Addressing Digital Preservation: Proposals for New Perspectives

Abstract

Digital preservation aims at maintaining digital objects accessible over long periods of time, ensuring the authenticity and integrity of these digital objects. In this paper, we propose three different approaches to address the digital preservation problem. First, we survey the main requirements specific to the preservation arena. Next, we show how digital preservation can be approached as a specific case of System of Systems Engineering. Then, we introduce Enterprise Architecture as a framework which is regularly used to assist information systems design and maintenance, but can also be applied to System of Systems and consequently to digital preservation. Finally, in such complex environments, Risk Management is a key factor to assure the normal behavior of systems along time. Thus, we propose a Risk Management based approach to design and assess digital preservation environments, enclosing the definition of context and requirements, and the identification of threats and vulnerabilities, to be used as the basis of the definition of actions to deal with the risks associated with those threats and vulnerabilities. We generalize and survey the threats, vulnerabilities and techniques that can be applied in the scope of digital preservation.