Cost modelling for cloud computing utilisation in long term digital preservation
The rapid increase in volume of digital information can cause concern among organisations regarding manageability, costs and security of their information in the long-term. As cloud computing technology is often used for digital preservation purposes and is still evolving, there is difficulty in determining its long-term costs. This paper presents the development of a generic cost model for public and private clouds utilisation in long term digital preservation (LTDP), considering the impact of uncertainties and obsolescence issues. The cost model consists of rules and assumptions and was built using a combination of activity based and parametric cost estimation techniques. After generation of cost breakdown structures for both clouds, uncertainties and obsolescence were categorised. To quantify impacts of uncertainties on cost, three-point estimate technique was employed and Monte Carlo simulation was applied to generate the probability distribution on each cost driver. A decision support cost estimation tool with dashboard representation of results was developed
Invest to Save: Report and Recommendations of the NSF-DELOS Working Group on Digital Archiving and Preservation
Digital archiving and preservation are important areas for research and development, but there is no agreed upon set of priorities or coherent plan for research in this area. Research projects in this area tend to be small and driven by particular institutional problems or concerns. As a consequence, proposed solutions from experimental projects and prototypes tend not to scale to millions of digital objects, nor do the results from disparate projects readily build on each other. It is also unclear whether it is worthwhile to seek general solutions or whether different strategies are needed for different types of digital objects and collections. The lack of coordination in both research and development means that there are some areas where researchers are reinventing the wheel while other areas are neglected.
Digital archiving and preservation is an area that will benefit from an exercise in analysis, priority setting, and planning for future research. The WG aims to survey current research activities, identify gaps, and develop a white paper proposing future research directions in the area of digital preservation. Some of the potential areas for research include repository architectures and inter-operability among digital archives; automated tools for capture, ingest, and normalization of digital objects; and harmonization of preservation formats and metadata. There can also be opportunities for development of commercial products in the areas of mass storage systems, repositories and repository management systems, and data management software and tools.
Tools for modelling and simulating migration-based preservation
This report describes two tools for modelling and simulating the costs and risks of using IT storage systems for the long-term archiving of file-based AV assets. The tools include a model of storage costs, the ingest and access of files, the possibility of data corruption and loss from a range of mechanisms, and the impact of having limited resources with which to fulfill access requests and preservation actions. Applications include archive planning, development of a technology strategy, cost estimation for business planning, operational decision support, staff training and generally promoting awareness of the issues and challenges archives face in digital preservation
Towards a framework for predicting whole life-cycle cost for long-term digital preservation
Estimating the costs for the whole lifecycle of long-term digital preservation (LTDP) activities ena-bles decision makers to choose carefully what data to preserve, duration of preservation and type of preservation techniques best applied for their information. To address this need, a framework is de-veloped to generate a cost model that will estimate costs for long-term digital preservation activities using storage in the cloud and taking into consideration the impact of mitigating uncertainties, espe-cially obsolescence issues on future costs. This cost estimating framework is part of the European pro-ject entitled ‘Enabling kNowledge Sustainability Usability and Recovery for Economic value’ which aims to provide a total long-term digital preservation solution for companies and public sector organi-sations interested in keeping their digital information alive for the long-term within the healthcare, fi-nancial and the clinical trials business sectors
LIBER's involvement in supporting digital preservation in member libraries
Digital curation and preservation represent new challenges for universities. LIBER
has invested considerable effort to engage with the new agendas of digital preservation
and digital curation. Through two successful phases of the LIFE project, LIBER
is breaking new ground in identifying innovative models for costing digital curation
and preservation. Through LIFE’s input into the US-UK Blue Ribbon Task Force on
Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access, LIBER is aligned with major international
work in the economics of digital preservation. In its emerging new strategy and
structures, LIBER will continue to make substantial contributions in this area, mindful
of the needs of European research libraries
Modelling long term digital preservation costs: a scientific data case study
In recent years there has been increasing UK Government pressure on publicly funded researchers to plan the preservation and ensure the accessibility of their data for the long term. A critical challenge in implementing a digital preservation strategy is the estimation of such a programme’s cost. This pa-per presents a case study based on the cost estimation of preserving scientific data produced in the ISIS facility based at The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Rutherford Appleton Laboratory UK. The model for cost estimation for long term digital preservation is presented along with an outline of the development and validation activities undertaken as part of this project. The framework and methodology from this research provide an insight into the task of costing long term digital preservation processes, and can potentially be adapted to deliver benefits to other organisa-tions
Keeping Research Data Safe 2: Final Report
The first Keeping Research Data Safe study funded by JISC made a major contribution to understanding of long-term preservation costs for research data by developing a cost model and indentifying cost variables for preserving research data in UK universities (Beagrie et al, 2008). However it was completed over a very constrained timescale of four months with little opportunity to follow up other major issues or sources of preservation cost information it identified. It noted that digital preservation costs are notoriously difficult to address in part because of the absence of good case studies and longitudinal information for digital preservation costs or cost variables. In January 2009 JISC issued an ITT for a study on the identification of long-lived digital datasets for the purposes of cost analysis. The aim of this work was to provide a larger body of material and evidence against which existing and future data preservation cost modelling exercises could be tested and validated. The proposal for the KRDS2 study was submitted in response by a consortium consisting of 4 partners involved in the original Keeping Research Data Safe study (Universities of Cambridge and Southampton, Charles Beagrie Ltd, and OCLC Research) and 4 new partners with significant data collections and interests in preservation costs (Archaeology Data Service, University of London Computer Centre, University of Oxford, and the UK Data Archive). A range of supplementary materials in support of this main report have been made available on the KRDS2 project website at http://www.beagrie.com/jisc.php. That website will be maintained and continuously updated with future work as a resource for KRDS users
A framework for identifying uncertainties in long-term digital preservation
With the current expansion in digital information comes an increasing need to preserve such assets. The ENSURE (Enabling knowledge Sustainability, Usability and Recovery for Economic value) pro-ject, a research project under the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme, is the par-ent project to this research area and its aim is to conduct advanced research to address the challenges of Long Term Digital Preservation (LTDP) to ensure the successful preservation, availability and ac-cessibility of preserved data in the future. Focusing on identifying uncertainties in the LTDP activities and their impact on cost and economic performance of digital preservation systems, this paper dis-cusses a framework to identify uncertainties in LTDP for business sectors interested
- …