Relayed: station ID being associated with more than one station ID

[RocketD0g]

This comment is relayed and originally from @maschu09. (3 of 8 to transport over to GH):

a station can be associated with more than one station id (for example if it contributes to several programs), but there must be one primary station id which must not change. Basically, a change of the primary id means that a new station has been launched. Note: ideally, the relation between primary station id and secondary station ids is made in a separate database and not harvested from individual measurement submissions. Therefore we propose that the data submission records only contain a primary id, but data providers will (later) get the chance to register alternative ids through a web tool.

[RocketD0g]

I definitely could see different programs having different names for their stations, but I'm not sure about secondary station IDs.

I can imagine having the station name location as designated by the originating source and an OpenAQ unique stationID (or other such parameter name), but not sure about a separate database for other aliases.

Is there something simpler we could do - at least initially to see how much 'demand' there is for this? Like have an alias type parameter in the meta data format that folks could add in aliases?

[maschu09]

This again refers to th ediscussion in #6 and #5. My proposal is to add ProviderStationID as optional metadata tag, where 0..N "short names" can be listed (but don't have to be). Again, the main purpose is to allow linking the data in OpenAQ to data in other archives. In a more complete concept, one could also suggest to format ProviderStationID as "network:stationID". For example Westerland, Germany has four IDs in the TOAR database:

• UBA:DEUB001
• GAW:WES654N00
• AIRBASE:DEUB001
• EMEP:DE0001R

GAWSIS uses the term "program specific ID" fo rthis. See for example https://gawsis.meteoswiss.ch/GAWSIS//index.html#/search/station/stationReportDetails/16