[Seavox] "Sea Areas"

[Roy Lowry]

Thanks Greg,

That gives me the encouragement to go ahead.  I'll start building some time early in November. 

My initial instincts were to drop the ROSCOP divisions until I realised they are used in thousands of CSR records in SeaDataNet, which would had required changes through mappings such as Northeast Atlantic to North Atlantic.  This represents a massive degradation in metadata resolution that I though was best avoided.

Cheers, Roy.

>>> Greg Reed <greg at metoc.gov.au> 10/14/2008 3:03 am >>>
Hi Roy

My response.

(1) Are there any reasons why this plan shouldn't go ahead? No - your 
idea to implement the sea area terms as a list in the vocabulary server 
should provide a single authoritative reference.

(2) Should 'Sea of Japan' be included as a term under SeaVoX governance? 
This issue is much bigger than SeaVox. Leaving it out will cause as much 
controversy as leaving it in. I think you should use the S23 (1953) name 
but be prepared to change it in the future if required.

(3) Should we stick with the local spellings such Jawa Sea and Tai-Wan 
Strait?  If not, which terms should we change? Use local names if you 
want international buy-in. If you start to anglicise some of the names 
you should do all of them (e.g. Selat Makasar) but this is not a good 
idea. Use the IHB spellings as these have been agreed by all member 
states of IHO.

I personally would not use the ROSCOP subdivisions but don't have a 
problem if you leave them in.

cheers, Greg



Roy Lowry wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
> Attached is a concept map of a proposed nucleus list of "Sea Areas" (defined something like named subsets of the Earth's surface of interest to the oceanographic data management domain for use as data discovery keywords).  Consequently, it includes chunks of land to provide context for inland waters that are increasingly falling into the oceanographic data centre sphere of interest).
> 
> The terms included come from four sources as indicated by the bubble colour.  The pale blue terms bear a striking resemblance to the unpublished IHO 2002 S23 revision.  The red/orange terms are the so-called ROSCOP extensions to C23.  The green terms are terms I've added to cover, with geographical context, freshwater bodies  that have been brought to my attention as being of interest to 'oceanographic data centres'.  The purple term is the cause of all the controversy in IHO and the reason why S23 hasn't been revised since 1953.
> 
> The terms are organised into an ontology that may be navigated by starting at 'World' then following the arrows.
> 
> My plan would be to implement these terms as a single list in the vocabulary server with the relationships between terms as shown by the arrows.  Further terms may be added as required, providing they are proposed together with the terms to which they should be mapped (ie broader areas that enclose the new term or overlap with it).  This new list would replace the existing C16 vocabulary used in SeaDataNet. Naturally mappings to the new list would be provided wherever possible.
> 
> However, I plan to go further than this and set up a spatial database holding a polygon corresponding to each term that would be accessible through WFS and/or WMS.  Service URLs would be included in the term definition field.
> 
> Initially, I would like the governance group to consider the following questions:
> 
> (1) Are there any reasons why this plan shouldn't go ahead?
> (2) Should 'Sea of Japan' be included as a term under SeaVoX governance?
> (3) Should we stick with the local spellings such Jawa Sea and Tai-Wan Strait?  If not, which terms should we change?
> 
> Any other comments on the terms included would be welcome.  
> 
> Note that I would rather avoid requests for additional terms at this stage until I get something together.  
> 
> The concept map is also available in CMAP XML export format if anyone needs it.
> 
> Cheers, Roy.
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Greg Reed
Executive Officer
Australian Ocean Data Centre Joint Facility
Fleet Headquarters
Wylde Street
Building 89, Garden Island
Potts Point NSW 2011 Australia
Tel: +61 2 93593141
Fax: +61 2 93593120