Data Warehouse Digital Archiving Case Study: North Carolina Department of Transportation

Data at state departments of transportation (DOTs) are numerous and varied. Large legacy data stores exist in many forms; are stored in a variety of media; and include such diverse items as text (calculations, forms, correspondence, specifications, and so forth), drawings, and photographs. Enormous collections of new data are continuously being created. Nearly all of the legacy data are in paper form. Even much of the newly collected data begins on paper, although most new data collection efforts are being converted to digital form. Given the current state, the key problems faced by state DOTs are how to find and acquire needed data, how to store it (warehouse), how to convert it to a useful form, how to relate it to other data (so that new analyses can be performed), how to manage it, how to access and use it, and how to archive it for both predicted and unexpected future needs. In another context, state DOTs are asking what to convert to digital form; what to do with data that are not in digital form; how to manage and access digital data warehouses; and how to maintain digital data in the face of continuous and drastic changes in hardware, software, and storage media. These questions are addressed in the context of a study conducted by the Traffic Survey Unit of the North Carolina Department of Transportation that led to some insightful and unexpected observations.