Dear API users,
Based on the recommendations from the GBIF Data Fitness
for Use in Distribution Modelling group and user feedback,
the GBIF Informatics team decided to apply some changes to
the GBIF API for the occurrences[1] response. We decided to
deprecate the field "coordinateAccuracy" in favor of the
DarwinCore terms based fields
"coordinateUncertaintyInMeters"[2] and
"coordinatePrecision"[3] as provided(see details below) by
the data publishers.
The JSON response will remain the same structure except:
- coordinateAccuracy will never be found since it will be
null and null values are not provided explicitly (same as
the current behaviour for most records)
- coordinateUncertaintyInMeters and coordinatePrecision
will be included (example: coordinateUncertaintyInMeters:
1000, coordinatePrecision: 0.0001)
These changes should not break existing applications
using the JSON API, and therefore as a non breaking change
can be included in the V1 of our API as an enhancement.
Details:
-coordinateUncertaintyInMeters:
DarwinCore definition: "The horizontal distance (in
meters) from the given decimalLatitude and decimalLongitude
describing the smallest circle containing the whole of the
Location. Leave the value empty if the uncertainty is
unknown, cannot be estimated, or is not applicable (because
there are no coordinates). Zero is not a valid value for
this term."
GBIF comment: double, must be greater and not equals to 0
and lower than 5000000 (5000 km), as provided by data
publishers with unit stripped (if the value is provided in
imperial, conversion will be applied), related issue
OccurrenceIssue.COORDINATE_UNCERTAINTY_METERS_INVALID.
-coordinatePrecision:
DarwinCore definition: "A decimal representation of the
precision of the coordinates given in the decimalLatitude
and decimalLongitude."
GBIF comment: double, must be between 0 and 1, elated
occurrence issue
OccurrenceIssue.COORDINATE_PRECISION_INVALID
We expect the changes to be available next week (between
11-15 April 2016).
The GBIF Informatics team
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