[IGS-DCWG-149] Re: Sitelog and Countries

[Fran Boler]

All-

Let's add to the agenda for the next teleconference these suggestions 
from Markus.

Fran



On 11/18/16 9:28 AM, Markus Bradke wrote:
> 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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Fran Boler, Ph.D.
Data Center Manager
Geodetic Data Services
UNAVCO
303.381.7453
boler at unavco.org
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