2.7 Active Archive Phase

To retain the usefulness of the ISO Data Archive far into the future, an `Active Archive Phase' was approved by ESA's Science Programme Committee (SPC) for the ISO Data Centre. This phase started on January 1, 2002 and will last until December 31, 2006. During this phase the ESA ISO Data Centre continues to cooperate closely with the several national ISO data centres (see Section 1.4.1), in order to refine the archive data products. The goal at the end of this phase is that the archived data will then require no or only the absolute minimum use of additional IA intervention by the user before scientific exploitation.

The responsibilities of the ESA ISO Data Centre in the Active Archive Phase can be summarised as maintaining the central archive and providing expert support to the community across all instruments, via:

• Archive maintenance and improvements:
  During this phase, the archive will be maintained, especially the user interface to maximise its usefulness and ease of use, and improved with the ingestion of new data and information. Major tasks will be: stimulating systematic data reduction by ISO experts and capturing the resulting data products into the archive; tracking of refereed ISO publications and incorporating this information; ingestion of new ISO catalogues and atlases; continuing the process of increasing the inter-operability of archives by linking to other data sets.
• Support in data usage:
  The ISO Data Centre will continue to be the first line support to the general community on all matters regarding ISO data. This includes provision of advice; support for data reduction either remotely or via visits to the centre; and supply of, and assistance with, software for detailed data analysis.
• Supply of general information:
  The existing Helpdesk and WWW services will be continued and updates made as needed to the ISO Handbooks.
• Promotion of awareness of ISO data:
  General conferences and specific small `hands-on' data reduction workshops will continue to be organised with the proceedings being made widely available.

The continuation of the cooperation between the ESA ISO Data Centre and most of the national data centres is of much benefit to the final archive and gives added value to the community. The ESA Centre in Villafranca is taking the responsibility for overall co-ordination of the managerially and financially independent data centres.

Activities of the national data centres involved in the Active Archive Phase include: maintenance and improvement of software packages for interactive data reduction, including making available new algorithms and calibration files; further work on instrument specific calibration; and focussed reduction of specific data sets to be ingested back into the archive as Highly Processed Data Products (HPDPs).

A mid-term review, in front of an independent Board, will be held in 2004 to review progress and make recommendations on any re-directions of effort.