RE: Event significance

On 10 March, Misha wrote:

> Our journalists want to be able to indicate the significance of an 
> event to one or more entities.  Consider hurricane Katrina.  It 
> had a high significance to (among others) New Orleans, Louisiana, 
> the oil industry.  So how could we indicate this in NewsML 2?

[...]

> So how can we design in significance?  My current thinking is that 
> we:
> 
> -  Add a significance attribute to the subject element.
> 
> -  State that when this attribute is applied to a subject which 
>    represents an entity, then the value of the attribute represents 
>    the significance to that entity of any nearby subject which 
>    represents an event.

A better approach would be to add a <significance/> child element 
to the <subject/> element denoting the affected entity, with a link 
of some kind to the event.  What kind of link?  There seem to be 
two options:

1. An "idref" attribute linking to a <subject/> element denoting 
   the event, eg:

   <subject code="iso3166-2:US-LA" relevance="80" confidence="80" 
       created="2005-08-29">
     <sameAs code="usps:LA"/>
     <childOf code="iso3166-1:US"/>
     <title xml:lang="en">Louisiana</title>
     <title xml:lang="fr">Louisiane</title>
     <significance idref="foo">80</significance>
     <significance idref="bar">80</significance>
   </subject>

   <subject code="nc:03007000" type="typ:event" id="foo">
     <childOf code="nc:03000000"/>
     <title xml:lang="en">Meteorological disaster</title>
     <title xml:lang="fr">Désastre météorologique</title>
   </subject>

   <subject code="nc:03005000" type="typ:event" id="bar">
     <childOf code="nc:03000000"/>
     <title xml:lang="en">Flood</title>
     <title xml:lang="fr">Inondation</title>
   </subject>

2. A "code" or "about" attribute holding the CURIE of the event, eg:

   <subject code="iso3166-2:US-LA" relevance="80" confidence="80" 
       created="2005-08-29">
     <sameAs code="usps:LA"/>
     <childOf code="iso3166-1:US"/>
     <title xml:lang="en">Louisiana</title>
     <title xml:lang="fr">Louisiane</title>
     <significance code="nc:03007000">80</significance>
     <significance code="nc:03005000">80</significance>
   </subject>

   <subject code="nc:03007000" type="typ:event">
     <childOf code="nc:03000000"/>
     <title xml:lang="en">Meteorological disaster</title>
     <title xml:lang="fr">Désastre météorologique</title>
   </subject>

   <subject code="nc:03005000" type="typ:event">
     <childOf code="nc:03000000"/>
     <title xml:lang="en">Flood</title>
     <title xml:lang="fr">Inondation</title>
   </subject>

I'm inclined towards the second option.

A note on events vs event types: Though I use the term *event* in 
the above, what I'm describing is really an *event type*.  A 
hurricane (or a meteorological disaster) is an instance of an 
event type, while Hurricane Katrina is an instance of an actual 
event of that type.

We need to be able to "speak" of both events and event types.  It 
is not valuable or even feasible to give every event an identity 
(ie a URI) which would make it possible to make statements about it.
It is more plausible to give URIs to event types and to significant 
events.

Misha
------------------- NewsML 2 resources ------------------------------
http://www.iptc.org/        | http://www.iptc.org/NAR/
http://www.iptc.org/NAR/1.0 | http://groups.yahoo.com/group/newsml-2/


To find out more about Reuters visit www.about.reuters.com

Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender specifically states them to be the views of Reuters Ltd.

Received on Saturday, 11 March 2006 19:44:04 UTC