Dear Ken,
Can you expand on the distinction between "quality" and "status"? I understand that they are different in principle, but, in order to support this new standard name I think we need a clear objective statement of how we would want to distinguish between them in CF.
The conventions section on flags (3.5) mixes the two up (
http://cfconventions.org/cf-conventions/cf-conventions.html#flags ), so some re-wording of the document would also be needed,
regards,
Martin
________________________________
From: CF-metadata <cf-metadata-bounces at cgd.ucar.edu> on behalf of Kehoe, Kenneth E. <kkehoe at ou.edu>
Sent: 19 July 2019 06:42
To: cf-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu
Subject: [CF-metadata] New standard_name of quality_flag for corresponding quality control variables
Dear CF,
I am proposing a new standard name of "quality_flag" to indicate a variable is purely a quality control variable. A quality control variable would use flag_values or flag_masks along with flag_meanings to allow declaring levels of quality or results from quality indicating tests of the data variable. This variable be a subset of the more general "status_flag" standard name. Currently the definition of "status_flag" is:
- A variable with the standard name of status_flag contains an indication of quality or other status of another data variable. The linkage between the data variable and the variable with the standard_name of status_flag is achieved using the ancillary_variables attribute.
This definition includes a variable used to define the state or other status information of a variable and can not be distinguished by standard name alone from a state of the instrument, processing decision, source information, needed metadata about the data variable or other ancillary variable type. Since there is no other way to define a purely quality control variable, the use of "status_flag" is too general for strictly quality control variables. By having a method to define a variable as strictly quality control the results of quality control tests can be applied to the data with a software tool based on requests by the user. This would not affect current datasets that do use "status_flag" nor require a change to the definition outside of the indication that "quality_flag" standard name is available and a better use for pure quality control variables.
Proposed addition:
quality_flag = A variable with the standard name of quality_flag contains an indication of quality information of another data variable. The linkage between the data variable and the variable or variables with the standard_name of quality_flag is achieved using the ancillary_variables attribute.
Proposed change:
status_flag = A variable with the standard name of status_flag contains an indication of status of another data variable. The linkage between the data variable and the variable with the standard_name of status_flag is achieved using the ancillary_variables attribute. For data quality information use quality_flag.
Thanks,
Ken
--
Kenneth E. Kehoe
Research Associate - University of Oklahoma
Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies
ARM Climate Research Facility - Data Quality Office
e-mail: kkehoe at ou.edu<mailto:kkehoe at ou.edu> | Office: 303-497-4754
Received on Mon Jul 22 2019 - 02:57:09 BST
