Occurrence vs Sampling Event - Explaining different core types - Webinar needed

[debpaul]

From August 2017 webinar:

John Wieczorek: Occurrence and Sampling Event are two perspectives on species at a place and time. The distinction puts the focus on organisms in the Occurrence case and on the time/place/protocol in the Sampling Event case. Both can produce Darwin Core Occurrences, but because of the limitations on structure in an Darwin Core Archive, Events might need to be the core record. This is to be able to connect extensions with, for examples, measurements on the Events as opposed to on the organisms. John Wieczorek: The limitation is the star schema. Annie Simpson: That is fine for now; it is much more complex than I had initially thought however.

Webinar idea: The "Core" in a Darwin Core Archive as in, (possible sample abstract)

When sharing biodiversity data, we may have extra data for each recorded occurrence that can't be shared if there's only one field for a given concept. An example of this might be measurements. A researcher may record quite a few measurements from a given specimen - so one measurement field doesn't work. This is referred to as "one-to-many" as in, many measurements for that one object. So, we can solve this puzzle, by putting all the measurements in a separate (csv) file - being careful to note the specimen identifier in every row that contains a measurement for that specimen. In addition, for museum specimen records, the core file in a DwC-A is usually the Occurrence Core, and then extensions (like Measurement or Fact, or Audubon Core) are used to share extra information about those specimens.

But perhaps our researchers want to focus on sharing data for an overall Event in the field, including information about all that happened at that event. For example, not only were specimens collected and measurements taken, but maybe DNA samples were taken from the specimens collected, and perhaps experiments were carried out following a strict protocol. Trying to share this type of information using a DwC-A Occurrence Core could be difficult, or impossible. In some cases then, it makes sense to change the core file to a different type, say, Event. In the Event Core, you share your higher-level data about what happened at the overall event, and then, one of your extensions can be the Occurrence file containing your data for the specimens collected at that Event.

At this DwC Hour - get to the core of data-sharing. Find out how you can provide more information about your biodiversity holdings.

We need to also create a resource somewhere on the Wiki - that has links to sample DwC-A example files with different cores.

One activity at this webinar could be to provide a DwC-A and have people open it and look inside at the structure - as a group webinar activity.

[debpaul]

Getting at Core Types (what they are and the need for them) can be at least partially addressed also in the webinars on Taxon vs Occurrence

[debpaul]

See also https://github.com/VertNet/dwc-qa-manage/issues/22