[DDI-ADG] Geographic coverage descriptions

[Wendy Thomas]

re: Bounding box and bounding polygon

A Bounding box is a very specific kind of bounding polygon with exactly 4
sides and each side must fall along a longitude or latitude line. It is
used for reducing search space defined by a point search.

Bounding Polygon allows you to provide one or more polygons with a minimum
of 3 sides. You would not repeat the contents of a Bounding Box in the
bounding polygon fields.

wendy

On Mon, 29 Aug 2005, Katherine McNeill-Harman wrote:

> One question about the new geography spreadsheet.  I was briefed by someone
> on the rest of the conversation and understand that the group chose to go
> w/this structure to minimize duplication.  However, along those lines, I
> want to make sure I understand the description of the Geographic Coverage,
> specifically the relationship among line 4: description, line 22: Geography
> Code, and line 23: Geography name.
>
> We had agreed that Geographic Coverage would be machine actionable; this
> would presumably come in line 22 (as part of geography, then geography
> values), but then how do the descriptions in line 4 and line 23 relate--are
> they simply duplicates?  It's my understanding that the group believes we
> can't have any duplicates.
>
> For example, let's say that we're documenting a study about the United
> States, at which there is information available by state and at lower
> levels (not aggregated at the level of the U.S.); would the information be
> as follows?:
>
> 4.    Description: United States
> 9.    HasSummaryData: N
> 10.   GeographicLevelCode n/a? (empty, b/in this case it isn't really a level?)
> 11.   GeographicLevelName n/a? (empty, b/in this case it isn't really a level?)
>
> 20.      GeographyCode
> 21.         Authority: ISO
> 22.         Code: 10
> 23.      GeographyName: United States
>
> And if in another study there was data at the same level of the geographic
> coverage (in this case United States), would it be the same as the above,
> but 9 would be Y and 10 and 11 would be filled in?
>
> So again, my question is why do we have two places for the textual
> description of geographic coverage (4 and 23)?  And if I'm misinterpreting
> the role of Geography/Geographic Values, and in fact these won't be filled
> in for geographic coverage, we still need to provide a mechanism for
> machine actionability.
>
> Also, I wonder the relationship between line 3: Bounding Box and line 24:
> Bounding Polygon (although I recall they may have separate and important
> roles, but since it seems to be a similar issue to the above, thought I'd
> check).
>
> Kate
>
> ___________________________________________
> Katherine McNeill-Harman
> Data Services Librarian
> Dewey Library for Management and Social Sciences
> Massachusetts Institute of Technology
> 77 Massachusetts Avenue, E53-100
> Cambridge, MA 02139
> mcneillh at mit.edu
> 617-253-0787
>
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Wendy L. Thomas                          Phone: +1 612.624.4389
Data Access Core Director		 Fax:   +1 612.626.8375
Minnesota Population Center              Email: wlt at pop.umn.edu
University of Minnesota
50 Willey Hall
225 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455