On 8/27/11 5:10 AM, Lowry, Roy K. wrote:
> I would suggest some fine tuning of this to:
>
> platform_name
> platform_id (note this needs to be alphanumeric to support ICES ship codes widely used in oceanography)
> platform_id_authority (mandatory if platform_id present)
> platform_description
>
> I wonder if the concept of authority is relevant to names - who is the authority for a ship's name? Even if relevant, there is no guarantee that the authority will be the same as the platfom_id and somebody will want to include both a name and an id. If people feel that a name authority is required then I would label it platform_name_authority rather than having one name doing two jobs.
Agreed - multiple authorities are needed. Our buoys have a
platform_name conferred by OceanSITES and, usually, a WMO
platform_id as well.
Naming_authority seems to me to be especially important for ships'
names; the 'authority' could be any body that maintains, or, preferably
serves, a list of these names in a standard form. That would enable us
to e.g. equivalence R.V. Ronald H. Brown and brown.
Do we need to specify whether the _id is numeric or character? I'd prefer
to leave that to the user and his code.
> The nature of the platform dscription merits a little discussion. Controlled terms, particularly if accompanied by definitions, are always much more helpful than plaintext. There is an internationally-governed platform type vocabulary used in the SeaDataNet and ICES systems (http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/list/L06). There is also at least one relevant WMO vocabulary (VOS types).
This is another good resource; thanks, Roy.
> If formalisation of the description is agreed then we could either keep 'platform_description' for plaintext and add 'platform_type' plus 'platform_type_authority' or standardise 'platform_description' by adding 'platform_description_authority'.
>
> Finally, I think we need to agree how an authority is represented. My choice would be a namespace URL, but maybe there are other ideas.
I'd have thought something like 'WMO' or SeaDataNet would be enough,
but ... maybe not. We really don't want to get into needing to use a
platform_id_authority_authority.
On the other hand, if it's got to be a namespace URL, I sincerely hope
it's allowed to, or required to, be human-readable. It won't go well if
my platform_id is 372224 and my platform_id_authority is a url ending
in term/P00/4/41. My CF files are written by human-generated code,
and I like the CDL files to convey meaning to humans as well.
Maybe put the URL in yet another field, platform_id_authority_reference?
Cheers - Nan
> ________________________________________
> From: ...Jeffrey F. Painter [painter1 at llnl.gov]
> Sent: 27 August 2011 01:27
> To: cf-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu
> Subject: Re: [CF-metadata] standard names for stations
>
> It seems to me that we would need four standard_names to satisfy
> everyone's needs. How does this sound?
>
> platform_name: variable of character type containing a character ID or
> name of an observing station or other platform
> platform_id: variable of integer type, identifying an observing station
> or other platform
> platform_naming_authority: variable of character type, specifying the
> naming authority or system used to choose a platform_id or platform_name
> platform_description: variable of character_type which describes an
> observing station or other platform
>
> A typical station would have a platform_name or platform_id, but rarely
> both. The reason for having both is that I expect that the numerical
> WMO identifiers (of various lengths) will be used very frequently, and
> it can be helpful to represent numbers as numbers. But Eiji's message
> shows that we must allow for character identifiers. A relatively short
> character identifier would have a different function from the kind of
> long description suggested by ?ystein. The most common
> platform_naming_authority would be the originally conceived "WMO", of
> course.
>
> - Jeff
>
> On 8/26/11 12:36 AM, ?ystein God?y wrote:
>>> Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2011 16:26:55 -0700
>>> From: "Jeffrey F. Painter"<painter1 at llnl.gov>
>>> Subject: [CF-metadata] standard names for stations
>>> To: cf-metadata<cf-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu>
>>> Message-ID:<4E5588BF.2090003 at llnl.gov>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>>>
>>> The draft version 1.6 of the CF Conventions manual recommends use of
>> two
>>> standard names which don't exist yet but are needed to describe discrete
>>> data such as observations from stations or other discrete points. So
>>> I'd like to propose the following two standard names:
>>>
>>> - station_description : variable of character type containing a
>>> description of a time series station
>>> - wmo_platform_id : variable of integer type, containing the WMO
>>> identifier of an observing station or other platform
>>>
>>> - Jeff Painter
>> Hi,
>>
>> I clearly see the need for this.
>>
>> Concerning station_description, I think this is useful whether it is a time
>> series or not. There is a need to describe the actual location for the
>> station. E.g. describe the surface, horizon, and other aspects that may affect
>> the observations.
>>
>> Concerning wmo_platform_id, I think Nan Galbraiths suggestion using an id
>> and a naming authority is useful and more flexible than specifying a WMO
>> reference directly. Concerning my institution, all stations operated by us,
>> whether being WMO stations or not, always have an internal ID. Not all
>> stations have a WMO id. It may even be useful to be able to use multiple ids
>> for stations to cover situations like the one I mention.
>>
>> NACCD is good but it does not have the momentum that CF has. Many other
>> such discovery conventions for NetCDF files exist and are used, most of
>> course differing only slightly. I believe they will merge in time, but for now
>> I think NACDD is less used than CF. I certainly agree it should be promoted
>> (and we will probably move towards it), but these things take time.
>>
>> Thus I would prefer put as much information as possible as CF-compliant
>> variables in the dataset, even if it means duplicating them as global
>> attributes for discovery purposes.
>>
>> All the best
>> ?ystein
>
--
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* Nan Galbraith (508) 289-2444 *
* Upper Ocean Processes Group Mail Stop 29 *
* Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution *
* Woods Hole, MA 02543 *
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Received on Mon Aug 29 2011 - 07:52:40 BST
