Preservation and redeployment of sensor acquisition processes from a dam safety information system

Abstract

There is a growing demand for digital preservation of, not only static objects and files, e.g. text documents and images, but also dynamic objects and whole processes, such as interactive media and entire business and scientific processes. This paper investigates the problem of digitally preserving monitoring processes of a dam safety information system. Monitoring processes are a crucial element in ensuring structural safety; the interpretation of the past data produced by such processes as well as the prediction of potential future behaviour facilitates an earlier detection of possible dam failure. After a successful preservation performance, relevant data can be used or re-produced without the need for the original system to still exist; merely by re-playing the preserved information and data. This enables several possibilities in the scope of a water dam system. The retracing of former situations and structural behaviour decades later is one of them. Furthermore, the interpretation of past data and subsequent prediction of future behaviour that could facilitate an earlier detection of a fault or possible dam failure. This work presents a methodology for preserving the obtained sensor data (readings, measurements, and meta-data) from a dam safety information system, whose involved processes include: data acquisition, the preservation process itself, and the re-playing and redeployment of the preserved data.