{"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__earth_sciences","archetype_slug":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management","domain_slug":"earth_sciences","title":"Evidence-weighted lifecycle tiering for geoscience sample archives","opportunity_summary":"Test whether a persistent lifecycle catalog, dependency gates, quarantine, restore drills, and periodic revalidation can reduce active-storage and retrieval burdens relative to a one-time expert shelf review without compromising sample integrity, rights, provenance, or reconstructability. The unmanaged population and comparative benefit remain hypotheses.","adopter_authorizer":"An authorized geological repository collections committee or accountable curator, subject to ownership, donor agreements, regulatory obligations, safety requirements, and rights-holder constraints.","scores":{"meaningful_impact":{"score":3,"rationale":"Preserving reconstructable Earth-science evidence while reducing active-space and retrieval burdens would be consequential, but the packet contains no measured burden, unmanaged population, or evidence-loss frequency."},"stakeholder_pull":{"score":2,"rationale":"Repository staff, researchers, donors, regulators, and rights-holders are identified, but the sealed candidate provides no observed requests, commitments, budget signals, or demonstrated dissatisfaction with current practice."},"incremental_advantage":{"score":3,"rationale":"The persistent catalog, dependency checks, restore drills, and revalidation loop offer a testable increment over the stated one-time expert review, but no comparative outcomes establish that the added process improves retrieval, space use, or error rates."},"distinctiveness_plausibility":{"score":3,"rationale":"The mechanism composition is specifically differentiated from the named rival, but prior art is explicitly unsearched, so distinctiveness beyond that local comparison is unresolved."},"technical_implementability":{"score":4,"rationale":"A non-destructive shadow workflow using inventory reconciliation, review rules, tags, dependency tracing, and restore testing appears implementable with ordinary repository and data-stewardship capabilities, although incomplete identities and dependencies may materially impede it."},"adoption_authority_feasibility":{"score":4,"rationale":"The accountable curator or collections committee is explicitly identified and the pilot respects its authority, but ownership, agreements, holds, hazardous-material rules, and external rights may fragment authority for later disposition."},"evidence_readiness":{"score":4,"rationale":"The candidate specifies an eight-week, 300-accession shadow pilot, a nearest-rival comparison, failure conditions, falsifiers, exclusions, and rollback conditions. Readiness is reduced by missing outcome procedures, acceptance thresholds, error ceilings, and dependency-coverage requirements."},"safety_net_benefit":{"score":5,"rationale":"Quarantine, tombstones, restore drills, exception and authority gates, unchanged original locations, explicit halt conditions, and a ban on irreversible pilot actions directly address the proposal's principal evidence-loss risks."},"scalability":{"score":3,"rationale":"The lifecycle structure could be reused across collections, but identity reconciliation, specialist review, dependency tracing, rights resolution, sample-specific handling, and heterogeneous catalog quality may remain labor-intensive at scale."}},"score_confidence":"LOW","costs":{"first_evidence":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Design, execute, independently check, and report the eight-week shadow pilot on 300 accessions from one closed program, including identity reconciliation, dependency tracing, rival comparison, stratified restore testing, and preregistration.","confidence":"MODERATE","assumptions":["No samples are moved, consolidated, or destroyed.","Existing catalog and storage access are available.","The work requires curator, data-steward, specialist, evaluation, and limited legal or safety review labor.","No major new software platform or laboratory testing is required."]},"initial_deployment_startup":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Establish governance rules, lifecycle definitions, exception procedures, catalog fields, permissions, audit records, training, and limited integration for one repository after favorable evidence.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The repository can extend an existing collection-management system.","Ownership and retention rules are mostly documentable.","The scope excludes wholesale backlog reconciliation, construction, and irreversible disposition.","Security controls can build on existing infrastructure."]},"operational_launch":{"band_2026_usd":"250K_TO_1M","scope":"Launch the governed workflow over a defined initial repository tranche, including inventory reconciliation, specialist review, dependency remediation, reversible tiering, storage coordination, restore exercises, and launch evaluation.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Launch is limited to one repository and a bounded initial collection tranche.","Existing controlled storage remains usable.","Material handling does not require extensive new hazardous-material facilities.","All irreversible actions remain outside scope pending separate authorization and evidence."]},"annual_recurring":{"band_2026_usd":"250K_TO_1M","scope":"Operate lifecycle review, catalog maintenance, exception handling, periodic revalidation, access support, restore drills, audit reporting, software support, and any reversible storage-tier logistics for one repository.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["A continuing multidisciplinary stewardship team is required.","Review volume and archive size are moderate but unspecified.","Remote or lower-tier storage costs are included when used.","Major facility expansion and destructive disposition programs are excluded."]}},"research_burden":"HIGH","earliest_credible_horizon":"3_TO_12_MONTHS","pipeline_gates":{"recognizable_externally_supportable_problem":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The tension between indefinite active retention and unsafe removal is coherent and falsifiable, but the packet provides no empirical audit showing a meaningful unmanaged population, capacity burden, retrieval penalty, stale-context risk, or unsafe disposition history."},"identifiable_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"YES","reason":"The repository's authorized collections committee or accountable curator is explicitly designated, with applicable ownership, agreement, regulatory, and safety limits."},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"YES","reason":"The proposal can test persistent lifecycle cataloging, dependency gates, restore drills, and revalidation against the specified one-time expert shelf review on retrieval, simulated space, integrity, and classification-error outcomes."},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"YES","reason":"An eight-week shadow pilot on 300 accessions from one closed program is bounded, non-destructive, reversible, and includes comparison and falsification conditions."},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"YES","reason":"For the shadow pilot, originals remain in place, prohibited actions and halt conditions are explicit, and accountable authority is named. This does not establish authority for later physical disposition."},"implementation_cost_scope_and_range":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The pilot is operationally bounded enough for a broad resource band, but archive scale, catalog condition, specialist effort, storage logistics, system integration, hazards, and rights complexity prevent a supportable full-implementation range from the sealed packet alone."}},"blocking_evidence":["A representative, independently checked estimate of unresolved identities, unmanaged retention, capacity burden, retrieval penalty, stale context, and unsafe ad hoc disposition.","Preregistered comparative results showing whether lifecycle tiering improves simulated space or retrieval outcomes over one-time expert review without excessive protected, unique, or soon-requested-accession errors.","Evidence that dependency coverage and reviewer agreement meet predefined thresholds and that stratified restore tests preserve required integrity and reconstructability.","Documented ownership, retention, hazard, disclosure, and rights constraints sufficient to determine which lifecycle transitions could ever be authorized.","Prior-art research establishing whether the proposed composition materially differs from existing geoscience repository or analogous archival workflows."],"next_evidence_step":"Preregister and run the authorized eight-week shadow pilot on a representative, independently checked sample of 300 accessions from one closed program. Compare the persistent lifecycle workflow with a one-time expert shelf review using predefined identity-resolution, reviewer-agreement, dependency-coverage, retrieval, simulated-space, protected-item error, and restore-success criteria. Move or destroy nothing; falsify the problem if the audit finds no meaningful unmanaged burden, and reject the intervention if it provides no material comparative improvement or breaches the error or restore ceilings.","research_questions":["What proportion of the sampled accessions has unresolved identity, condition, ownership, dependencies, demand history, or retention requirements?","Do unmanaged accessions create a measurable active-capacity, retrieval, stewardship, or stale-context burden?","What minimum dependency coverage, reviewer agreement, and restore success are required before a lifecycle state is usable?","How does the persistent workflow perform against one-time expert review on retrieval, simulated space, review effort, and protected-item errors?","Which ownership, donor, regulatory, hazardous-material, publication, provenance, or community constraints prohibit particular transitions?","How often would the process flag unique, obscure, protected, or soon-requested material, and can exceptions reliably catch those cases?","What existing repository or archival practices overlap with the proposed workflow, and what incremental claim remains after prior-art review?","How sensitive are resource requirements to archive size, metadata quality, specialist availability, system integration, and storage logistics?"],"recommendation":"VALIDATE_PROBLEM_FIRST","uncertainty_constraints":["The assessment is closed-book and uses no external evidence.","Problem prevalence, burden magnitude, stakeholder demand, and realized impact are unmeasured.","World novelty and relevant prior art are unmeasured.","The nearest rival is asserted by the candidate rather than empirically established as ordinary practice.","Pilot outcome definitions and quantitative acceptance thresholds have not been preregistered.","Deployment costs depend heavily on unspecified archive scale, catalog quality, hazards, rights complexity, staffing, and storage infrastructure.","Old or rarely accessed geological material may acquire future value, limiting the validity of staleness as a proxy for expendability.","The selected cost bands are assumption-dependent resource-equivalent ranges, not observed prices or point estimates."],"closed_book_prior_art_boundary":"The packet explicitly labels prior art as unsearched and supplies no external repository guidance, comparable implementations, prevalence data, market evidence, or adoption results. This assessment therefore makes no claim about novelty, commonness, market size, or realized impact; distinctiveness is evaluated only against the candidate's stated nearest rival."}