Sustaining Engineering Informatics: Toward Methods and Metrics for Digital Curation

Abstract

Ensuring the long-term usability of engineering informatics (EI) artifacts is a challenge, particularly for products with longer lifecycles than the computing hardware and software used for their design and manufacture. Addressing this challenge requires characterizing the nature of EI, defining metrics for EI sustainability, and developing methods for long-term EI curation. In this paper we highlight various issues related to long-term archival of EI and describe the work towards methods and metrics for sustaining EI. We propose an approach to enhance the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) functional model to incorporate EI sustainability criteria, Digital Object Prototypes (DOPs), and end user access requirements. We discuss the end user’s requirements from the point of view of reference, reuse and rationale – the “3Rs” – to better understand the level of granularity and abstractions required in the definition of engineering digital objects. Finally we present a proposed case study and experiment.