On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 1:57 AM, Peter DeVries
<pete.devries@gmail.com> wrote:
I agree. there are a number of tools that can interpret the geo: standard and it is not as if the alternatives are more accurate.
I never understood why this issue is any different that having people standardize on meters.
Everyone except Americans understand meters. And even Americans can type "15 meters in feet" into a Google search and figure out the conversion. ;-)
383 students of our georeferencing workshops to date understand datums (more, if you count the workshop at Yale this week). Of those, I estimate realistically that ten of them knew what a datum was before they attended the workshop. Those same ten are probably the only ones still who would be able to transform coordinates from one datum to another. Therein lies the big difference - it isn't easy. Part of not being easy is not having tools. With existing tools (GIS), you must have expertise that is uncommon among those who are contributing the data. To me it seems an unreasonable expectation under current conditions that the not just the average data contributor, but every data contributor must have the responsibility for this conversion. The reality is that these many of these people do not have the human resources to keep up with actual errors in their databases, let alone prepare data to be more appetizing to developers with a risk of creating further, undetectable errors.
The issue of error can be dealt with with the addition of another field.
A field beyond dwc:coordinateUncertaintyInMeters? If so, for what error?
I think a better solution might be easy-to-use tools that let groups convert their records to geo:lat and geo:long before submitting them.
Now you are talking, except that, better than a tool that the contributors use, a tool that developers use. That way any errors will be systemic, detectable, and correctable in one place. Don't forget that our best practices for data quality recommend that we lose nothing of the verbatim original information.
- Pete
On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 10:01 AM, joel sachs
<jsachs@csee.umbc.edu> wrote:
All,
When representing observation records in RDF, there are advantages to using Dublin Core and Geo (http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#)
namespaces where possible. For example, if we use DC:date, and geo:lat, geo:long, instead of DwC:eventDate, DwC:lat, and DwC:long, then Linked Data browsers can automatically map the records, plot them on a timeline, etc.
My question is: What are the disadvantages to doing this? (For example, is this going to break someone's DwC validator?)
Thanks -
Joel.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Pete DeVries
Department of Entomology
University of Wisconsin - Madison
445 Russell Laboratories
1630 Linden Drive
Madison, WI 53706
GeoSpecies Knowledge Base
About the GeoSpecies Knowledge Base
------------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________
tdwg-tag mailing list
tdwg-tag@lists.tdwg.org
http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-tag