SDD proposal: General modifiers

TDWG working group: Structure of Descriptive Data (SDD)

Introduction

[needs to be written!]

Important points: should multiple general modifiers be allowed? Should location modifiers be separated out? Perhaps Spatial and temporal modifiers? The rest as a catch all remaining cases then only a single time? However, no special properties of other modifier classes have been identified so far!

Reasons to separate frequency and certainty modifiers from general modifiers:

• Special attributes have been identified (frequency and probability range)
• For analysis it is helpful if each state is associated only with a single frequency or probability range.

Proposal

Preliminary proposal: Introduce general modifiers as a catch-all for all modification statements other than frequency and probability (the latter including the misinterpretation modifiers). Allow multiple general modifiers on each state in a description.

Request for discussion

Please send your criticism or suggestions to the SDD mailing list or to the author.

Gregor Hagedorn; Vers. 1; 12. November 2003