NOAA's Comprehensive Large Array-data Stewardship System (CLASS) provides the information technology (IT) infrastructure to support the long-term, secure storage of and access to NOAA's archived environmental datasets, preservation information, and metadata for indefinite periods. It is based upon a focused effort to ensure the Information Technology (IT) infrastructure is in place and working before the arrival of significantly larger and more complex environmental data (e.g., NPP/NPOESS and GOES-R). NOAA has directed that both legacy and emerging environmental observing systems requiring the long-term archive of data and information will use CLASS.

Adoption of standards is critical to CLASS's success, and CLASS is working with NOAA's Global Earth Observation Integrated Data Environment (GEO-IDE) project to identify standards that will ensure CLASS's interoperability with other NOAA systems and holdings. As the IT solution supporting NOAA's archive, CLASS will apply emerging standards of the GEO-IDE, as they are identified, to integrate both with NOAA's non-archival systems as well as with legacy archive systems not migrated to CLASS.

CLASS, as an evolving system, will continue to provide secure storage and access to environmental datasets while further adhering to the principles of the International Standards Organization's Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model. The ISO standard OAIS-RM provides a conceptual framework that describes the responsibilities and activities of organizations attempting to preserve digital information.