title: A Digital Archive of Monitoring Data
creators: Fábio Costa Gabriel David Álvaro Cunha
abstract: The change of status of data files from mere stepping stones to build other research products into publishable documents raises the question of how to organize data repositories appropriate for dissemination of such publications outside of the original research group. If the repository is to be used for the on-going research by the research group, it assumes the role of a digital archive. In this paper, a metadata model for the special case of projects relying on monitoring data is proposed and a prototype digital archive is described that has been built according to that model. This metadata is critical to preserve the context of production of the data at the organizational and technical levels and the meaning of each value. The digital archive offers several services for ingestion, visualization and dissemination that are essential for the effective adoption of the system. The method followed has been focus group work with a research group on structural health monitoring during the metadata specification phase, and an iterative development approach during the prototype construction phase of a digital archive for the same group.
keywords: scientific data repositories experimental data streams structural health monitoring lisbon