In casaultb/azmpdata: A data package to share derived metrics from AZMP research documents

Discussion of Maritimes environmental data access, July 22, 2020

B. Casault, E. Chisholm, C. Layton, C. Johnson, M. McMahon

Meeting Minutes

• Discussed progress since last group meeting

• Emily, Chantelle and Benoit met to discuss organizing metrics into csv tables and worked on some metric names

• Metadata names and organization needs to be discussed

• some metadata will need to be merged into data tables

• some may be better in a seperate look up table

• Make a list of metadata required for each csv

• want to minimize linking to look up tables

• example where linking will be necessary is NAFO regions, auxillary info will contain polygon definitions

• Bottom nutrients and oxygen should be reported in NAFO regions (future work BC)

• gridded data will not be included in azmpdata but will go to Gordana's DB

• EC, CL and BC will work on defining lookup tables and any required regional definitions

• EC will intiate chat about remaining questionable variable names from azmpmetrics_v2.xlsx

• Do spatial definitions get included as flat files (eg. csv's) or as R spatial objects?

• MM concern that creating polygons from list of points is a hurdle for users
• Other side of that concern is that not all users may be familiar with spatial objects in R/ they may be unhappy with the type of spatial object (eg. sf vs sp packages)
• maybe there is some package functionality to plot/ visualize the polygons, which lets us control how the user sees the data
• If we use spatial objects can someone extract the points to use in a different format?
  • MM says a simple polygon would be easy to convert into a short flat file, but more complicated polygons may have thousands of points and be difficult to 'flatten'
• Best spatial package in R/ most popular right now is 'sf', Benoit supports this package
• CJ suggests starting with csv files for spatial info, then adding spatial objects later either in this package or more likely in another 'modular' package

• useful to include documentation on how to form csv files into polygons in R, and test to make sure the data included with the package is useable

• Make a list of wgat regions need defining & decide on format

• BC: What occupation metadata table will look like (for next time)

• Remote sensing data may be split off into a seperate package, need to discuss with Emmanuel (CJ)

• starting to write azmpdata

• functions and documentation
• work needs to be outlined, prioritized and delegated

• EC and BC will work on task list to share with group

• Next meeting (without Chantelle) will be August 19th at 2pm

casaultb/azmpdata documentation built on July 4, 2025, 11:04 a.m.