[tdwg-content] data provenance; was Re: Updated TDWG BioBlitz RDF Example with Pivot View and Data Browsing

Peter DeVries pete.devries at gmail.com
Sun Feb 27 01:04:38 CET 2011


Hi Bob,

Yes an estimate of the precision / extent should be recorded by the original
observer.

This has been repeated several times and it is interesting that even TDWG
did not incorporate this into their data collection.

What I was proposing was a specific extension to the ietf proposal for
occurrence records.

It adds something very similar to pointRadiusSpatialFit to a latitude and
longitude.

By standardizing on the significant digits we gain something even before
there is general software support for this standard.

That records with "geo:41.53000000,-70.67000000;u=100" are an equivalent
URN, while.

 "geo:41.53000000,-70.67000000;u=100" and "geo:41.53,-70.67;u=100" are not

That allows those records to be linked within a triple or quadstore.

As in this earlier example:

    Here is a browsable view of one of the areas bit.ly
http://bit.ly/hBtVFL


http://lsd.taxonconcept.org/describe/?url=geo:41.53000000,-70.67000000;u%3D100

Without doing anything other than standardizing on the number of digits,
occurrences attached to the same GPS reading are linked in both a triple
store and a google search.

Where as software needs to be written that interprets
"geo:41.53000000,-70.67000000;u=100"
and "geo:41.53,-70.67;u=100" as equivalent.

Try Googling "geo:44.86294500,-87.23120400;u=10"

If the ietf.org standard is supported in future versions of Virtuoso and
other tools then we would not need to include the redundant use of geo:lat
geo:long for the dynamic maps.

- Pete


On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Bob Morris <morris.bob at gmail.com> wrote:

> Your arguably reasonable recoding of the geo uri's of your example
> illustrates an issue on which so much metadata is silent: provenance. Once
> exposed, it is probably impossible for someone to know how the uncertainty
> (or any other data that might be the subject of opinion or estimate) was
> determined and whether the data is fit for some particular purpose, e.g.
> that the species were observed near each other.
>
> BTW, the IETF geo proposal was adopted in 2010, in the final form given at
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5870 . One interesting point is
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5870#section-3.4.3 which says
>   "Note: The number of digits of the values in <coordinates> MUST NOT beinterpreted as an indication to the level of uncertainty." The section
> following is also interesting, albeit irrelevant for your procedure. It
> implies that when uncertainty is omitted (and therefore unknown), then "geo:41.53000000,-70.67000000"
>  and "geo:41.53,-70.67"  identify  the same geo resource.
>
>
> Bob Morris
>
> On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 4:56 PM, Peter DeVries <pete.devries at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> 5) I added in my proposed "area" so that it is easy to see what species
>> were observed near each other. Since there was no measure of radius in these
>> longitude and latitudes I made the radius 100 meters.
>>     Normally I would estimate the radius for a GPS reading to be within 10
>> meters but some of these observations were made where the GPS reading was
>> taken and the readings were given only to two decimals.
>>
>> Area = long, lat; radius in meters following the ietf proposal but with
>> the precision of the long and lat standardized
>> example "geo:41.53000000,-70.67000000;u=100"
>>
>> [...]
>>
> --
> Robert A. Morris
> Emeritus Professor  of Computer Science
> UMASS-Boston
> 100 Morrissey Blvd
> Boston, MA 02125-3390
> Associate, Harvard University Herbaria
> email: morris.bob at gmail.com
> web: http://efg.cs.umb.edu/
> web: http://etaxonomy.org/mw/FilteredPush
> http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram
> phone (+1) 857 222 7992 (mobile)
>
>


-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
Pete DeVries
Department of Entomology
University of Wisconsin - Madison
445 Russell Laboratories
1630 Linden Drive
Madison, WI 53706
TaxonConcept Knowledge Base <http://www.taxonconcept.org/> / GeoSpecies
Knowledge Base <http://lod.geospecies.org/>
About the GeoSpecies Knowledge Base <http://about.geospecies.org/>
------------------------------------------------------------
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