{"schema_version":1,"assessment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_opportunity320_20260801","source_experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management__astronomy_astrophysics","archetype_slug":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management","domain_slug":"astronomy_astrophysics","title":"Governed lifecycle management for superseded astronomy data products","opportunity_summary":"Test whether dependency-gated authority labeling, reversible storage-tier migration, durable disposition markers, and scheduled restoration checks can reduce misleading discovery and active-tier burden without damaging provenance, reproducibility, or long-baseline scientific value.","adopter_authorizer":"An observatory-designated archive governance group comprising archive operations, instrument or pipeline experts, and scientific-data stewardship representatives, with affected collaborations and rights holders consulted for disputed or protected products.","scores":{"meaningful_impact":{"score":4,"rationale":"If the stated lifecycle gap is present, preventing obsolete-product selection while preserving reconstruction inputs could materially improve archive interpretability, reproducibility, and resource use. The packet provides no evidence of prevalence or current burden, limiting a score of 5."},"stakeholder_pull":{"score":2,"rationale":"The proposal identifies affected archive operators, scientists, release teams, users, authors, and rights holders, but contains no expressed demand, observed complaints, measured cleanup backlog, budget pressure, or adopter commitment."},"incremental_advantage":{"score":4,"rationale":"Relative to indefinite original-tier retention or storage expansion plus metadata improvements, the proposal adds dependency-gated disposition, reversible cold-tier migration, quarantine, restoration testing, and policy revalidation. Whether these additions produce net benefit remains untested."},"distinctiveness_plausibility":{"score":3,"rationale":"The integrated combination of authority labeling, scientific-value exceptions, dependency gates, reversible migration, disposition markers, and restore testing is coherent and testable, but prior art is explicitly unsearched and overlap with existing archive practices is unknown."},"technical_implementability":{"score":3,"rationale":"The bounded pilot uses metadata inventory, classification, tier migration, and restore testing with no permanent deletion, but incomplete dependency and ownership metadata could prevent safe classification, and retrieval performance and restore fidelity are unknown."},"adoption_authority_feasibility":{"score":4,"rationale":"A specific multidisciplinary archive governance authority is named, its first action is bounded, and halt conditions are explicit. Feasibility is reduced by potential disputes among collaborations, publication dependents, operators, and proprietary-rights holders."},"evidence_readiness":{"score":4,"rationale":"The candidate supplies separate problem and intervention falsifiers, a completed non-proprietary test family, a baseline, reversible actions, and measurable outcomes. It lacks calibrated thresholds, baseline measurements, and representative workload data."},"safety_net_benefit":{"score":5,"rationale":"The proposed first step is metadata-led and reversible; permanent deletion, age-only destruction, lossy compaction of canonical measurements, and action under unresolved dependencies or holds are excluded. Restore failure, provenance mismatch, unexpected demand, or disputed value triggers halt and rollback."},"scalability":{"score":3,"rationale":"The lifecycle sequence could be repeated across product families, but astronomy products vary in uniqueness, reconstruction requirements, access urgency, rights, and long-baseline value. Scaling therefore requires class-specific policies and substantial metadata remediation."}},"score_confidence":"MODERATE","costs":{"first_evidence":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"A bounded metadata inventory and dry-run classification for one completed, non-proprietary product family, followed by reversible cold-tier migration of only agreed redundant or reproducible copies, offline discovery comparison, restoration tests, and evaluation.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Existing archive staff and systems can provide metadata and controlled storage access.","The selected family is bounded enough for manual scientific review.","Costs include archive, pipeline, stewardship, storage, coordination, and evaluation labor.","No permanent deletion, lossy transformation, or production-wide migration occurs."]},"initial_deployment_startup":{"band_2026_usd":"250K_TO_1M","scope":"Establish governance, product-state definitions, exception and dispute workflows, dependency checks, audit records, reversible tiering automation, monitoring, and restore-test infrastructure for one observatory archive.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Existing archive and identity infrastructure can be extended rather than replaced.","Metadata gaps require targeted remediation but not full provenance reconstruction.","The scope is one observatory rather than a multi-observatory standardization program.","Protected products receive additional review rather than custom platform development."]},"operational_launch":{"band_2026_usd":"1M_TO_5M","scope":"Roll out the governed lifecycle process across multiple product families in one observatory, including integrations, metadata remediation, scientific review, migration validation, staff training, exception handling, and launch evaluation.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Product families differ enough to require class-specific thresholds and validation.","Legacy dependencies and publication links need material human review.","Cold-tier capacity is procured through existing institutional arrangements.","Launch excludes irreversible mass deletion and cross-institutional federation."]},"annual_recurring":{"band_2026_usd":"250K_TO_1M","scope":"Ongoing stewardship, exception revalidation, storage and retrieval, scheduled restore drills, audit maintenance, monitoring, disputed-disposition review, user support, and policy updates for one observatory archive.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Review and restore testing continue after launch.","Cold-tier storage lowers active-tier use but still incurs storage, retrieval, and operational costs.","Some products remain permanently exempt because of uniqueness or long-baseline value.","Major platform replacement and extraordinary legal disputes are excluded."]}},"research_burden":"HIGH","earliest_credible_horizon":"3_TO_12_MONTHS","pipeline_gates":{"recognizable_externally_supportable_problem":{"status":"YES","reason":"The sealed candidate describes a recognizable conflict among superseded-product authority, active storage burden, provenance, and reproducibility, and supplies an inventory-based problem falsifier. Its actual prevalence and materiality remain unverified."},"identifiable_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"YES","reason":"The candidate explicitly assigns decisions to an observatory-designated archive governance group with operational, pipeline, and scientific-stewardship representation."},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"YES","reason":"Against indefinite original-tier retention and storage expansion with metadata alone, the proposal claims that dependency-gated reversible tiering and restoration checks will reduce active footprint or stale-product selection without increasing restore, provenance, latency, or disposition failures."},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"YES","reason":"One completed, non-proprietary product family is specified for metadata inventory, dry-run classification, narrowly reversible migration, and restore testing, with no permanent deletion authorized."},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"YES","reason":"The authorized first step avoids permanent deletion and protected products, requires dependency and retention checks, and mandates halt and rollback on restoration, provenance, demand, or preservation disputes."},"implementation_cost_scope_and_range":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"A bounded pilot and one-observatory rollout can be scoped into broad bands, but the packet supplies no archive size, metadata completeness, staffing, storage pricing, retrieval workload, integration complexity, or remediation volume."}},"blocking_evidence":["Whether a representative inventory contains a material volume of ambiguously authoritative or unnecessarily active-tier products.","Whether dependency, ownership, provenance, and retention metadata are complete enough to classify products safely.","Whether reversible cold-tier migration produces meaningful active-tier savings while meeting agreed restore-fidelity and retrieval-delay requirements.","Whether users actually select superseded products under the current discovery interface and whether authority relabeling reduces that error.","Whether existing observatory practices already provide materially equivalent lifecycle governance.","Whether archive leadership, data-producing collaborations, and affected rights holders accept the proposed authority and dispute process."],"next_evidence_step":"On one completed, non-proprietary product family, predeclare authority, dependency, restoration-fidelity, retrieval-delay, footprint, and dispute criteria; inventory and dry-run classify every product; compare current-practice labels and active-tier placement with the proposed classification in an offline discovery exercise; then reversibly migrate only independently reviewed redundant or reproducible copies and run restore tests. Stop and treat the intervention as falsified for that family if it yields no meaningful footprint or stale-selection improvement, or causes any restore failure, provenance mismatch, delay beyond the agreed threshold, unresolved dependency, or disputed disposition.","research_questions":["What fraction of a representative inventory is superseded, ambiguously authoritative, redundant, reconstructible, dependency-critical, or uniquely valuable?","Which metadata fields and review procedures are sufficient to establish authority, dependencies, ownership, holds, and reconstruction requirements?","What class-specific thresholds for retrieval delay, restore fidelity, quarantine duration, and active-tier reduction are scientifically acceptable?","How does the proposed process compare with current practice on stale-product selection, storage footprint, staff effort, provenance integrity, and restoration outcomes?","Which existing observatory retention, provenance, tiering, supersession, and reproducibility practices overlap with the proposed mechanism?","Which governance participants have final authority over contested preservation value, publication dependencies, proprietary rights, and rollback decisions?"],"recommendation":"VALIDATE_PROBLEM_FIRST","uncertainty_constraints":["The problem, evidence maturity, and causal benefits are explicitly hypotheses.","No external evidence establishes prevalence, stakeholder demand, archive-wide burden, or realized impact.","Prior art is unsearched, so novelty and comparative distinctiveness cannot be inferred.","Archive scale, metadata quality, storage economics, retrieval demand, and integration effort are unspecified.","Old astronomical products may gain value over time; age or inactivity cannot serve as a proxy for disposability.","Cost bands are resource-equivalent planning ranges based on a one-observatory assumption, not measured estimates."],"closed_book_prior_art_boundary":"No claim is made that the mechanism is novel, uncommon, or absent from astronomy archives. The sealed packet marks prior art as unsearched and provides no external evidence about retention policies, provenance systems, storage tiering, supersession labeling, restoration testing, adoption prevalence, market size, or realized outcomes."}