The Solar Environmental Data Network is operated jointly by the Materials and Construction Research Division, Building and Fire Research Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, MD, the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC), Edgewater, MD, the US Department of Agriculture, UV-B Monitoring Program, Ft. Collins, CO and the US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory, Madison, WI.  A data center has been established at NIST for the purpose of coordinating the acquisition, processing, and distribution of environmental data, and to conduct research on new methods for accelerated aging methodologies, and prediction models for predicting the service life of building materials.  The NIST, Standard Reference Data Program has provided funding support for the data center since its creation in 1996.  Currently, there are four exposure sites instrumented with the SR18 Spectroradiometer.  The SR18 instrument is a 18 channel scanning radiometer, collecting solar UVB data in the 290-324nm range.

    The primary objectives of this Internet site include the maintenance of an on-line resource for enabling the coatings service life community to characterize outdoor exposure sites and to query and analyze quantitative data sets.  UV radiation plays a role in the degradation of all polymeric materials including construction materials, like asphalt, paint, plastic, polymeric composites, sealants, and textiles, and biological systems.  UV radiation is known to be an agent in melanoma and non-melanoma cancers, cataracts, and sunburn; acts as a germicide, fungicide, and batericide in agriculture and biological systems; and plays an important role in atmospheric photochemistry.  The data requirements for most of these applications are similar, and, for this reason, a solar spectral UV database is important for meeting the needs of the scientific community.