Hi John
Thanks for this!
I promised to write something similar myself ... and have failed miserably.
(Actually, I've been failing miserably on a number of promises lately ...
many of you will know why :-) ...
... so I'm especially glad you've done this. Further, I think you've written
is very similar to what I would have written but in about half the text ...
(so everyone should thank you :-)
Your suggestions for governance are precisely what I think we should do, and
as Jonathan says in follow-up, what we need are some dedicated folk to work
on it ... more on this when I can.
Cheers,
Bryan
On Thursday 26 May 2005 23:01, John Caron wrote:
> Since I am not able to come to the GO-ESSP meeting to discuss these
> issues in person, I wanted to lay out my thoughts about where CF could
> go in the future. These are personal opininions, and not in any way
> official Unidata positions.
>
> We (Unidata) have been pushing CF as the recommended way to write
> gridded files to anyone who asks. We have had a lot of success,
> including with ESRI who are working on reading CF compliant netdf files
> into ArcView. CF has really done a great job of clarifying the semantics
> of data. In my view, the current edges of CF that need work are:
>
> 1. staggered grids, eg as output by the WRF model.
> 2. need to specify very detailed info as used by GIS, for example,
> ellipsoids and datums etc.
> 3. ongoing need to add new projections and vertical coordinate types
> 4. ongoing need to develop standard names and hook these into other
> ontologies
>
> My primary concern is creating a process for evolving CF, what Bryan
> called "governance". I would like to see a formal decision making group
> be identified, with super-majority but not necessarily unanimous consent
> required. I would also like to have ad-hoc subgroups form to work on
> special topics, for example "Regional/local models" and "GIS". These
> subgroups would work out a concrete recommendation, then submit to the
> entire group for feedback and eventually a decision by the governance
> group.
>
> Another issue that has recently come up: CF has a small section about
> both Station and Trajectory data, that is good as far as it goes, but
> needs more semantics to be complete. I would recommend that CF restrict
> itself to gridded data, and withdraw the Station and Trajectory data
> sections. However, if there is enough interest, i would recommend
> forming a subgroup that would finish specifying it.
>
> There is also development at Unidata that effects CF, most notably the
> "coordinate system" object model, prototyped in the Netcdf-Java library
> (which we may also add to the Netcdf-4 library). This parses CF
> conventions (among others) and presents a unified coordinate system API
> to the user. We also are working on "scientific data type" APIs that so
> far include Grid, Point, Station, Trajectory and Radial data types. This
> work is not as far along as the coordinate systems, but as part of it we
> have been evolving our view of what makes good file formats in those cases.
>
> Whatever is decided, we will continue to support CF as an important
> semantic description of data. I appreciate all the time and intelligence
> this group continues to provide.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> CF-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu
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--
Bryan Lawrence
Head, NCAS/British Atmospheric Data Centre
Director, CCLRC/Environmental Data Archival and Associated Research
badc.nerc.ac.uk, home.badc.rl.ac.uk/lawrence, +44 1235 445012
(CCLRC, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, OX11 0QX)
Received on Fri May 27 2005 - 02:36:20 BST
