The Future of Data Standards and Storage: Harnessing Data Generation into a Standardized Repository

Abstract

Data storage and standards are often the last consideration, or given no consideration at all, when assessing human factors. Generally, objective and subjective data are collected and used for a specific purpose and then stored as needed by individual investigators. Data storage may include hard drives, hard copies, removable storage devices (e.g. USB sticks, DVDs), and a plethora of file types (e.g. delimited, pdfs, proprietary formats). Historically, these data have not been standardized or stored in a manner that allows for easy and widespread future access and use. This results in potential duplicate efforts and dollars, increased analysis time, and delays in decision making while waiting for new data to be generated. The cloud-based Army Experimentation Resource Data Repository (AERDR) was developed to address these issues. Here we present the repository framework and capabilities, representative data included in the repository, and challenges and considerations on standardizing data.