[CF-metadata] physical vs dimensional units

From: John Caron <caron>
Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2011 06:59:44 -0600

udunits is a "dimensional units" library, for manipulating powers of the
fundamental dimensions (length, mass, time, charge, temperature). this
is necessary but not complete for capturing the meaning of the "physical
units" of our data.

We also need units like kg/kg, for which the udunit canonical string is
the empty string. But even more difficult is "atoms CO2 / atoms air" or
"grams CO2 / grams air", or "count of phytoplankton".

the simple thing is to just introduce another attribute "unit labels"
(or something) for this, to be displayed to the user. but such an
"opaque string" limits the amount of automatic inferencing that can be
done. better would be a grammar from which both the dimensional units
and the "substance we are talking about" can be understood.

also, all of our space/time units arent dimensional units, they are all
referenced to a datum. we include the datum in the udunit string for
time, but not for vertical or horizontal coordinates. thats not a
particular problem, but it does point out that these units are not the
same as dimensional units. we need to include the datum in the "physical
units" representation, which could be one string or several strings .

what are other solutions that are being used for "physical units"? Im
wondering how Roy Lowry's software deals with this? Or the MMI or SWEET
ontologies , etc? Is there something nice and compact like udunits
strings, but with more semantics, without getting into the complexity of
RDF triples?
Received on Thu Mar 31 2011 - 06:59:44 BST