The Arctic World Archive (AWA) is a facility for data preservation, located in the

Svalbard Svalbard ( , ), previously known as Spitsbergen or Spitzbergen, is a Norway, Norwegian archipelago that lies at the convergence of the Arctic Ocean with the Atlantic Ocean. North of continental Europe, mainland Europe, it lies about midway be ...

archipelago on the island of

Spitsbergen Spitsbergen (; formerly known as West Spitsbergen; Norwegian language, Norwegian: ''Vest Spitsbergen'' or ''Vestspitsbergen'' , also sometimes spelled Spitzbergen) is the largest and the only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipel ...

, Norway, not far from the

Svalbard Global Seed Vault The Svalbard Global Seed Vault () is a secure backup facility for the world's crop diversity on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago. The Seed Vault provides long-term storage for duplicates of seeds fro ...

. It contains data of historical and cultural interest from several countries, as well as all of American multinational company

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

's open source code, in a deeply buried steel vault, with the data storage medium expected to last for 500 to 1,000 years. It is run as a profit-making business by private company Piql and the state-owned coal-mining company Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani (SNSK).

History

Piql is a Norwegian data-storage company that specialises in long-term storage of

digital media In mass communication, digital media is any media (communication), communication media that operates in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital content can be created, viewed, distributed, modified, listened to, an ...

. Piql and SNSK created the deeply buried steel vault out of a mineshaft of an abandoned

coal mine Coal mining is the process of resource extraction, extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its Energy value of coal, energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to Electricity generation, generate electr ...

. At the time of its opening as the Arctic World Archive on 27 March 2017, the Brazilian, Mexican and Norwegian governments deposited copies of various historical documents in the vault.

Description

The Svalbard

archipelago An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands. An archipelago may be in an ocean, a sea, or a smaller body of water. Example archipelagos include the Aegean Islands (the o ...

, situated north of mainland

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

, about from the

North Pole The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's rotation, Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distingu ...

, is declared demilitarised by 42 nations, as established in the

Svalbard Treaty The Svalbard Treaty (originally the Spitsbergen Treaty) recognises the sovereignty of Norway over the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, at the time called Spitsbergen. The exercise of sovereignty is, however, subject to certain stipulations, and no ...

signed after

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

. This means that the territory cannot be used for military purposes, and the company describes the location as "one of the most geopolitically secure places in the world". The archive facility is on Spitsbergen, the biggest island in Svalbard. The facility is a large steel vault located somewhere between and below the ground or

permafrost Permafrost () is soil or underwater sediment which continuously remains below for two years or more; the oldest permafrost has been continuously frozen for around 700,000 years. Whilst the shallowest permafrost has a vertical extent of below ...

inside an abandoned coal mine (Store Norske Gruve 3) that reaches over into the side of a mountain. The facility is secured with a concrete wall and a steel gate. The deposits themselves are stored in secure

shipping container A shipping container is a container with strength suitable to withstand shipment, storage, and handling. Shipping containers range from large reusable steel boxes used for intermodal shipments to the ubiquitous corrugated box design, corrugated b ...

s behind the gate. Because of the island's Arctic climate and resulting permafrost, even if the power to the facility failed, the temperature inside the vault would remain below

freezing point The melting point (or, rarely, liquefaction point) of a substance is the temperature at which it changes state of matter, state from solid to liquid. At the melting point the solid and liquid phase (matter), phase exist in Thermodynamic equilib ...

, which is cold enough to preserve the vault's contents for decades or more, with the vault below the permafrost. The vault is situated deeply enough to avoid damage even from nuclear and EMP weapons.

Storage and future use

Data is stored offline on film reels made using a refined version of ordinary

darkroom A darkroom is used to process photographic film, make Photographic printing, prints and carry out other associated tasks. It is a room that can be made completely dark to allow the processing of light-sensitive photographic materials, including ...

photography technology. The film is made of

polyester Polyester is a category of polymers that contain one or two ester linkages in every repeat unit of their main chain. As a specific material, it most commonly refers to a type called polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Polyesters include some natura ...

coated in

silver halide A silver halide (or silver salt) is one of the chemical compounds that can form between the Chemical element, element silver (Ag) and one of the halogens. In particular, bromine (Br), chlorine (Cl), iodine (I) and fluorine (F) may each combine wit ...

crystals and powder-coated with

iron oxide An iron oxide is a chemical compound composed of iron and oxygen. Several iron oxides are recognized. Often they are non-stoichiometric. Ferric oxyhydroxides are a related class of compounds, perhaps the best known of which is rust. Iron ...

, and has a life span of at least 500 and possibly up to 2,000 years, if stored in optimum conditions. Realising that people in the very far future may not understand what they see in the vault, a kind of "

Rosetta Stone The Rosetta Stone is a stele of granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a Rosetta Stone decree, decree issued in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty of ancient Egypt, Egypt, on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle texts ...

" has been devised to help decode the data, in the form of a guide to interpreting the archive. The guides are all readable by eye, after

magnification Magnification is the process of enlarging the apparent size, not physical size, of something. This enlargement is quantified by a size ratio called optical magnification. When this number is less than one, it refers to a reduction in size, so ...

, and written in English,

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

, Spanish, Chinese, and

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

Process

Clients who pay for the storage of data can send their data digitally or physically. The data can be retrieved at any time from the vault, but it is not a quick process, because the data is not connected to the internet. If data is requested, the relevant reel of film has to be manually retrieved, then uploaded via a fibre optic connection to the mainland, to Piql's headquarters in

Drammen Drammen () is a city and municipality in Buskerud county, Norway. The port and river city of Drammen is centrally located in the south-eastern and most populated part of Norway. Drammen municipality also includes smaller towns and villages such ...

; the fastest possible retrieval time is 20–30 minutes, but it can take up to 24 hours with an active subscription and up to 72 hours without an active subscription.

The archive stores a wide range of historical and cultural data. Governments, researchers, religious institutions, media companies and others store some of their most significant records in the vault; Brazil and Norway have archived their

constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other type of entity, and commonly determines how that entity is to be governed. When these pri ...

s and other important historical papers. The archive includes information about the

biodiversity Biodiversity is the variability of life, life on Earth. It can be measured on various levels. There is for example genetic variability, species diversity, ecosystem diversity and Phylogenetics, phylogenetic diversity. Diversity is not distribut ...

of Australia, and examples of culturally significant Australian works. It includes the Atlas of Living Australia, and

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

models created by

Geoscience Australia Geoscience Australia is a statutory agency of the Government of Australia that carries out geoscientific research. The agency is the government's technical adviser on aspects of geoscience, and serves as the repository of geographic and geolo ...

, which assist in understanding topics such as

bushfires A wildfire, forest fire, or a bushfire is an unplanned and uncontrolled fire in an area of Combustibility and flammability, combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire may be more specifically identified as a ...

and

climate change Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in Global surface temperature, global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in ...

. The archive includes a digitised version of the painting ''

The Scream ''The Scream'' is an art composition created by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch in 1893. The Norwegian name of the piece is ('Screaming, Scream'), and the German title under which it was first exhibited is ' ('The Scream of Nature'). The agonize ...

'' by

Edvard Munch Edvard Munch ( ; ; 12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944) was a Norwegian painter. His 1893 work ''The Scream'' has become one of Western art's most acclaimed images. His childhood was overshadowed by illness, bereavement and the dread of inher ...

for the National Museum of Norway, and a digitised version of

Dante Dante Alighieri (; most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri; – September 14, 1321), widely known mononymously as Dante, was an Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer, and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called ...

's master-work of Italian literature, ''The Divine Comedy'' for the

Vatican Library The Vatican Apostolic Library (, ), more commonly known as the Vatican Library or informally as the Vat, is the library of the Holy See, located in Vatican City, and is the city-state's national library. It was formally established in 1475, alth ...

. In March 2018, German science TV show ''

Galileo Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642), commonly referred to as Galileo Galilei ( , , ) or mononymously as Galileo, was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a poly ...

'' deposited their first show, and made a documentary about it for

ProSieben ProSieben (, ''sieben'' is German for "seven"; often stylized as Pro7) is a German free-to-air television network owned by ProSiebenSat.1 Media. It was launched on 1 January 1989. It is Germany's second-largest privately owned television company ...

. In October 2020, the first deposit from a

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...

laureate went to the Archive: 14 books of the 2018

Nobel Prize in Literature The Nobel Prize in Literature, here meaning ''for'' Literature (), is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, "in ...

winner, Olga Tokarczuk, were placed on PiqlFilm, undertaken by the Piql Polska and funded by publisher Wydawnictwo Literackie.

GitHub Archive Program

In November 2019,

(which was acquired by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

in 2018) announced that all of its public open source code would be archived in a code vault at the Arctic World Archive, as part of its GitHub Archive Program. In July 2020, the 21-

terabyte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable un ...

February site archive was stored at the AWA. The data is stored on 186 film reels measuring long, covered in code stored as matrix (2D) barcode ( Boxing barcode), which store data very densely (each of the 200 platters of data carry 120

gigabyte The gigabyte () is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The SI prefix, prefix ''giga-, giga'' means 109 in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one gigabyte is one billion bytes. The unit symbol for the gigabyte i ...

s). The amount of code stored has been described thus: "If someone who types at about 60 words a minute sat down and tried to fill up all that space, it would take 111,300 years". The first reel holds the code of both the

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

and Android operating systems, plus that of 6,000 other major open source applications. Further to the general guide to the vault, the "Tech Tree" details

software development Software development is the process of designing and Implementation, implementing a software solution to Computer user satisfaction, satisfy a User (computing), user. The process is more encompassing than Computer programming, programming, wri ...

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

s and other information about

computer programming Computer programming or coding is the composition of sequences of instructions, called computer program, programs, that computers can follow to perform tasks. It involves designing and implementing algorithms, step-by-step specifications of proc ...

. The Guide and the Tech Tree are written in a collaborative process as a public Git repository. GitHub's Arctic Cold Vault is a "cold layer" of archiving. The "hot" (accessible online repositories) and "warm" (e.g.

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

) layers of GitHub's code archives both have the weakness of being founded upon

electronics Electronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate electrons and other Electric charge, electrically charged particles. It is a subfield ...

. It is an incomplete but more secure snapshot of data, with archiving intended at five-year intervals.

References

External links

Official website
*Martin Skjæraasen et al.
Frø i fare
eeds in danger(22 March 2021) NRK {{authority control 2017 establishments in Norway Archives in Norway Digital preservation Spitsbergen