[Seavox] Food for thought

[Roy Lowry]

Dear All,

Just thought I'd share a couple of my current quandries with you to see if any pearls of wisdom out there can ease my suffering!

Problem 1

Consider the AMT dataset - repeated measurements taken along 20W (i.e. straight down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean).  The CTD temperature data in this are marked up with the BODC Parameter Usage Vocabulary term 'Temperature of the water column by CTD'.  The plan is to use this markup to automatically generate metadata records.  So, we first of all convert the usage term to a discovery term, resulting in 'Temperature of the water column'.  Now for ISO19115 we need Topic Categories and because the discovery term covers datasets from both fresh and salt water (to get around the problem of datasets running up estuaries and rivers) we end up with a mapping relationship to both 'oceans' and 'inlandWaters'.  So, we end up associating our mid-Atlantic dataset with the ISO 'inlandWaters' topic, which to me is totally daft.  However, the logic used to derive the relationship (a SKOS minorMatch mapping) seems sound.  

I guess this is exactly the same problem of false indication in the parameter dimension that is encountered in the spatial dimension when using rectangular boxes to describe dataset spatial coverage.  However, to me the spatial case seems acceptable whereas the parameter case does not.  Does this mean that problem is that my perception of 'acceptable' is based on common sense and not logic? 

Problem 2

The ISO19115 keyword class includes a keyword type label, a list of actual keyword terms and a citation class to document the source thesaurus. There is no specific location for keyword URIs, although these could be built from the citation class and the keyword term providing a representation of the thesaurus version used containing both terms and keys was available.  Is this adequate or should we be pressing for inclusion of an explicit keyword URI storage location in ISO19115/19139 profiles?  I raised this issue expressed in terms of 'keys' rather than 'URIs' for the ISO19115 Ocean Profile with Greg Reed back in September, am coming to realise that when expressed in terms of URIs the case is much stronger.

I guess another possibility would be to use a URI that unambiguously described the keyword text term (such as  http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/P021/12/TEMP/term/ for the keyword text from entry (key+term+abbreviation+definition) http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/P021/12/TEMP/ from thesaurus http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/term/P021/12/) as the ISO19115 keyword element content. Note 'P021/12' specifies version 12 of controlled vocabulary list P021. Or is being too creative? 

Cheers, Roy.