Project to map American archival vulnerabilities due to climate change.
- Eira Tansey (@tanseyem), University of Cincinatti
- Ben Goldman (@bmrgoldman), Penn State University
- Nathan Piekielek, Penn State University
Which American archival repositories are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change in the coming decades?
To date, there has been little consideration of the potential impacts of climate change on American archival repositories, nor any known examination of climate models by archivists to help inform where potential risks might exist. Basically, we have assumptions, but no data to guide planning.
This research should make more concrete (to the extent that climate models might be considered ‘concrete’) the possible risks to certain archival repositories and collections in the future. For those institutions where the risks move from abstract to demonstrated-by-actual-models, more informed planning and dialogue may take place. The data compiled with this research might instigate further research (e.g. around assessing costs). The importance of this research may take shape in helping to inform what we don’t know about American archival repositories, in terms of the number, geographic locations, extent of holdings, and quality of storage spaces.
Demonstrating that we can model the impacts of climate change on a subset of known archival repositories is a significant contribution. Mapping/visualization is a unique way of presenting research in our field. Stimulating further areas of inquiry (including by the authors themselves) is an expected outcome.
- Tansey E. 2016. Archival adaptation to climate change. Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy 11(2) Published online Mar 02, 2016. http://sspp.proquest.com/archives/vol11iss2/1509-019.tansey.html
- Gordon-Clark, Matthew. “Paradise Lost? Pacific Island Archives Threatened by Climate Change.” Archival Science 12.1 (2012): 51–67. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10502-011-9144-3
American archives must begin preparing for the risks posed by climate change-induced weather disasters (floods, hurricanes, wildfires) that will afflict different geographical regions in the coming decades. And in order to begin planning, we must develop a sharper understanding of the potential risks.
We propose to use OCLC ArchiveGrid’s repository data, and WorldClim version 1 global climate metadata. The OCLC repository data includes addresses, longitude and latitude, but is known to be incomplete. It’s unknown how accurate the data is, but it should be considered that repository location data likely does not account for scenarios like remote storage, nor for factors that might impact certain types of extreme weather vulnerability (basement location vs. 13th floor). The WorldClim data is an aggregation of many different climate models. We will sample from these and within these (based on the different concentration scenarios).