Speaker
Dr
David South
(DESY (DE))
Description
While the current focus is on the LHC at CERN, in the current period
several important and unique experimental programs at other
facilities are coming to an end, including those at HERA, b-factories and the Tevatron. However, until recently no coherent strategy existed for data preservation and re-use, and many important and complex past data sets have simply been lost. To address this problem, an inter experimental Study Group on HEP data preservation and long-term analysis, DPHEP, was convened in 2009 as a panel of the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA). The group was formed by large collider-based experiments and investigated the technical and organisational aspects of the HEP data preservation. The aims of the study group include to confront the data models, clarify the concepts, set a common language and investigate the technical aspects of data preservation in HEP. The experiments BaBar, Belle, BES-III, CLAS, CLEO, CDF, D0, H1 and ZEUS are all represented in DPHEP, with representatives from the LHC experiments ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb having joined the study group in 2011. The associated computing centres at CERN (Switzerland/France), DESY (Germany), Fermilab (USA), IHEP (China), JLAB (USA), KEK (Japan) and SLAC (USA) are also represented in DPHEP. An intermediate report was released in November 2009 addressing the general issues of data preservation in HEP. A more complete report is to be released in the first half of 2012, extending and building upon the initial findings. An analysis of the research case for data preservation is provided and a detailed
description of the various projects at experiment, laboratory and
international levels. In addition, concrete proposal for an
international organisation in charge with the data management and
policies in high-energy physics are provided.
Primary author
Dr
David South
(DESY (DE))
Co-author
Cristinel Diaconu
(Universite d'Aix - Marseille II (FR))
