[DDI-ADG] Geography and time comments

Mon Sep 12 10:58:53 EDT 2005

I've attached a revised version of the Geography spreadsheet I sent out 
Fri. w/the additional fields that Wendy recommended.   A couple of comments 
and questions.

At 02:35 PM 9/11/2005 -0500, Wendy Thomas wrote:
>WLT
>Line 4 in geography "Description" is quite simply the Dublin Core
>definition of GeographicCover allowing for as detailed a description as
>the creator wishes to make. Its sole purpose is to provide a "basket" to
>dump into the Dublin Core basket. FGDC and other geographic systems will
>take thier definition of GeographicCover from the label of the Top Level
>geography.

I inserted your description.  But I still left the original description as 
it's helpful to clarify how the elements relate (something that took much 
discussion to clarify among our group, so can only be helpful to others).

>Geography
>1) Thinking through and documenting the issue we talked about in line 4
>(where Description could say that the study covers 3 countries, each of
>which has its own Geography > GeographyValues > GeographyName), I realized
>that line 5 needed to be rewritten b/it implies that Geographic Coverage
>will be described by only one geography.  So I broadened it.  I assume the
>"which can also be distinguished by a Geography which does not have a
>ParentGeography" would apply to each of the 3 coverage-related instances
>of Geography in the 3-country scenario.  This relates to line 13.
>
>
>WLT
>No. There is only one top level geography. If I have 3 countries that 3
>country group is my top level. If I combine the three individual countries
>(level 2) I get the top level geography. The study itself defines what the
>top level geography is in the same way it defines what the population
>universe is. There is no .predefined. name or code for this level just as
>there is not a predefined code or name if my .geography. is an area
>comprised of a 5 mile circle around a specific point. Don.t change this.
>It is a concept which ties into FGDC and other geographic descriptive
>systems. Geographic Cover means the full extent of the geography covered
>regardless of whether or not it is an contiguous area.

I see what you're saying (that in the given case the top level is a group 
of countries, not a country), but am not sure how it would change the 
spreadsheet. Are you proposing:
- that I change line 6 back to omit the line "The first occurrences of this 
should be Geography (may be multiple occurrences, as in 3-country example 
described above) that describes the overall coverage area, which can also 
be distinguished by a Geography which does not have a ParentGeography" or 
to simply change the plural to singular?
- Are you suggesting that in the case of the 3-country example that we 
would not have 3 Geographies?

Also, in your notes, on line 15 you say:
"Parent should be identified in terms of geographic hierarchies (for 
example a County parent is the State rather than the State and sometimes 
the MSA).  Any geography with 2 or more parents is defined as being the 
intersect of those multiple hierarchies"
Is this meant to supplement or replace the given description?  It sounds 
like the latter, but as what sounds like a significant change, what do 
others think?; I put it in the attached as a choice and bolded it so we 
knew we had to address it.

Others can maybe chime in on these as well; and/or let's talk about this 
tomorrow.

>2) Line 18: Hate to bring up a substantive issue at this late date (some
>are just occurring to me when really reading through the descriptions),
>but I'm not clear on what's required w/in this group.  Is it true that
>they could choose among lines 19-25 (have to put at least one, but not
>all)?  If this is the case, then we'd lose the machine-actionability of
>the values (b/the author could choose just to put in a GeographyName and
>not a GeographyCode).
>I think that I recall that we wanted authors to always insert a code for a
>geography, but we would (in line 20) give them the option of pointing to
>an external code list (rather than having to document each code using line
>24).
>Therefore I would think that at minimum lines 21 and 23 should be
>required.
>Does this make sense?  Is this what's needed to ensure
>machine-actionability?
>
>WLT
>Not all areas have geographic names or codes (see example of 5 mile circle
>above). It is correct as it is. You have the option of using as many or as
>few as you wish. Our job is to make machine-actionability possible. We
>cannot enforce the amount of information that is available.especially in
>this case where you would be forcing people to make something up.

This was basically what we agreed in the Friday phone call.

--
Also, in the note to line 22 Wendy wrote:
"Should exist outside of the repetionShould point to the location of the 
lowest level code variable (such as BLOCK): At this level it can only refer 
to a specific geographic level."  It sounds like a proposal to change the 
structure, so I'm including it as another option/choice, but I'm not sure 
of the best choice.

Kate

>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
>
>_______________________________________________
>DDI-ADG mailing list
>DDI-ADG at icpsr.umich.edu
>http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/mailman/listinfo/ddi-adg

___________________________________________
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 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Geography_09_12_2005.xls
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 20992 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/pipermail/ddi-adg/attachments/20050912/b15821ea/Geography_09_12_2005-0001.obj