[IGS-DCWG-148] Re: Sitelog and Countries

[Markus Bradke]

Dear all,

Thanks for your quick response. The fact with the "Country" in section 2 
is what I explained to the guys from the UK Met Office.
They have a different opinion though since they are not interested in 
the political "ownership" of a station.
 From a geodetic point of view also a reasonable argument. I don't want 
to select all stations within France and get La Reunion back =)

The question is, what standard do we use within the site log? There is 
only one standard for that - ISO 3166.

I guess having the ISO country code in the file names could leadto 
problems in future anyway.
What happens if the country of a station changes?

We should find a solutionfor that in the new XML site log.

Maybe having two identifiers (Country Territorial and Country Division), 
e.g. for ASPA: US and AS.And in case they are equal only keep one.
They should get flagged with "valid from" and "valid to" timestamps. 
Then it would be much clearer also to allocatethe corresponding file 
names over time.
Or add "valid times" even for the 9 character station code.

Just an idea and a starting point for a discussion.

Have a nice weekend,
Markus

Am 18/11/2016 um 16:23 schrieb Giovanni Sella:
> Dear Markus,
>  For ASPA, CNMR, GUUG, since the IGS site log says country we can't 
> change this to anything other than US, it would be wrong. If the IGS 
> site log states ISO code then we should be able to. Its a minor point, 
> but it would break a number of DB's that are outside of IGS and are 
> the responsibility of the site operator's (my) agency!
>
>  Giovanni
>
> On 11/18/2016 10:16 AM, David Maggert wrote:
>> Markus,
>>
>> I don’t have an answer to this problem, but I can tell you how the 
>> long station names were built.  They were built with the country 
>> listed in section 2 of the site log.  So in the ASPA site log, the 
>> country is listed as the United States therefore it was assigned the 
>> country code of US.  If the country listed in the site log were 
>> American Samoa, then it would have been identified as AS.  This is 
>> the way all of the countries were setup.  Now since those were setup, 
>> I have been asked to change the country codes for some 
>> China/Taiwan/Hong Kong stations so those country codes now don’t all 
>> match the country listed in the site log section 2.  This kind of 
>> exception heads down a slippery slope of allowing station operators 
>> to have two differing values leading to confusion.  This “big” 
>> country vs island territory seems no different China/Taiwan/Hong Kong 
>> situation.  Another problem that could arise, what if the station 
>> operator decides five years down the road that they want to change 
>> the country ID to something else (think “big” country vs island) and 
>> now we have data files out there with two different country codes.  
>> That sounds like a big mess to me.  It will be interesting to see how 
>> this one plays out.
>>
>> Best Regards,
>> David
>>
>>> On Nov 18, 2016, at 4:01 AM, Markus Bradke <bradke at gfz-potsdam.de> 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi guys,
>>>
>>> I got confronted with a "problem" raised by the UK Met Office.
>>> I generate a new format for meteorological products and sent it to them
>>> for a check.
>>>
>>> Now I got the following answer back:
>>>
>>>
>>> "
>>> I also noticed that some of the ISO codes are incorrect.
>>> DGAR and DGAV in Diego Garcia have ISO [GB] but it should be [IO].
>>> ASPA has [US] instead of [AS]
>>> CNMR has [US] instead of [MP]
>>> GUUG has [US] instead of [GU]
>>> REUN has [FR] instead of [RE]
>>> STHL has [GB] instead of [SH]
>>>
>>> These are all appear to be islands which are associated to the country
>>> code that has been given but they should have the ISO code for the
>>> territory that it is in.
>>> "
>>>
>>> These are all IGS stations that politically belong to one of the "big"
>>> countries but have an own ISO code.
>>>
>>> Since nothing is really standardized or described in the current site
>>> log format, how do we proceed with that? I would like to give them a
>>> clear answer but at the moment I can't since "Country" in the site log
>>> can mean anything.
>>>
>>> If we adopt the ISO codes to the actual territory, that would mean a 
>>> lot
>>> of changes in the DC archives.
>>>
>>> Looking forward to some feedback.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Markus
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> M.Eng. Markus Bradke
>>>
>>> Helmholtz Centre Potsdam
>>> GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences
>>> Department 1: Geodesy
>>> Section 1.1 : Space Geodetic Techniques
>>>
>>> Telegrafenberg
>>> Building A17, Room 10.09
>>> D-14473 Potsdam
>>>
>>> Phone: +49 331 288-1182
>>> Fax  : +49 331 288-1759
>>> Mail : markus.bradke at gfz-potsdam.de
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>>
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