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openaq / project-universal-stationID

This repo houses project discussions for creating a universal station ID system.
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Relayed: Concerning Station names #8

Open RocketD0g opened 5 years ago

RocketD0g commented 5 years ago

This comment is relayed and originally from @maschu09. This comment is relayed and originally from @maschu09 (7+ 8 of 8 to transport over to GH):

  • station name can be any unicode string describing the station location. The length of station name should not exceed 200 characters.

  • if a station name is given, it should remain constant throughout time. However, this is a weak requirement, because the identification of a station is made via the station id.

RocketD0g commented 5 years ago

On station names (currently designated as location in our data format, I think it might be truest and most transparent to the originating source to keep the name as-is.

Currently the names (or the location parameter) are not picked by us, but rather designated as how the originating source presents it. This allows some transparency for a given agency to understand which station is which on our system, while the new stationID type parameter will allow a universal, persistent method of identifying the station, no matter if the originating source changes the name. Does this make sense? (Especially to @maschu09 and @jflasher)

jflasher commented 5 years ago

Makes sense to me. Put another way, I am not sure how we'd come up with something different than both stationID and location to use as a station name.

maschu09 commented 5 years ago

@RocketD0g you captured exactly what I intended to say: station name shoul dremain under full control of the originating agency/data provider. The two suggestions I made were only meant to cast this into some very loose rules that can be used for creating databases and software that makes use of the location parameter, i.e. fixing a length and data type.