Are "survey time blocks"-related terms really needed? in HC

[pzermoglio]

The following three terms in HC refer to "survey time blocks":

• Original HC survey time blocks definition:

  The time blocks in which surveys were performed, either in sum or by site.

• Original HC number of time units spent surveying in each block definition:

  The number of (months, days, hours) spent in each time block.

• Original HC temporal unit definition:

  The temporal units described for the time block (months, days, years)

. It has been suggested that these should be part of dwc:samplingEffort, currently defined as:

The amount of effort expended during an Event.

and with the following examples: 40 trap-nights, 10 observer-hours, 10 km by foot, 30 km by car

. :scissors: :question:'s

• Do we really need these three HC terms to be separate from sampling effort?
• How much granularity a) would we like to see, and b) are we likely to see in real data to justify separate terms?
• What would this information be used for? specially if very heterogeneous.

other :grey_question:

• Looking at those original definitions, how do we define time blocks exactly...? (@robgur)

[tucotuco]

The definitions for these terms aren't very clear. The second and third ones together look like a duration for the blocks. I take it that a block is an uninterrupted time period. The first one, since it can be summed, must be a count since the second one already accounts for the other summable quantity - duration. In keeping with Darwin Core patterns, I would commit to a unit for the duration and have that be a part of the term name. I think that would serve to make quantities much more readily comparable. I would deprecate the temporal unit term.

If these are reasonable interpretations of the intention of the terms, and if these concepts are actually needed separately, then I would propose the following two term names and definitions:

surveyBlockCount - "The number of distinct survey periods within an Event." Example: 4 surveyBlockDurationInHours - "The duration (in hours) of survey periods within an Event." Example: 0.25

If they don't need to be separate, then the dwc:samplingEffort would work to capture the product of count and duration for a given event. Example matching those above: "4 blocks of 15 minutes each"

[pzermoglio]

Two new terms created from group discussion:

eventDuration: definition: Time spent sampling (in the unit reported in eventDurationUnit). comments: A eventDuration should have a corresponding eventDurationUnit. examples: 1, 30

eventDurationUnit: definition: The temporal unit used to report eventDuration. comments: A eventDurationUnit should have a corresponding eventDuration. examples: minutes, hours, days, months, years

[tucotuco]

The Extension proposal ended having eventDuration and eventDurationUnit.