Dear all,
last week, we had a rather successful workshop on "Metadata for air
quality and atmospheric composition" in Dublin. It was nice to see that the
community (i.e. those present) seemed to agree without much discussion, that
ISO 19115 (-1) is the way to go for discovery metadata, while CF is the way
forward for descriptive metadata to be stored in (usually) netcdf data files.
The main discussions at the workshop centered around ISO issues, but there was
one interesting point that came up with respect to CF standard_names and their
relation to controlled vocabulary:
We did have discussions on this list earlier about a more grammar-oriented
approach, and this was also brought up at our workshop again, mainly in light
of the "threat" that the atmospheric composition group will soon begin to flood
this email list with hundreds of new names in order to add additional chemical
compounds. As we have seen with the problem of standard_names for emissions,
this is stretching the limits of the current ways to operate and publish new
standard_names. I don't want to argue against the concept of one "flat" master
list (we have been through this and there are good reasons for sticking to this
concept), but I would like to stipulate a discussion about adding more
"metadata" to the standard_name table in order to better link it to other
controlled vocabulary lists and avoid confusing inconsistencies, for example in
the naming of chemical compounds. Specifically, I would like to propose two
"conditional" tags compound_name and compound_codelist in the standard_name
list which shall appear for all standard_names having to do with chemical
compounds. Example:
-<entry id="atmosphere_mass_content_of_carbon_monoxide">
<compound_name>Carbon monoxide</compound_name>
<compound_codelist>http://rdfdata.eionet.europa.eu/airquality/components/10</compound_codelist>
<canonical_units>kg m-2</canonical_units>
<description>"Content" indicates a quantity per unit area. The "atmosphere
content" of a quantity refers to the vertical integral from the surface to the
top of the atmosphere. For the content between specified levels in the
atmosphere, standard names including content_of_atmosphere_layer are used. The
chemical formula of carbon monoxide is CO.</description>
</entry>
In a way, this may be seen as duplication of information, but it would
really help to tie ends together, because it is practically impossible to parse
the standard_names in order to extract such information (due to the lack of a
strict grammar). There may be other tags which could be useful to add, and one
will have to decide about the pros and cons in each case. However, for compound
names I would see a clear need arising now.
Best regards,
Martin
PD Dr. Martin G. Schultz
IEK-8, Forschungszentrum Jülich
D-52425 Jülich
Ph: +49 2461 61 2831
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