[Platforms] Platform classes and Shipcode list

[Roy Lowry]

Hi Marilynn,

First of all, for the UK ships we can save you a lot of work as Fran has been assigning platform classes plus other metadata to the BODC local copy of the ship code list.  I have been keeping this hidden (like you to avoid confusion) but it is temporarily exposed in the vocabulary server (http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/client/vocabServer.jsp) as list C171 for the SeaDataNet TTT meeting at the end of this week.  

I know this list has problems (about a dozen ships missing that are in Susanne's list) and I haven't thoroughly checked the metadata yet, but it has gained a lot of additional information through Fran's efforts that it would be silly not to share at this stage.

Your subset list is fine by me.  I have no problems with local lists that are subsets.  It's when entries start to get added to local lists that I worry!!!

The inclusion of 'information-loaded' unknowns (non-specified ship and so on) is something that I agree we have to do and is the obvious way out of some of the problems where ship codes have been assigned to inappropriate entities.  I was postponing discussion on this issue until we had succeeded in broadening this e-mail discussion list (JCOMM-OPS have recently joined us and I hope to gain some more SeaDataNet participation by the end of the week).  However, an initial 'straw-man' list in a spreadsheet would be a good start if you have the time.  We can then discuss how far we go with this - to the level of 'non-specified MOD charter vessel' or beyond??? 

One thing we need to sort out with JCOMM-OPS is interoperability with their lists.  We especially want to avoid setting up lists for classes of platforms that they have covered in the past but ICES has not.

Cheers, Roy.

>>> Marilynn Sørensen <marilynn at ices.dk> 12/5/2006 1:04 pm >>>
Hi Roy,
 
Platform classes have now been added to the ICES Data Centre code database, "RECO", at www.ices.dk/datacentre/reco/ - see "Platform class". As agreed with you earlier, the listed platforms are a sub-set of L06_V1 which apply to data held here at ICES. The sub-set can be expanded as necessary. We will use the L06 definitions of platforms and revise our system accordingly.
 
We are now preparing to assign platform classes - where possible - to "Susanne's" shipcode list and will use the above mentioned sub-set if there are no comments from you by Friday, 8 Dec.  To avoid confusion, note that the revised SeaDataNet shipcode list is not in RECO yet.
 
To avoid loss of platform information in the standardisation process, we are currently discussing the addition of new non-ship codes - especially for use with legacy data. These will be added without country code prefixes. We have checked NODC's and ISO's country list (ISO 3166-1) to avoid using an already assigned or reserved country code as a prefix. We suggest using "AA" for the new non-ship codes as it is not used by NODC and it is considered a "user-assigned" code by ISO 3166-1. 
 
An example of the new codes would be:
 
AA71     Non-specified (or unknown) human <platformclass>human</platformclass>
AA3A     Non-specified (or unknown) man-powered small craft<platformclass>man-powered small boat</platformclass>
AA30     Non-specified (or unknown) ship <platformclass>ship</platformclass>
 
If anyone has comments, we'd be pleased to hear from you.
 
Kind regads,
Marilynn
 
 
 
Marilynn Sørensen

  

Data Manager

International Council for the Exploration of the Sea

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