4

Potential Models for a New Center

ALTERNATIVE CONCEPTS FOR THE POTENTIAL CENTER

To consider potential organizational models for a new center for paleoenvironmental records of extreme events, the committee evaluated several alternative concepts that could advance the collection, interpretation, and use of paleoenvironmental data relevant to extreme events. Each option offered distinct advantages and limitations with respect to feasibility, cost, and alignment with the goals articulated in the statement of task.

New Physical Repository

One option considered was the establishment of a new national repository to focus on cores, samples, and other materials that record evidence of past extreme events. Such a facility could consolidate dispersed collections, promote standardized curation, and improve long-term preservation. However, extensive physical repositories already exist across federal agencies, state geological surveys, and academic institutions. While these facilities vary in scope, focus (e.g., ice cores versus tree rings), and capability, the materials contained therein generally are discoverable and available for further analysis. The committee determined that the creation of an additional repository would be costly, duplicative, and unlikely to address the central challenge of transforming existing data into actionable information for societal decision making. Targeted investments to enhance coordination and access among existing repositories (see, e.g., NASEM, 2020) may provide greater benefit than the creation of a new physical repository.

Centralized Digital Database

The committee also considered the feasibility and usefulness of a single, comprehensive digital repository that would integrate paleoenvironmental data across multiple archive types and disciplines. In principle, such a database could reduce fragmentation and streamline the discovery of relevant datasets. In practice, however, well-established community data repositories such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Paleo,¹ Neotoma,² and PANGAEA³ already provide robust data-curation services and digital identifiers for tens of thousands of paleoenvironmental records and are widely used by technical experts in the field. Creating a new “umbrella” repository would require substantial and continuous effort and investment, risk duplicating existing expertise and infrastructure, and not necessarily alleviate the challenges of discoverability and sustainability that scientific databases face.

Conclusion 4-1: Creating a new “umbrella” physical or digital repository would require substantial additional investment, risk duplicating existing infrastructure, and likely exacerbate the sustainability challenges faced by existing scientific facilities and databases. Strengthening coordination and access across existing repositories offers a more effective path forward.

National Inventory or Metarepository

Another possibility is the development of a centralized inventory that catalogs and links existing data systems and physical collections—a “database of databases.” Such an inventory could enhance the visibility and discoverability of paleoenvironmental records, helping researchers and decision makers identify where relevant physical or digital materials reside. However, maintaining a comprehensive, up-to-date inventory would require enormous initial and sustained effort, without which it would rapidly become incomplete or outdated. The committee noted that such databases exist for some fields, including the Index to Marine and Lacustrine Geological Samples,⁴ which provides an inventory of geological materials and data collected from lake and marine settings. This resource was recently

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¹https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/paleo-search/ (accessed November 6, 2025).

²https://www.neotomadb.org/ (accessed November 6, 2025).

³https://www.pangaea.de/ (accessed November 6, 2025).

⁴https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/index-marine-lacustrine-samples (accessed November 6, 2025).

decommissioned by NOAA and has been archived elsewhere.^5,6 The Internet of Samples (iSamples)⁷ and the System for Earth and Extraterrestrial Sample Registration (SESAR)⁸ are building standardized and persistent digital identifiers for physical samples that can be registered and tracked across repositories and downstream applications to allow full provenancing across the information ecosystem of paleoenvironmental data (see Chapter 3).

These examples illustrate the challenges of building a centralized inventory capable of serving the paleoenvironmental research community. The committee believes that the effort involved and the resources required to build and maintain such a centralized inventory would be disproportionately high relative to the benefits gained. Instead, existing initiatives could be continued and strengthened to support protocols for existing paleoenvironmental repositories and databases to share data and metadata across systems.

Distributed Network or Virtual Center

Rather than creating a single physical or institutional home, the committee considered that a new center could exist as a distributed network of existing repositories, databases, and research groups linked through a shared governance structure and data framework. This structure has considerable advantages in using existing infrastructure and expertise and therefore lowering startup and operational costs, and the network could promote community participation. However, during internal deliberations and meetings with stakeholders, a common theme that emerged was the need for scientific data and knowledge about past extreme events to be accessible to and useful for decision makers and other stakeholders (see Table 5-1). Achieving this accessibility and utility requires exchange of knowledge and perspectives as well as relationship building among scientists and all stakeholders, so that project development is adapted at early stages to stakeholder information needs. Although virtual mechanisms such as webinars can advance these exchanges and relationship building, in-person meetings remain critical, particularly at the launching stage of new partnerships. Therefore, an entirely virtual center is unlikely to fully support data accessibility as well as the opportunity for collaborative project design, synthesis, and interpretation, although hybrid approaches are promising.

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⁵https://www.geosamples.org/news/current-events/notice-to-the-community-regarding-the-imlgs (accessed December 4, 2025).

⁶https://purl.stanford.edu/kb879ww0098 (accessed November 6, 2025).

⁷https://isamples.org/ (accessed November 6, 2025).

⁸https://www.geosamples.org/ (accessed November 6, 2025).

Synthesis Center Model

The committee interviewed synthesis center leaders and considered other synthesis center topics and models, including the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS),⁹ the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC),¹⁰ National Evolutionary Synthesis Center,¹¹ Long Term Ecological Research Network (LTER),¹² Environmental Data Science Innovation & Impact Laboratory,¹³ and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Powell Center for Analysis and Synthesis.¹⁴ These centers focus on data analysis and the synthesis of transdisciplinary questions, e.g., questions that cross disciplinary boundaries and address policy, planning, and other societal needs. The center leaders described in-person meetings as a crucial ingredient for accelerating collaborations involving diverse users and for coproduction among decision makers, scientists, and other stakeholders (see Table 5-1) to determine critical research directions. Most working groups at these centers employ hybrid strategies, in which in-person meetings are combined with virtual solutions for interaction. A physical meeting space in combination with support for virtual engagement within and among stakeholders is therefore a crucially important component for collaboration involving scientific and societal questions.

Thematic or Regional Center Model

Another option considered was creation of a center that focuses on a specific kind of extreme event or region. An example of this model is the Cascadia Region Earthquake Science Center.¹⁵ This model allows for deep specialization, targeted partnerships, and possible co-location, with local or regional agencies or universities. However, emphasizing one specific region or event type might come at the cost of inattention to other regions or types of extreme events; e.g., a regional center in the southwestern United States might focus primarily on droughts and fires and attend less to tropical cyclones or nor’easter storms. A regional-center approach likely would require substantial investment in multiple centers to satisfy multiple concerns. Furthermore, a multicenter regional model would be challenged to enable learning and engagement across centers. At the same time, the challenge for

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⁹https://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/ (accessed November 6, 2025).

¹⁰https://www.sesync.org/ (accessed November 6, 2025).

¹¹https://www.nescent.org/ (accessed November 6, 2025).

¹²https://lternet.edu/ (accessed December 2, 2025).

¹³https://esiil.org/ (accessed December 2, 2025).

¹⁴https://www.usgs.gov/centers/john-wesley-powell-center-for-analysis-and-synthesis (accessed November 6, 2025).

¹⁵https://cascadiaquakes.org/about-crescent/ (accessed November 6, 2025).

a national center model is developing the capacity for outreach to regional and local stakeholders and concerns. Conversations with agency representatives, scientists, and other stakeholders revealed a common theme: many kinds of extreme events are well recorded in paleoenvironmental archives, but there is a persistent and systematic gap between the scientific data and knowledge of these past extreme events, the translation of scientific findings to actionable information, and therefore the systems and structures used by decision makers to assess and mitigate risk.

Recommendation 4-1: A new center should accommodate multiple decision-making communities by having the capacity to engage across regions and support projects that synthesize and translate data for any region and the extreme events that may affect them.

Collaboration, Synthesis, and Translation Center

The committee’s discussions with users and stakeholders highlighted a critical insight: the primary barriers to the broader use of paleoenvironmental information lie less in data scarcity, and more in the fragmentation of existing resources and the limited capacity for integration and communication across disciplines and sectors. Addressing these challenges requires an institutional framework explicitly designed to foster collaboration, synthesis, translation, and impact.

Accordingly, the committee determined that the most significant need is greater capacity to synthesize and translate existing information into actionable knowledge using state-of-the-art computational, informatic, and synthesis tools. Establishing a synthesis and translation center dedicated to integrating paleoenvironmental records of extreme events would facilitate collaboration among scientists, data and cyberinfrastructure specialists, and representatives from business, policy, planning, and infrastructure to ensure that synthesis efforts would address societal needs. A synthesis and translation center model would convene interdisciplinary working groups, provide access to informatics and analytical expertise, and generate products designed to communicate actionable knowledge to inform hazard assessment, infrastructure planning, and resilience strategies. This synthesis center should support the integration and analysis of multiple kinds of paleoenvironmental data types, support the study of multiple kinds of extreme events, and support project initiation coming from any stakeholder community with mechanisms established to ensure a broad range of topics, scientific and policy expertise, career stages, and regional knowledge.

A critical challenge faced by a single center is how best to engage with stakeholders distributed around the United States with localized exposures to various types of extreme events. Several mechanisms can facilitate these

connections. One strategy is for the center leadership to cultivate close connections with regional experts at federal agencies and with extension agents at universities, given their local knowledge of extreme event threats and community concerns. Another strategy is to establish an advisory board with expertise in relevant sectors to oversee the center’s operations and budget. Other synthesis centers have successfully addressed this challenge by encouraging proposals submitted by project- or region-based working groups, enabling a wide range of societally relevant scientific challenges to be undertaken. Once projects are selected, individual teams of scientists and stakeholders can be assembled to tackle localized challenges relating to extreme events and their impacts. Such teams can be facilitated through a combination of in-person and virtual activities. This project-centric model draws on successful precedents such as NCEAS, SESYNC, and the USGS Powell Center for Analysis and Synthesis,¹⁶ all of which demonstrate the power of focused, time-bound, and interdisciplinary collaborations. By emphasizing coordination, synthesis, and communication rather than new infrastructure or data collection, a center for paleoenvironmental records of extreme events organized around these principles would best fulfill the study’s charge to strengthen resilience to future extreme events.

Conclusion 4-2: The greatest opportunity for impact lies in a synthesis and translation center with support for both in-person and virtual interactions that links existing repositories and data systems, supports interdisciplinary analysis informed by stakeholder participants, and promotes engagement, synthesis, and translation of science into action.

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¹⁶https://www.usgs.gov/centers/john-wesley-powell-center-for-analysis-and-synthesis (accessed November 6, 2025).