Directorate:  Geohydrology

PRIMARY DATA ARCHIVE (PRIDA)

Background

This document is excluding the technical reports because the question whether they should be dealt separately or the same way as primary data sensus stricto (PD) is still open for discussion.

Current state of primary data archiving is highly unsatisfactory due to not less than these reasons:

• No coherency amongst the offices/head-office
• No standard of primary data (incl. the list of primary data that is to be archived)
• Vague treatment of primary data (altering, moving from one place to another)
• No solid scheme for establishing a purposeful and reliable national archive.

Form of the project

The PRIDA project has been included as a subproject in the portfolio of National Groundwater Information System (NGIS).

Options

Following the ideas voiced through Business Case and Conceptual Specifications of NGIS project there are two principal solutions for the archive building. It could be built as central archive or distributed archive, where the later one offers another two options and that is with or without central back-up. Leaving out all the sentiments, there seem to be equally good reasons for any of them.

Option 1: Central archive would

• make application of firm standards for the work of archive easier;
• probably reduce the costs of the whole undertaking, saving on space, personnel, training and control;
• be an advantage if the outsourced geo/hydrological service will be set up;
• does not exclude optional storage of PD copies at regional office;

Central archive would NOT

• cover the needs of regional offices;
• offer maximum security in case of disaster (e.g. fire);

Option 2: Distributed archive without central back-up would

• maximize the independence of regions from head-office;

Distributed archive without central back-up would NOT

• give many reasons for employment of auxiliary services officers at head-office;
• give satisfactory guarantee of consistent approach unless a strong function of some head-office personnel would be introduced and that would increase dramatically traveling expenses;

Option 3: Distributed archive with central back-up would

• offer maximum possible security;
• give easiest and fastest access to data resources to all involved parties;

  

Distributed archive with central back-up would NOT

• be easy to manage (e.g. ‘duplication’ of primary data);
• be most economical due to 100% overlap of head-office and regional archives;

Option 4: Archive shared with WARMS

Understand geohydrological PD as part of WARMS agenda and wait (and participate) for WARMS project to develop and implement the filing system (underway).

Discussion and suggested solution

Whatever the final solution is going to be, one thing is obvious, the design of PRIDA will dramatically affect the Data Quality Auditing (DQA) overall philosophy and procedures. From that point of view few scenarios similar to those above can be drawn. If head-office is to be deemed responsible for national groundwater DQA (preferred option), both PRIDA options 1 and 3 are feasible. Option 2 would require a mobile DQA unit and would increase logistic problems of the undertaking. Option 4 is counting on project not finalized yet and therefore is difficult to assess.

Regional offices can only be held responsible for DQA within limits of thePir capacities and that would naturally create an undesirable gap in responsibility at national level. Interdepartmental and international data/information enquiries and co-operation (incl. SADEC activities) would be negatively affected. In summary, the option 1 seems to be the combination of least expense with most benefits. In addition to that, it still does not exclude the optional storage of PD copies within the discretion of regional management. That kind of decision is considered optional and regarding copies only, and does not influence the functioning of PRIDA in any way.

Questions to be resolved

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