1. An Overview of Plans for SEAD:
Sustainable Environment through Actionable Data
Margaret Hedstrom1
, Beth Plale2
, Jim Myers3
, Praveen Kumar4
, Robert H. McDonald2
,
Ann Zimmerman1
, George Alter1
, Bryan Beecher1
, Katy Borner2
, Charles Severance1
,
John Wilkin1
, Karen Woolams1
1
University of Michigan, 2
Indiana University, 3
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 4
University of Illinois
Introduction
This poster will present an overview of the proposed DataNet Sustainable Environment through
Actionable Data (SEAD) project. SEAD is a collaboration of the University of Michigan, ICPSR,
Indiana University, NCSA, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the University of Illinois that
will create a virtual organization (SEAD) dedicated to the development of community data
services 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 other
data 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 Upper
Mississippi 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 will
follow 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 curation
services, 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 data
deposition and community curation activities and with VirtA serving as a a reference archive
that 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, VirtA
can be viewed intuitively as a thin layer that virtualizes distributed institutional repository
storage. In other words it is a layer that presents a uniform access model to its clients (the
ACR is the most notable client).
Results
The SEAD DataNet initiative is slated to begin in August 2011 and will have an initial 18 month
prototype schedule. Early results of the ACR and VirtA components will be available in late
2012.