RASSC

The RASSC project aims to transform current approaches to data retention and access in data intensive supply chains. Our targets are aerospace design and surveying in the oil and gas industry. The objective is to provide third-parties and major supply chain partners with a blueprint for delivering new data retention and access services to the whole community. As an example, the Eurofighter typhoon has over 250,000 parts in a complex configuration, with no two aircraft being identical, and all generating a vast amount of integrated in-vehicle health monitoring data. Retaining and getting maximum value out of this data over a 50 year lifetime is a major technical, economic and business challenge. If achieved however, the benefits are operational cost savings, improved data sharing and efficiency in supply design and manufacturing chains, and long-term mitigation of the 'cost of data loss' (e.g. not meeting regulatory compliance or having to ground aircraft during investigations).

The project is a first phase investigation into this new model. Our target is the potential barriers to adoption, with work done in the project including (a) economic analysis of the underpinning business models of data sustainability services in supply chains; (b) investigation of how to integrate long-term retention and access services into Product Data and Lifecycle management tools; (c) scoping of the policies needed for data security, safety, audit-ability and integrity; and (d) building and evaluating a demonstration system to gain insight into technical and operational challenges.

RASSC is just one of IT Innovation's R&D projects in the area of digital preservation and access; see also the AVATAR-m and PrestoPRIME projects.

A key result from all this work is a new company called Arkivum, which has been spun-out of IT Innovation to provide assured archiving services across a range of sectors.

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RASSC has received research funding from the UK Technology Programme.