Dr. Norman Swindells Ferroday Ltd Birkenhead, U.K. Conservation of digital data

Product life cycle

Sustainable technical information Product information in digital form is specific to a particular software application Cannot be communicated directly between different software systems Life time of products is longer than the life time of the computer software If products are to be recovered, reused or recycled then complete information at end of life will increase their value Conservation of products also requires the conservation and communication of information in a form that is independent of proprietary software

Reasons to conserve data Product liability Preserve intellectual property Designs, product properties, process details Retain knowledge and experience Structural integrity measurements of energy plant Nuclear engineering, decommissioning Report environmental data and compare over time Satisfy requirements for EU directives – REACH, RoHS, etc

OAIS Framework (ISO 14271)

Framework components Ingest – input data records plus metadata to enable them to be found in the future Data management – editing and quality control of input Storage – physical storage including back-up and migration to new media Preservation planning – ensuring the data is not just a stream of unreadable digital bits when future access is required Access – finding records in the archive and distributing them to appropriate users Administration – operation and maintenance of thearchive.

Preservation planning Role of standards for product data representation ISO – product shape from CAD systems ISO – design and assembly of any product ISO – FEA analysis of product shape and layered products ISO – shape and machining features of cast products ISO – product life cycle support ISO – engineering properties of any product measured by any method.

ISO Engineering properties for produce design and verification Provides and audit trail from a design value to the origins of the value in a testing procedure Any properties of any product Applications to support conservation could be: Structural integrity Nuclear build and decommissioning Nuclear waste Environmental records and reporting Etc.

Conclusion The conservation of digital product and process data is needed now OAIS framework provides a working method to achieve this Product data standards provide the means to achieve some of the requirements of this framework This is not a problem that can be delayed now that a solution is available. The LOTAR project is using the combination of OAIS and ISO standards to conserve engineering data for the European and US aerospace sector.