title: ESA PLANS – A PATHFINDER FOR LONG TERM  DATA PRESERVATION
creators: Vincenzo Beruti David Giaretta Esther Conway M.Eugenia Forcada Mirko Albani
abstract: Digital preservation is difficult. The technical difficulties
  are the cause of much research. Other types of difficulty are
  those to do with organisational commitment, funding and
  context.
  With the increasing interest on global change monitoring,
  also the use and exploitation of long time series of Earth
  Observation (EO) data has been increasing systematically,
  calling for a need to preserve the EO data without time
  constrains.
  On the other hand:
  · Data archiving and preservation strategies are still
  mostly limited to the satellite lifetime and few years
  after.
  · The data volumes are increasing dramatically.
  · Archiving and data access technology are evolving
  rapidly.
  · EO data archiving strategies, if existing at all, are
  different for each EO mission, each operator or
  agency.
  In the meantime the issue grows more urgent since more
  and more EO missions’ data can be called ‘historic’ and more
  and more operators are faced with the decision of whether
  and how to preserve their data.
  This paper describes the European Space Agency’s (ESA)
  plans for long term commitment to preserving EO data
  concerning Europe. We believe this shows that ESA provides
  a pathfinder example of the way in which all these difficulties
  can be tackled.