[tdwg-content] Easting and northing
Quentin Groom
quentin.groom at br.fgov.be
Tue Feb 10 10:59:03 CET 2015
Here is an example of DwC where I think I'm correct, but GBIF considered
my verbatim data "suspicious". Plant recording in Britain is conducted
in grid squares of the Ordanace Survey. Those coordinates have a very
specific notation so that my verbatimCoordinatesare some thing like this
NZ3767 and my verbatimCoordinateSystem is OSGB36 (e.g.
http://www.gbif.org/occurrence/1020049283/verbatim). To me this is
correct usage of the verbatim fields. I do complete the decimal
longitude and latitude fields, based upon the centre of the square, but
as these are based on the point-radius view of observations they are
largely useless for real analysis.
To make my records internationally acceptable I also complete the
footprintWKT and footprintSRS, but although this is probably the best
description of the locality I'm fairly sure that nobody will actually
use it.
Quentin
Roderic Page wrote:
> Is it wrong that I’d be happier if Darwin Core itself had terms for
> easting, northing, and zones so there was no ambiguity (or at least it
> would be minimised). Putting stuff in text fields and hoping people
> can figure it out is just asking for trouble, as is overloading fields.
>
> If they do go into verbatimCoordinates, I wonder if the spec/examples
> could add a regular expression to they would have to pass in order to
> be accepted.
>
> Regards
>
> Rod
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> Roderic Page
> Professor of Taxonomy
> Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine
> College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences
> Graham Kerr Building
> University of Glasgow
> Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
>
> Email: Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk <mailto:Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk>
> Tel: +44 141 330 4778
> Skype: rdmpage
> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/rdmpage
> LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/rdmpage
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdmpage
> Blog: http://iphylo.blogspot.com
> ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7101-9767
> Citations:
> http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=4Z5WABAAAAAJ
> <http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=4Z5WABAAAAAJ>
> ResearchGate https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Roderic_Page
>
>
>> On 9 Feb 2015, at 17:03, Markus Döring <m.doering at mac.com
>> <mailto:m.doering at mac.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Rod & John,
>>
>> for the future documentation of dwc I’d be curious if we all think it
>> is a good idea to overload verbatimLongitude/Latitude with not
>> strictly lon/lat values like easting and northing.
>> I *think* I would prefer a definition, comment and examples where UTM
>> values go into the verbatimCoordinates field only, even though it
>> would be great to not have to parse them out from a string.
>>
>> Any strong opinions?
>>
>>
>> On 09 Feb 2015, at 17:25, Roderic Page <Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk
>> <mailto:Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi John,
>>>
>>> I guess my concern is that the TTU dataset in VertNet/GBIF didn’t
>>> explicitly say that the verbatimLatitude/Longitude were easting and
>>> northings (other values it has in those fields for other records are
>>> lats and longs), nor did it include the zone information, or the
>>> fact that the values were for south of the equator (TTU itself
>>> doesn’t say that either). I had to go back to the TTU web site to
>>> discover that.
>>>
>>> So, even if parsing is a mess (and I agree it pretty much always is)
>>> the TTU output didn’t have everything needed to figure out how to
>>> parse the data correctly. It would be nice if the data that gets to
>>> the aggregator is complete enough to be interepreted, leaving aside
>>> in what fields people stick that information.
>>>
>>> Regards
>>>
>>> Rod
>>>
>>> ---------------------------------------------------------
>>> Roderic Page
>>> Professor of Taxonomy
>>> Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine
>>> College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences
>>> Graham Kerr Building
>>> University of Glasgow
>>> Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
>>>
>>> Email: Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk <mailto:Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk>
>>> Tel: +44 141 330 4778
>>> Skype: rdmpage
>>> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/rdmpage
>>> LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/rdmpage
>>> Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdmpage
>>> Blog: http://iphylo.blogspot.com
>>> ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7101-9767
>>> Citations:
>>> http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=4Z5WABAAAAAJ
>>> <http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=4Z5WABAAAAAJ>
>>> ResearchGate https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Roderic_Page
>>>
>>>
>>>> On 9 Feb 2015, at 16:12, John Wieczorek <tuco at berkeley.edu
>>>> <mailto:tuco at berkeley.edu>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi Rod,
>>>>
>>>> I would treat easting and northing as latitude and longitude, but
>>>> not following strictly the definition in Darwin Core. There is
>>>> actually value in being able to have the easting (longitude)
>>>> separate from the northing (latitude) if the source has them
>>>> separated. It makes it that much less ambiguous to interpret. I
>>>> would also have that full tuple as in the example you gave (18M
>>>> 166624 9840350) along with "UTM" in verbatimCoordinateSystem, and a
>>>> datum or something similar in verbatimSRS. We want more
>>>> information, not less, when it comes time to try to turn this all
>>>> into more readily usable information (decimalLatitude,
>>>> decimalLongitude, geodeticDatum,
>>>> coordinateUncertaintyInMeters). All of this verbatim separation
>>>> arose from the heyday of massive collaborative georeferencing in
>>>> MaNIS, HerpNET, and ORNIS where we were able to take good advantage
>>>> of whatever information the source had, and that is why
>>>> verbatimCoordinateSystem is part of the offerings, to help with tha
>>>> parsing problem if the original source is known.
>>>>
>>>> In short, I wouldn't have it any other way than the way it is done
>>>> with TTU. It actually allows use to extract more information
>>>> correctly rather than less. Parsing is a mess, but it is a mess
>>>> anyway. It takes me about 25 steps to parse the variations I see in
>>>> verbatim coordinates in VertNet. but it is worth it.
>>>>
>>>> Now, to get back to TTU and upgrade their venerable migrator and
>>>> see how things look afterwords. We appreciate the careful eye and
>>>> the quality feedback reports to Github on TTU's behalf.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>>
>>>> John
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 8:50 AM, Roderic Page
>>>> <Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk <mailto:Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi Dag,
>>>>
>>>> Gack, this is where things get messy. I wouldn’t treat easting
>>>> and northing as latitude and longitude (although they are
>>>> obviously related). When I write code to parse verbatim
>>>> latitude and longitude the last thing I expect is easting and
>>>> northing (it’s hard enough already given the various ways
>>>> people write lats and longs). There seems to be enough
>>>> ambiguity here to really mess things up, as indeed they have
>>>> for the TTU dataset.
>>>>
>>>> Regards
>>>>
>>>> Rod
>>>>
>>>> ---------------------------------------------------------
>>>> Roderic Page
>>>> Professor of Taxonomy
>>>> Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine
>>>> College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences
>>>> Graham Kerr Building
>>>> University of Glasgow
>>>> Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
>>>>
>>>> Email: Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk
>>>> <mailto:Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk>
>>>> Tel: +44 141 330 4778 <tel:%2B44%20141%20330%204778>
>>>> Skype: rdmpage
>>>> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/rdmpage
>>>> LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/rdmpage
>>>> Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdmpage
>>>> Blog: http://iphylo.blogspot.com <http://iphylo.blogspot.com/>
>>>> ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7101-9767
>>>> Citations:
>>>> http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=4Z5WABAAAAAJ
>>>> <http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=4Z5WABAAAAAJ>
>>>> ResearchGate https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Roderic_Page
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> On 9 Feb 2015, at 11:41, Dag Endresen <dag.endresen at gmail.com
>>>>> <mailto:dag.endresen at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Hi Rod,
>>>>>
>>>>> I have assumed that the purpose of the dwc:verbatimCoordinates
>>>>> term is
>>>>> to allow for reporting coordinates originally recorded as one
>>>>> single
>>>>> tuple such as the MGRS (Military Grid Reference System).
>>>>>
>>>>> While original source coordinates that do have two tuples such
>>>>> as UTM
>>>>> would use dwc:verbatimLongitude (for the Easting or X coordinate
>>>>> tuple) and dwc:verbatimLatitude (for the Northing or Y coordinate
>>>>> tuple).
>>>>>
>>>>> Regards
>>>>> Dag
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 9 February 2015 at 11:57, Roderic Page
>>>>> <Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk
>>>>> <mailto:Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk>> wrote:
>>>>>> Hi John,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> So, if I understand you correctly, you would have hoped that
>>>>>> TTU would have
>>>>>> output something like this:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> “dwc:verbatimCoordinates” : “18M 166624 9840350”
>>>>>>
>>>>>> rather than put the easting and northing into
>>>>>> verbatimLatitude and
>>>>>> verbatimLongitude.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Regards
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Rod
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ---------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>> Roderic Page
>>>>>> Professor of Taxonomy
>>>>>> Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine
>>>>>> College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences
>>>>>> Graham Kerr Building
>>>>>> University of Glasgow
>>>>>> Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Email: Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk
>>>>>> <mailto:Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk>
>>>>>> Tel: +44 141 330 4778 <tel:%2B44%20141%20330%204778>
>>>>>> Skype: rdmpage
>>>>>> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/rdmpage
>>>>>> LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/rdmpage
>>>>>> Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdmpage
>>>>>> Blog: http://iphylo.blogspot.com <http://iphylo.blogspot.com/>
>>>>>> ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7101-9767
>>>>>> Citations:
>>>>>> http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=4Z5WABAAAAAJ
>>>>>> <http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=4Z5WABAAAAAJ>
>>>>>> ResearchGate https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Roderic_Page
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 8 Feb 2015, at 20:22, John Wieczorek <tuco at berkeley.edu
>>>>>> <mailto:tuco at berkeley.edu>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi Rod,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The verbatimLatitude, verbatimLongitude, and
>>>>>> verbatimCoordinates were all
>>>>>> intended to be able to capture the original coordinates used
>>>>>> at the source,
>>>>>> where decimalLatitude and decimalLongitude, with
>>>>>> geodeticDatum, were meant
>>>>>> to contain the the easy to act on global system (UTMs do not
>>>>>> cover the
>>>>>> entire planet, for example). The verbatimCoordinate term's
>>>>>> definition shows
>>>>>> that this was the intent, but verbatimLatitude and
>>>>>> verbatimLongitude do not.
>>>>>> When we get the examples separated from the term definitions,
>>>>>> it should be
>>>>>> easier to make this clear.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> John
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Sat, Feb 7, 2015 at 2:36 PM, Dag Endresen
>>>>>> <dag.endresen at gmail.com <mailto:dag.endresen at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hi Rod,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> At least in Norway, it is very common for the GBIF node to
>>>>>>> receive
>>>>>>> (only) Easting and Northing of UTM zones 32V to 36W. For
>>>>>>> many datasets
>>>>>>> we will on routine automatically make the conversion to decimal
>>>>>>> degrees (and WGS84) at the node before these datasets are
>>>>>>> published to
>>>>>>> the GBIF portal. When people download occurrences from the
>>>>>>> Norwegian
>>>>>>> "GBIF portal", Artskart, my impression is that the UTM 32V
>>>>>>> (and the
>>>>>>> 33V) Easting and Northing coordinate format is actually more
>>>>>>> popular
>>>>>>> than the decimal degree format - this is because the
>>>>>>> geographic data
>>>>>>> layers for Norway more often are made available in the UTM
>>>>>>> format
>>>>>>> (most often 32V or 33V) [1]. And yes, this continued present day
>>>>>>> official use of such a wide variety of coordinate formats
>>>>>>> frustrates
>>>>>>> me too... The historic use reported with the verbatim terms,
>>>>>>> is of
>>>>>>> course difficult to do anything with...
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I assume that Easting and Northing coordinates are both
>>>>>>> valid and very
>>>>>>> common values (and not only in Norway) for the Darwin Core
>>>>>>> verbatim
>>>>>>> coordinate terms (dwc:verbatimLatitude and
>>>>>>> dwc:verbatimLongitude or
>>>>>>> dwc:verbatimCoordinates), but of course only at all useful when
>>>>>>> accompanied by the respective dwc:verbatimCoordinateSystem and
>>>>>>> dwc:verbatimSRS also reported. (And that the
>>>>>>> dwc:decimalLatitude and
>>>>>>> dwc:decimalLongitude correctly reported in WGS84 should
>>>>>>> preferably
>>>>>>> also always be there). I believe that Darwin Core is already
>>>>>>> fine with
>>>>>>> respect to terms to report geographic coordinates. If at all any
>>>>>>> additions are useful, I believe that identifying and
>>>>>>> recommending
>>>>>>> terms from more specialized geographic vocabularies and
>>>>>>> ontologies
>>>>>>> might be much more useful than adding any new dwc:Location
>>>>>>> terms to
>>>>>>> Darwin Core. In fact, most of the dwc:Location terms might
>>>>>>> perhaps
>>>>>>> preferably be replaced by terms from the geography
>>>>>>> community... such
>>>>>>> as perhaps [2] and [3] (as a start).
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> [1]
>>>>>>> https://dagendresen.wordpress.com/2013/11/22/convert-coordinate-srs/
>>>>>>> [2] http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#
>>>>>>> [3] http://www.geonames.org/ontology/documentation.html
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Regards
>>>>>>> Dag
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 7 February 2015 at 13:02, Roderic Page
>>>>>>> <Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk <mailto:Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk>>
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>> Pardon my ignorance, but has there ever been a discussion
>>>>>>>> of easting and
>>>>>>>> northing values in regards to Darwin Core? AFAIK the
>>>>>>>> current standard
>>>>>>>> doesn’t mention them. The reason I’m asking is that I’ve
>>>>>>>> just come
>>>>>>>> across
>>>>>>>> some VerbatimLatitude and VerbatimLongitude values in a
>>>>>>>> dataset that is
>>>>>>>> aggregated by VertNet (and hence GBIF) where (after some head
>>>>>>>> scratching) I
>>>>>>>> realised that the verbatim values were actually Easting and
>>>>>>>> Northing
>>>>>>>> (which
>>>>>>>> I didn’t know existed until yesterday). Details are here:
>>>>>>>> https://github.com/ttu-vertnet/ttu-mammals/issues/11
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I’m guessing this isn’t a terribly common way to record
>>>>>>>> location
>>>>>>>> information, but it looks like in this case the lack of
>>>>>>>> support for this
>>>>>>>> type of data has resulted in somebody trying to shoehorn
>>>>>>>> them into
>>>>>>>> VerbatimLatitude and VerbatimLongitude, resulting in values
>>>>>>>> which are
>>>>>>>> uninterpretable to aggregators further up the chain.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Regards
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Rod
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> Dag Endresen, Ph.D.
>>>>>>> Private email: dag.endresen at gmail.com
>>>>>>> <mailto:dag.endresen at gmail.com>
>>>>>>> Work email: dag.endresen at nhm.uio.no
>>>>>>> <mailto:dag.endresen at nhm.uio.no>
>>>>>>> Mobile: +47 4061 2982
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> tdwg-content mailing list
>>>>>>> tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org <mailto:tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org>
>>>>>>> http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Dag Endresen, Ph.D.
>>>>> Private email: dag.endresen at gmail.com
>>>>> <mailto:dag.endresen at gmail.com>
>>>>> Work email: dag.endresen at nhm.uio.no
>>>>> <mailto:dag.endresen at nhm.uio.no>
>>>>> Mobile: +47 4061 2982
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>
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--
Dr. Quentin Groom
(Botany and Information Technology)
Botanic Garden, Meise
Domein van Bouchout
B-1860 Meise
Belgium
ORCID: 0000-0002-0596-5376
Landline; +32 (0) 226 009 20 ext. 364
FAX: +32 (0) 226 009 45
E-mail: quentin.groom at br.fgov.be
Skype name: qgroom
Website: www.botanicgarden.be
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