Hi Nan,
Just to clarify I maintain two gazetteer-type vocabularies.
http://vocab.nerc.ac.uk/collection/C19 for fresh and saltwater bodies under SeaVoX governance (supersedes C16 so forget that if you see it) and
http://vocab.nerc.ac.uk/collection/C38 for valid cruise landing points (mostly ports) under SeaDataNet governance. I also serve out the ISO3166-1 list for valid (political) country names. The GCMD resource looks quite useful, but is quite limited in its coverage of sea areas and doesn't seem to match IHO. There are also resources such as the GEBCO undersea feature names maintained by SCUFN and a well-supported resource from Flanders Marine Data centre (VLIZ) that has C19 plus much more.
I think the overall conclusion from this is that there unlikely to ever be one resource that satisfies every need of every community and as you say CF shouldn't end up trying to build one. This leads to the approach of allowing attribute population from any resource providing the resource used is referenced (particularly important for resources that deliver geometries!).
However, in the case of CMIP5 I doubt if any published resource will fulfil their requirements because the spatial objects are sections defined by the project, which are unlikely to be included in any resource originating outside the project. Therefore they need their own project-specific resource and I can't see any alternative to this being governed and served by CF.
Cheers, Roy.
From: cf-metadata-bounces at cgd.ucar.edu [mailto:cf-metadata-bounces at cgd.ucar.edu] On Behalf Of Nan Galbraith
Sent: 12 January 2012 15:15
To: cf-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu
Subject: Re: [CF-metadata] Request for a region standard_name
Hi All -
Maintaining a gazetteer seems a little outside the scope of CF -
wouldn't it be preferable to require (or at least allow) an attribute
for the "region" variable pointing to an external vocabulary?
char geo_region(lbl,strlen) ;
geo_region:standard_name="region" ;
geo_region:vocabulary_name="GCMD Location Keywords" ;
I thought SeaDataNet might have a good candidate for this, but a
quick search on the NERC vocab server makes me think that they've
separated out sea and land area names, and that would clearly cause
problems for some types of data.
So, as far as I know, GCMD has the only (well publicized) set of terms
that includes water bodies as well as land areas.
The GCMD list seems to have been updated this past October; it is available
at gcmd.nasa.gov/Resources/valids/archives/keyword_list.html
Cheers - Nan
On Jan/11/2012 8:36 PM, Karl Taylor wrote:
Dear Alison and all,
I have not objection to adding the region. I also favor the Standard Names Committee (and you) be responsible for the region names. Finally, I would ask the committee to consider adding any CMIP5 region identifiers to the official list, unless of course those names seem inappropriate.
thanks,
Karl
On 1/11/12 7:00 AM, alison.pamment at stfc.ac.uk<mailto:alison.pamment at stfc.ac.uk> wrote:
Dear Jonathan,
In September Jim Biard requested a standardized region name for the contiguous United States. Several people commented and there was general agreement that contiguous_united_states would be a suitable string to add to the list of region names.
Before I proceed, however, I note that the file on the CF website which contains the region names also contains the following introductory text:
"This list was based on the NASA GCMD keyword list for locations which was valid on 12 December 2002. We retained only the names of geographical regions from the GCMD list, changing them to lower case and replacing the separators within the names by underscores to be consistent with the style used for CF standard names. We excluded (a) countries (these could be added if required), (b) regions that could be specified by coordinate ranges in CF (e.g. western hemisphere), (c) ill-defined regions (e.g. west Africa), (d) names for layers and surfaces of the Earth (e.g. mantle, sea floor), which are or would be included in standard names if required. We have also added names shown like this. Our intention is to keep this list consistent with GCMD."
I wonder if this list has ever been updated since December 2002 (I certainly haven't made any changes). Does the list need to be reviewed? Also, strictly speaking, the region list is separate from the standard name table, so do we want it to be maintained along with standard names (I'm happy to keep it up to date if the answer is 'yes') or should it be regarded as the domain of the conventions committee? I'd appreciate it if we can clarify who should be maintaining the list before I go ahead and start making modifications. I think there may be some CMIP5 related region names that are also not currently part of the list.
Best wishes,
Alison
------
Alison Pamment Tel: +44 1235 778065
NCAS/British Atmospheric Data Centre Email: alison.pamment at stfc.ac.uk<mailto:alison.pamment at stfc.ac.uk>
STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
R25, 2.22
Harwell Oxford, Didcot, OX11 0QX, U.K.
-----Original Message-----
From: cf-metadata-bounces at cgd.ucar.edu<mailto:cf-metadata-bounces at cgd.ucar.edu> [mailto:cf-metadata-
bounces at cgd.ucar.edu<mailto:bounces at cgd.ucar.edu>] On Behalf Of Jonathan Gregory
Sent: 16 September 2011 16:55
To: cf-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu<mailto:cf-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu>
Subject: Re: [CF-metadata] Request for a region standard_name
Dear Jim
Following Don's comment, if you'd be happy with a standard region name
of
contiguous_united_states, and since no-one else has objected, I think
we
should agree to that. (We can omit of_america; I would expect people to
know
where the united_kingdom is without
of_great_britain_and_northern_ireland!)
I expect Alison will comment and/or add it to the table when she is
able to.
Cheers
Jonathan
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