Throughout the world a staggering amount of resources have been used to obtain billions of environmental data points. Some, such as meteorological data, have been organized for weather map display where many thousands of data points are synthesized in one compressed map. Most environmental data, however, are still widely scattered and generally not used for a systems approach, but only for the purpose for which they were originally taken. These data are contained in relatively small computer programs, research files, government and industrial reports, etc. This Conference was called to bring together some of the world's leaders from research centers and government agencies, and others concerned with environmental data management. The purpose of the Conference was to organize discussion on the scope of world environmental data, its present form and documentation, and whether a systematic approach to a total system is feasible now or in the future. This same subject permeated indirectly the Stockholm Conference on the environment, where, although no single recommendation came forth suggesting a consolidated environmental data pool, bank or network, each recommendation indicated that substantial environmental data needed to be obtained or needed to be pooled and analyzed from existing data sources.

The DOE/DOD Environmental Data Bank was established in 1959 as a central location for storing weapons and equipment environments information from a variety of DOE, DoD, and industrial sources and continues to be maintained by Sandia National Laboratories. The Data Bank contains approximately 3,000 documents regarding normal and abnormal environments that describe handling, storage, transportation, use, and general phases, which occur during the life of a system. This paper describes the DOE/DOD Environmental Data Bank system, its structure, data sources, usage, and progress in converting it from a microfilm database to an electronic database.