[Platforms] Roy enters the fray

[Susanne Reimert]

Thanks and welcome back from the kitchen Roy,

I expect that the list you loaded into Oracle, was the list I sent you
on 2 November, hence the list included the 'newer' NODC entries, that we
did not have at ICES.

The 3 'non-ship/general codes' were noted here, but I just added these
as to make sure that we did not make use of these codes in the future.
Whenever we are getting to the job of identifying non-ships, we will for
sure get busy.
The 74PT was on the NODC 2003 version (that ICES did not make use of),
and the 74VK and 74VV were both new to us from the 2006 version.
 
So I can't tell you anything about these 3 codes, but maybe Mitch can?

>From my experience with data work, I see your point in coding rather as
7499 (Unknown) or as 7490 (Multiple ships) but unknown as well!, but I
also very much dislike loosing information. 
I am then in favour of the idea of a 'richer vocabulary' as one of your
options.

Let us hear some more opinions on this.

Best regards,
Susanne











-----Original Message-----
From: platforms-bounces at biwebs1.nerc-liv.ac.uk
[mailto:platforms-bounces at biwebs1.nerc-liv.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Roy Lowry
Sent: 09 November 2006 11:29
To: platforms at biwebs1-2.nerc-liv.ac.uk
Subject: [Platforms] Roy enters the fray


Hi Suzanne,

At last I have found some time to start rationalising our local ship
code table with your master list.  What I have done so far is to load
your list into Oracle and do a 2-way code difference between your codes
and ours.  This turned up a number of errors in our system that I have
now sorted out.  This leaves 85 codes in your list that we do not have.
Of these, 82 seem to be ships that I will pass by Fran and then load up.


The other three worry me a lot.  These are:

74PT PROFILING FLOAT
74VK MINISTRY OF DEFENSE CHARTERED VESSELS
74VV ROYAL MARINE AUXILIARY VESSELS

As these stand, they are names of platform classes (i.e. groups of like
platforms) which is totally different from the entity we are calling a
ship (unique combination of hull, name and ownership/governance).  I am
therefore not at all happy about adding them to the list. The question
is what should we do about populating any fields in databases or data
files where these codes have been used.

In the case of profiling floats (Argo I guess) I think we should
certainly be using a the float identifier, which is maintained by WMO.

In the other two cases what we are saying is that we know the something
about the platform, but not exactly what it is.  My current
missionary-like zeal for clean and accurate metadata says that these
should be coded '7499', which currently carries the semantics 'Unknown
UK ship'.  However, another possible view is that we should go for a
richer 'vocabulary of unknowns' such as 'Unknown Royal Marine Auxiliary
vessel' and 'Unknown MOD charter vessel' .  Anyone any
arguments/feelings either way?

Cheers, Roy.


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