18186
Reporter: feedback bot
Type: Feedback
Summary: Location is the United States
Resolution: Fixed
Status: Closed
Created: 2016-01-30 20:14:15.284
Updated: 2017-10-05 20:39:36.485
Resolved: 2017-10-05 20:39:36.464
Description: I originally posted this observation on iNaturalist. The photo was taken in the United States near the Mexican border.
*Reporter*: FAC TRACKER
*E-mail*: [mailto:even_star@hughes.net]]]>
Author: cgendreau
Created: 2016-02-01 09:37:57.24
Updated: 2016-02-01 09:37:57.24
The problem here is related to "Coordinate uncertainty increased by 10000m at the request of the observer" pushing the coordinates in Mexico. It is also too far so our "buffer" will not pickup as a US/Mexico (http://api.gbif.org/v1/geocode/reverse?lng=-110.60143&lat=31.25007) possibility. Combined to the fact that the country is not provided we change the country to Mexico (we do no interpret the verbatimLocality).
Checking with [~jlegind@gbif.org] to inquire if iNaturalist could provide the Country code and with [~hoefft] if we could display the uncertaintyInMeter on the map.
I will contact the reporter.
Author: rdmpage
Comment: [~cgendreau@gbif.org] This raises the question of what "coordinate uncertainty" actually means. By default I'd assumed that it was a measure of the precision of the georeferrencing (i.e, "this is where it is +/- this amount of uncertainty") but in this case it means "we know where it is but we are obscuring that information". I guess at one level the practical consequence for GBIF is the same (there's a zone of uncertainty around the point locality) but the causes are rather different. Might be nice long term to think about distinguishing these two causes, especially as they would have implications for where the occurrence actually is. An obscured record presumably relies on an algorithm to enclose the point locality in some way that doesn't reveal where the occurrence is, whereas if I'm looking at an uncertain record I might assume that the true location is more likely to be near the centre of the uncertainty polygon than, say, the margins.
Created: 2016-02-01 10:03:35.397
Updated: 2016-02-01 10:03:35.397
Author: mdoering@gbif.org
Comment: I've opened a new issue for showing the uncertainty: http://dev.gbif.org/issues/browse/POR-3019
Created: 2016-02-01 10:25:41.644
Updated: 2016-02-01 10:25:41.644
Author: cgendreau
Created: 2016-02-01 10:36:56.112
Updated: 2016-02-01 10:36:56.112
I agree.
Current Dwc terms http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/#informationWithheld and http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/dataGeneralizations can capture such information but their freetext nature makes it difficult to clearly detect the exact cause.
Author: jlegind@gbif.org
Comment: iNaturalist has been contacted.
Created: 2016-02-08 11:49:36.278
Updated: 2016-02-08 11:49:36.278
Author: kueda
Comment: Hi folks. The countryCode field will be present the next time we generate the DwC-A you consume (next Thursday). We can fill in informationWithheld and dataGeneralizations too if you think it would help, and if there are any controlled vocabs we can use for those values, even better. Please file issues for such things at https://github.com/inaturalist/inaturalist/issues/.
Created: 2016-03-05 08:02:28.193
Updated: 2016-03-05 08:02:28.193