Project Information Requirements

Certain information is required so that users can obtain the information about the projects with GAIA. Some information is specific to the projects, other information is specific to a station or data channel.

Project Information

The following information about a project is required:

Project name

name of the project (eg Imaging Riometer for Ionospheric Studies).

Project abbreviation

upper case, no spaces or underscores allowed. Must be unique within GAIA, and allocated on first-come first-served basis (eg IRIS).

Project institutions

insitution(s) who should be credited. For each institute the following information is required:

Name

name of institute (eg University of Calgary).

Location 1

Town or city (eg Calgary).

Location 2

State, or province (eg Alberta). May be empty.

Country

country where institute is located (eg Canada).

URL

Web address of institute (eg http://www.phys.ucalgary.ca/).

Address

Full postal address. USe semi-colons ( ;) to indicate new lines.

Project PI(s)

Principal investigator(s) for the project. For each PI the following information is required:

First (given) name

Surname (family name)

We should probably have something to support non-European names where family is printed first. Advice sought! -- SteveMarple - 27 Mar 2007

Email address

note that email address are stored with weak encryption and that JavaScript is used to convert to a human-readable form, so we prefer to include the valid email address, instead of obfuscating it with nospam and similar words.

URL

Homepage for the PI. May be blank.

Institute

Home institute for the PI. Institute details as above.

Project contact(s)

Anyone else who should be named in association with the project. Details required are the same as for PIs.

Project URL(s)

Any URLs which should be referenced with the project. Multiple URLs are permitted.

Station Information

Associated with a project are one or more stations where data is recorded. Usually the stations are static, but satellites are recorded as non-static locations. The following information is required:

Abbreviation

the abbreviation by which a station is known. (eg KIL). The station abbreviation must be unique within a project, but the same abbreviation can be used by different projects (and can refer to different stations). Similarly, the same station used by different projects may be known by different abbreviations. Note: the abbreviation should not contain any spaces or underscores. Also, if the station abbreviation is a single letter it has to be in uppercase.

Location 1

Place name (eg Kilpisjärvi). Non-ASCII characters can be used.

Location 2

State or province. May be blank.

Country

The country in which the station is located. ( Antarctica is accepted even though it is officially a continent.)

Latitude

Geographic latitude of the station.

Longitude

Geographic latitude of the station.
Do we want geographic or geodetic latitude? Probably whatever a GPS normally outputs. -- SteveMarple - 27 Mar 2007
We are talking about maybe a hundred meter difference in location — I don't think it matters at all, and if it does then the data users can contact the PI. -- MikkoSyrjaesuo - 30 Mar 2007

Channel Information

Associated with a station are one or more data channels. The data channels may originate from separate instruments (eg a riometer and meridian-scanning photometer) or from the same instrument (eg 557.7 nm and 630 nm filters on the same auroral camera). For each channel the following information is required:

Channel type

see below.

Start date

(inclusive) date when data recording started.

End date

(exclusive) date when data recording stopped. For ongoing data use 2020-01-01.
Previously we used 9999-01-01 but that causes problems since it cannot be expressed as a unixtime variable -- SteveMarple - 16 Apr 2008.

Frame of reference

The frame of reference for the summary images. Usually earth for ground-based data and earth-sun for satellite data. See ImageOrientation for more details.

Orientation

The orientation of the keograms and thumbnail images. See ImageOrientation for more details.

Has keograms

Boolean value indicating if keograms are available. Normally TRUE. Widebeam riometer data is the only exception at present.

Has thumbnails

Boolean value indicating if thumbnail images are available. Normally TRUE. Widebeam riometer data and meridian scanning photometers are the only exceptions at present.

Default palette

The palette used for mapping greyscale images into colour when the user has not set a specific mapping.

Synchronisation details

URL from where other GAIA nodes can synchronise their summary images describe in more detail on separate page.

Definitive node

Which GAIA node holds the master copy of the dataset.

Summary data format string

A strftime format string specifying the location of any summary data, relative to the project directory (thereby allowing different stations and data channels to share the same CDF data files). This option is not required for most datasets, but is required for channels which do not have keograms (eg widebeam riometer data).

CDF data lookup name

Required only for widebeam riometer data. The variable name which should be used to find the column number in the Data variable of a CDF file (eg Sites).

CDF data lookup value

Required only for widebeam riometer data. The value to look for in the CDF data lookup variable. Can be a regular expression (eg ^(GILL|Gillam)).

Channel Type

GAIA records details about specific channel types. Known types are:

Greyscale optical data with a filter

140-170nm, 170nm, 427.8nm, 470.9nm, 486.1nm, 557.5nm, 589.3nm, 630.0nm, 777.4nm, 844.6nm, and OH-bands.

Greyscale optical data

no filter (greyscale).

Colour optical data

RGB (colour, recorded with red, green and blue channels) and CMYG (colour, recorded with cyan, magenta, yellow and green colour channels).

Ionospheric absorption data

absorption (normally recorded by riometer or imaging riometer).