Global seed vault
In picture: One of the newly arrived boxes containing seeds from Japan and the US is carried into the international gene bank Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV) outside Longyearbyen on Spitsbergen, Norway, on March 1, 2016. [Representational image]Reuters File Photo

Close to a decade after the world got the Svalbard Global Seed Vault — where seeds of every possible plant in the world is stored, in case a "Doomsday" wipes out all vegetation— we are getting an archive of possibly all the data in the world, in what is being dubbed the Doomsday data vault. 

Also read: Doomsday: This is how human race on Earth will be destroyed

Piql, the company developing the vault, says of the repository: "The Arctic World Archive [the official name of the vault] is an offline data vault that ensures the most sensitive and irreplaceable data to be protected for the future. Located in a disaster-proof vault, the information is kept in permafrost conditions far away from political and physical instabilities in the rest of the world."

The data will be "securely preserved" for more than 1,000 years on "piqlFilm" — which has been developbed by Piql itself. The data will be "protected by permafrost in a nuclear and EMP-safe
vault deep inside a closed mine," Piql has said. It added that the vault will have a "redundant high-speed data connection to mainland Norway and further to clients in the world for authorised access."

The national archives of Brazil and Mexico have already come on board with the project, which will be built inside an abandoned coal mine in Norway, and more nations are expected to follow suit to ensure that their culture is preserved in a vault in case of a doomsday event.

It may be noted that the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, near which the data depository is proposed to be built, houses some of the most important crop seeds in the world, and protects them from all outside influence. The Arctic World Archive is expected to be built on the same lines. 

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