An Overview of Plans for SEAD:Sustainable Environment through Actionable DataMargaret Hedstrom1, Beth Plale2, Jim Myers3, Praveen Kumar4, Robert H. McDonald2,Ann Zimmerman1, George Alter1, Bryan Beecher1, Katy Borner2, Charles Severance1,

John Wilkin1, Karen Woolams1

1University of Michigan, 2Indiana University, 3Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 4University of Illinois

Introduction

This poster will present an overview of the proposed DataNet Sustainable Environment throughActionable Data (SEAD) project. SEAD is a collaboration of the University of Michigan, ICPSR,Indiana University, NCSA, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the University of Illinois thatwill create a virtual organization (SEAD) dedicated to the development of community dataservices supporting the emerging field of sustainability science. During its initial 18 months,SEAD will develop a model for active and social curation that engages scientists and otherdata producers in community data management.

Objectives

SEAD is aimed initially at sustainability scientists working on sustainable land use, water qual-ity, urban planning and redevelopment, and agriculture in the Upper Great Lakes and UpperMississippi River Basin, but the concepts of active and social curation and SEAD’s Cyberinfras-tructure and underlying business model are expected to be widely applicable to interdisci-plinary research and communities in which long-tail data distributions exist. The project willfollow an active engagement strategy to work closely with sustainability researchers to devel-op a working prototype in its first 18-month period that will include active and social curationservices, an Active Content Repository (ACR) supporting them and a virtual long-term archive(VirtA) that supports long-term preservation.

Materials & Methods

Architecturally, the ACR can be viewed as a user-facing cache supporting incremental datadeposition and community curation activities and with VirtA serving as a a reference archivethat accumulates packaged data products and provides persistence over diverse and distribut-ed institutional repositories.

The primary components of the 18month prototype for this project project are:

1. Active Content Repository (ACR)2. Virtual Long-Term Archive (VirtA)

SEAD System Overview Active Content Repository (ACR)

A mechanism to collect and integrate data, metadata, and provenance information from mul-tiple projects and multiple applications/services into an overall “living” graph of related in-formation.

Virtual Long-Term Archive (VirtA)

The long term archive, called VirtA, will be implemented as a virtual archive. As such, VirtAcan be viewed intuitively as a thin layer that virtualizes distributed institutional repositorystorage. In other words it is a layer that presents a uniform access model to its clients (theACR is the most notable client).

Results

The SEAD DataNet initiative is slated to begin in August 2011 and will have an initial 18 monthprototype schedule. Early results of the ACR and VirtA components will be available in late2012.