[tdwg-content] What I learned at the TechnoBioBlitz

[Richard Pyle]

Hi Hilmar,

I'm not yet convinced that dwc:establishmentMeans is not meaningful for a
point (which I interpret as a single organism or small set of organisms
collected or observed at a particular place/time).  I think a legitimate
piece of metadata (i.e., something that data consumers will often want to
know) for such "standard" occurrence record is: "Was this organism born in
the general vicinity of its documented capture/observation, or did it arrive
from a far-distant locality during its lifetime?"  And, if the answer is the
latter, then many data consumers may also want to know "Was it brought by
humans to its documented place & time, or did it manage to get there by
so-called 'natural' means?"  Also, if the organism itself was born in the
vicinity of its documented capture/observation, it may be useful to know
whether its recent ancestors arrived in the vicinity with or without the
help of humans.

These seem like esoteric (or even rediculous) questions, but I think they
are, in essence, what people want to know in terms of why establishmentMeans
is part of DwC.

Also, as I tried to explain in one of my previous posts, it seems to me that
an "Occurrence" ultimately represents "a tuple of (taxon concept, location,
time)", where location and time are generally properties of Events, and an
Occurrence is essentially the intersection of a Taxon Concept and an Event.

Aloha,
Rich

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hilmar Lapp [mailto:hlapp at nescent.org] 
> Sent: Tuesday, October 12, 2010 1:26 PM
> To: Richard Pyle
> Cc: Jerry Cooper; tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org; 
> tdwg-bioblitz at googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] What I learned at the TechnoBioBlitz
> 
> Just trying to confirm whether my understanding from this 
> thread so far is correct. Is there agreement that 
> dwc:establishmentMeans is a) not meaningful for a point or 
> region in space, or a point in time, or a taxon concept, but 
> only for a taxon concept at a spatial location at a point in 
> time, and b) is a judgment made by someone on the basis of 
> certain evidence.
> 
> If yes, doesn't that mean that the property needs to be 
> applied to a tuple of (taxon concept, location, time), and 
> needs to be linked to a source and at least the kind of 
> evidence (such as a vocabulary term) on which the judgement 
> was made? I.e., how much worth is a dwc:establishmentMeans 
> value that fails either of those requirements?  
> 
> Apologies if that's all there already.
> 
> -hilmar
> 
> Sent with a tap.=