Progress and Possibilities for Data Preservation and Dissemination in the Multi-Sector Dynamics Community

The Integrated Multi-Sector, Multi-Scale Modeling (IM3) Scientific Focus Area (SFA), which is based out of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and includes collaborators from multiple national laboratories and universities, is developing a flexible and extensible modeling framework that can be used to study the resilience of coupled human and natural systems. One component of the framework is a tool for preserving data (primarily model output) generated by the project in a publicly-accessible data repository. IM3 aims to enhance the reproducibility and extendibility of its results by storing the data and metadata in a way that is intuitive and useful to the multi-sector dynamics (MSD) research community. In this talk we will discuss several key roadblocks we overcame in the development of the archive such as serving a geographically- and institutionally-distributed team, balancing flexibility and ease of implementation, and creating a culture focused on best practices, reproducibility, and reuse while also meeting project deliverables. Our overall approach is to explore, adapt, and create best practices for storing data generated by our diverse models. The talk will also include a look forward at new capabilities that could be incorporated that would enhance the overall benefits of our data archive to the end-user. For example, building an event-driven messaging system into the architecture of the archive that can reduce the overhead of multi-model coupling exercises by externalizing the communication between two or more models.