Securing Seismic Legacy Data

Session: Back to the Future: Innovative New Research with Legacy Seismic Data [Poster]
Type: Poster
Date: 4/28/2020
Time: 08:00 AM
Room: Ballroom
Description: 

New seismological data mining methods are supporting discoveries and cross-disciplinary research across Earth system science. Modern research methods are currently limited by the relatively short time period of observation for which digital records are readily available. Historical data, recorded on paper and other physical media, extend the time period of Earth observation to many decades. However, if such data are to be preserved and made available digitally to harness the data revolution there are significant challenges to overcome. Among these are dispersal of historical data across multiple institutions, the loss of the physical media and the retirement of the last generation of scientists knowledgeable in their use and collection. If converted to digital media, these collections conservatively represent upwards of 100’s of petabytes of raw data.

To confront these challenges, the first U.S. workshop focused on seismic legacy data, the 2019 Securing Legacy Seismic Data to Enable Future Discoveries, was held September 18-19, 2019 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Building upon community interests, the workshop activities were designed to lay the foundation to progress on two broad goals: developing the framework for preservation of longitudinal seismic data and creating an interdisciplinary network of data, domain and computational scientists to facilitate management, access and use of digitally imaged legacy data. The workshop engaged an international group of researchers representing universities, national laboratories and governmental agencies over two days in discussions that included science drivers, new and old and the state of preservation of collections worldwide. The workshop participants outlined 8 community needs to advance these goals: creating a catalog of analog data, creating a publications database that use analog data, creating metadata standards, establishing a pilot project, enabling future research, identifying enabling technologies, attracting a cross-disciplinary community of users and enlarging the user community through outreach.

Presenting Author: Lorraine J. Hwang

Authors