[tdwg-content] dwc: city to county

"Markus Döring (GBIF)" mdoering at gbif.org
Wed Aug 26 15:41:55 CEST 2009


>>> Darwin Core is able to transmit Gazetteer IDs for the kind of  
>>> objects
>>> you are talking about (generally called "features" or "named  
>>> places")
>>> that are present in gazetteers. Not only that, gazetteers can have
>>> detailed information (georeferences with uncertainties) about places
>>> with complex descriptions as well as simple named places. BioGeoBIF
>>> does this, and a Locality service I have long wanted to build has
>>> exactly this intention. What Darwin Core can't do is give a  
>>> gazetteer
>>> id for some part of the Location, only for the whole. In other  
>>> words,
>>> it can't do what you want it to do. I don't think Darwin Core  
>>> should.
>>> I think the far better solution is to use universal terms - the
>>> spatial data - for the use case you are proposing.
>>
>> There is a big difference between city being S. Francisco and the
>> location being detail inside of it, and city being S. Francisco and
>> the location being 200 km S of it.
>
> Yes, I agree. They are very different. Assuming there was a "city"
> term in DwC, I would not want someone to put San Francisco as the city
> if the Location was outside of the city. In other words, no geographic
> term is to be used to represent a "nearest named place", instead, they
> are to be used only to designate containment of the specific place.
>
>> So for the use case where the the detailed location is inside the
>> boundaries defined by a gazeetter ID, I am still assuming that DWC  
>> can
>> transmit the data ONLY if no more detailed data are given. Or this a
>> misunderstanding?
>
> You understand correctly. Darwin Core can transmit all of the detail
> about the place, no matter how specific, but it cannot transmit any
> gazetteer id that does not correspond to the whole Location in all its
> detail.

Would it hurt to put the gazateer ID into a higher geographic term?

for the county of san francisco:
dwc:county=TGN:1002859

for the city one could use the locality is there is no finer  
description of the exact place:
dwc:locality=tgn: 7014456


Remarkably the getty thesaurus also uses similar terms for the  
geographic hierarchy:
http://www.getty.edu/vow/TGNFullDisplay?find=san+francisco&place=city&nation=&prev_page=1&english=Y&subjectid=7014456
   North and Central America (continent)
   United States (nation)
   California (state)
   San Francisco (county)
   San Francisco (inhabited place)

Well, for a German town this is slightly different:
   Europe (continent)
   Germany (nation)
   Lower Saxony (state)
   Hannover (national district)
   Holzminden (inhabited place)



If all it takes is to add a dwc:city or dwc:inhabitedPlace term, I  
think I would second that.

Alternatively the most relevant bit apart from the locationID and  
exact locality is the next higher region that contains the exact  
location - no matter what rank.
Something like a dwc:namedArea


Markus








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