Purpose

The purpose of this document describes how WDI Implementations team collaborates with the Technical Working group to identify relevant metadata and address it as we encounter it when onboarding a new data source.

Metadata in SensorThings Implementations

The WDI Implementations team workload is largely driven by Use Cases defined by the NM Water Data Leads that address important questions that are considered valuable to New Mexico’s water data users. These Use Cases typically require the identification and integration of one or more new datasets sourced from our directing agencies and/or other sources. In the process of integrating these data sources, the Implementations Team performs transformation of the data set(s) into the SensorThings data model. This model defines general concepts (entities) that include Things, Locations, Datastreams, ObservedProperty, Sensor, Observation, FeatureOfInterest, as well as units of measurement that are integral to the classification of data from (sensing) devices which are the pervasive (, only?) source of data produced in water management. Of these SensorThings entity types, the following subset of entities in Table 1 are desired to have standardized names across data sources integrated by the Water Data Initiative:

The SensorThings data model accommodates any descriptive metadata that names or identifies an instance of any one of the SensorThings entity types identified in Table 1. For instance, an ObservedProperty instance name may be called ‘Meter Reading' which has specific meaning in the context of the Water Data Initiative. The goal is that all such names and/or descriptions for the occurrence of the entity types listed in Table 1 are consistent across all data source integrations for all entity types that are thought to refer to the same type of thing (i.e. Meter Reading as an observed property).

The goal in Implementations is then to ensure that when naming instances of the SensorThings entity types in Table 1 that we ensure that the names either 1) exist in our controlled vocabulary service or 2) are subject to a review process by the Technical Working group to determine a standardized name for the entity type.

After a name is decided for a newly encountered entity type, it is incorporated into the Controlled Vocabulary service for referencing when servicing SensorThings requests from users.

Workflow

The following flow diagram is a FIRST DRAFT attempt to model how metadata curation is incorporated into the WDI workflow starting with onboarding a new dataset.

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