[UDUNITS #HTW-289309]: CMIP5 metadata collection

Gerard,

> I am currently involved in the EU-funded METAFOR project, which has tasked
> by the WGCM to collect model and experiment/simulation metadata from
> each of the CMIP5 participants. Currently, we are in the final stages of
> developing an online tool to collect such metadata. This 'questionnaire'
> is heavily constrained by different sets of controlled vocabularies,
> which will eventually allow for more efficient information discovery
> and comparison.
> 
> We do not, at the moment, have a CV for 'units'.

CV?

> We are considering
> using the set of units outlined in your UDUNITS2 structure. However,
> the most practical way that we see of doing this is to compile 2 lists,
> the first being the prefixes, and the second being a compilation of the
> other 4 xml files you provide, and then exposing these as two side-by-side
> drop-down lists on the questionnaire webpage. I realise that not all
> the prefixes sensibly match up to all the units in the four files but
> this is something we can live with for now.
> 
> My question to you is is this a sensible thing to do,

Seems reasonable to me.  Because you're a scientific organization, however, I 
would think that you wouldn't need some of the units (e.g., "arpentlin").

> or are you aware
> of other maintained lists of units (climate-science related) that may
> suit our needs better?

Sorry, but no.

> Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Personally, I'd restrict the input units to be ISO-compliant (meters, 
kilograms, etc.) but allow the user to input a scale factor.  Probably wouldn't 
work, though, as different users would choose slightly different scale factors.

Good luck.

> Regards,
> Gerry Devine

Regards,
Steve Emmerson

Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: HTW-289309
Department: Support UDUNITS
Priority: Normal
Status: Closed