Re: [sdw] Question about derived results (#1144)

There is another aspect that seems particularly challenging for the heterogeneity of the Citizen Science domain, but is prevalent in any system-of-systems view too is that the level of abstraction of the ObservableProperty is an implementation choice.  At the OGC the Decision Support WG looked at registering sensor models and parameters in OGC Definitions Server - and we had to push back because there was significant inconsistency in approach here that needed further untangling.

The main options seem to be (crudely stated)
1) the underlying type of measured quantity for the physical phenomenon - e.g. Temperature 
2) The intended meaning of the measurement (e.g. sea surface temperature)
3) The sampling protocol - exact specification of what is being measured
4) the name of the attribute of the feature of interest (which may be dereferenceable to find its semantics)

There are probably other options.

Each of them is a choice that pushes description responsibility in different ways to the way we handle feature (class) description, observedProperty, usedProcedure , madeBySensor and other parameterisations.  SSN is currently agnostic about this choice (AFIACT - and I tracked the development and had some input into its modularity in particular, so I may have missed some perspective here - but I seem to be in good company ), 

The need to narrow down such implementation choices, and explain what you have done is a driving force for some work being done on an ontology to describe profiles of standards (https://www.w3.org/TR/dx-prof/).  (you wont find much about SSN here - as this would have taken these debates too deeply into details when we are looking at a very general need)

For example, we could define a profile of SSN where the observedProperty is a named attribute of the FeatureType of the FeatureOfInterest, 

we could then create a profile of that profile where the attribute is dereferencable to a canonical description model of how the attribute relates to the underlying phenomenon.

This would appear to be the bare minimum to support interoperability to a degree sufficiently to identify the underlying phenomenon being measured for this implementation choice (i.e. the competency question for an ontology based on SSN)

I'd be interested in the takes on this from other  experts in the group, and it would be useful if @jennet and others could contribute examples to drive Use Cases for this.

@dr-shorthair - is this matter appropriate for the SSN extensions (and if so I'll put my hand up to contribute to it) - or is a separate activity required?  (I suspect the latter as its not really extensions so much as implementation patterns)





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Received on Thursday, 14 November 2019 22:07:31 UTC