@emiliom any experience with this from your NANOOS days?

@MathewBiddle The only legacy connection I know of to the sector attribute we use in the IOOS Metadata Profile is to the IOOS SOS/SWE schema/guidelines. That can be found here (look for operatorSector).

AFAIK, sector was carried over from the SOS/SWE guideline to the IOOS Metadata Profile so that a netCDF dataset that met the requirements of the original 1.1 version of the IOOS Metadata Profile could be converted to match the SOS/SWE conventions XML formats using ncSOS software.

Since we're no longer requiring SOS/SWE, I think we could drop sector attribute entirely in a future version of the IOOS Metadata Profile if it was no longer important to us, or we could update the vocabulary in MMISW if we have access to do that. Either option seems reasonable.

We did use the "tribal" sector value for a couple of assets in NANOOS. It didn't raise issues with our partners, BUT, they probably were not aware of the existence of this metadata. Still, this being a fully US context, that part would probably not have been an issue. Changing it to "indigenous" would make sense, though I suggest that would be an opportunity to engage tribal partners about this terminology and associated descriptions. I'd be happy to facilitate some connections if you'd like. You'd also have to think about what to do with existing uses of "tribal".

I believe the motivation for having a sector controlled vocabulary at all came from the IOOS asset inventory needs. If that need is still there (I imagine it is), I'd think you'd want to retain it in the IOOS Metadata Profile.

The issue with "country" seems much trickier, and one I never dealt with. I imagine that not having US or Canada (as the case may be) in a machine actionable form under "country" could easily lead to unintended results when querying and inventorying assets. I wouldn't be surprised if there exists a clear (if not widely adopted) terminology that represents the relationship and distinction between a country and an indigenous nation. For example, in our usual contexts, country is an entity that has a ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code. Anyway, that's out of my depth.

@emiliom and @mwengren thank you both for the context and discussion points.

As I can't seem to find other examples of these changes I think it would be worthwhile for the IOOS community to discuss and explore the options. From what I can see now, here are the action items to be discussed:

• adjust mmi description and name for the sector - tribal term (https://mmisw.org/ont/ioos/sector/tribal) to indigenous and updating the description to include Tribes and First Nations.
• Identify an appropriate vocabulary for the various *_country attributes (we don't identify a vocabulary for these now).

@MathewBiddle Thinking of options to resolve the sector vocabulary question: what if we add more terms to the corresponding vocabulary, rather than changing the existing tribal term? See: https://mmisw.org/ont/ioos/sector. Would that impact the Asset Inventory if indigenous or first_nation were both added?

For the creator_country and publisher_country attributes in the IOOS Metadata Profile, I think I agree with @emiliom that those were intended to be countries recognized in the ISO standard he cited, so they could be mapped to a traditional contact info XML blurb such as the example below from the IOOS SOS Guidelines:

<sml:ResponsibleParty>
  <sml:organizationName>PNW Buoys</sml:organizationName>
  <sml:contactInfo>
    <sml:address>
      <sml:deliveryPoint>1007 Balch Blvd.</sml:deliveryPoint>
      <!-- Optional: City; but strongly encouraged  -->
      <sml:city>Fremont</sml:city>
      <sml:administrativeArea>WA</sml:administrativeArea>
      <sml:postalCode>98195</sml:postalCode>
      <!-- Required: country [Values: USA|<COUNTRY NAME>|NON-USA] -->
      <sml:country>USA</sml:country>
      <!-- Required: electronicMailAddress -->
      <sml:electronicMailAddress>contact@buoys.com</sml:electronicMailAddress>
    </sml:address>
    <!-- Optional: onlineResource; but strongly encouraged for operator -->
    <sml:onlineResource xlink:href="http://pnw.buoyoperator.org"/>
  </sml:contactInfo>
</sml:ResponsibleParty>

Having said that though, we don't mention that vocabulary restriction anywhere in the attribute descriptions like you mentioned, so that was probably just assumed. Technically speaking, anything could be entered in those attributes and they would be 'compliant' with our profile.

Not sure how to handle that one. Maybe we can leave it open ended as it is and as long as data providers understand the purpose of the attribute is to create a mailing address-like metadata collection, they can include any country identifier they prefer?

Any other ideas out there?

@mwengren I haven't used Operator sector for a request on the asset inventories. That doesn't mean we don't need it, but we probably are okay with adding in new terms - as long as we're not deprecating or changing the meaning of the existing one.

For reference, here are the unique Operator_sector terms we currently have in the inventory (2019-2021) http://erddap.ioos.us/erddap/tabledap/raw_asset_inventory.htmlTable?Operator_Sector&distinct()&orderBy(%22Operator_Sector%22)

@kbailey-noaa do you have any insights into how we use the Operator_sector for the Asset Inventory?

@kbailey-noaa is okay with making these adjustments.

@emiliom @fgayanilo I was going to update the terms in https://mmisw.org/ont/ioos/sector as described here, but I need permission to edit the vocabularies owned by 'ioos' in MMISW. How does one get access to this? My newly-created account ID on MMISW is: mwengren.

@emiliom It appears you are the author of the sector vocabulary, that's why I included you in my request.

TIA!

Could you add me too? username: mathewbiddle

there is an account for user= ioos with admin access for the collection. You can reset the password -- I think the account is registered to Derrick (@carueda I lost my "Admin" tab)

@fgayanilo – We (I and @graybeal) would be happy to assist with https://mmisw.org/ont stuff but I'm afraid I don't understand what the specific need is.

@carueda NOAA IOOS wants to update the vocabulary they maintain (IOOS collections). Matt Biddle (username=mathewbiddle) and Micah Wengren (username=mwengren) want to update their collection. We created an account with username=ioos (if my memory serves me right) for this purpose, but I cannot remember the profile for that user. Perhaps, you can help reset the password for that account.

Thanks @fgayanilo ...

I just added those users as members to the ioos organization.

Thanks, I see the 'Edit new version' button now. This should do the trick. I'm not sure how actively we plan to maintain all of these vocabularies, most aren't in active use at this point, but we do need to make a few changes to this particular one.

I'm glad I saw this after it had already been resolved 😄 !

Brings back memories.

Thanks all! The https://mmisw.org/ont/ioos/sector vocabulary has now been updated to include the terms indigenous and first_nation.

Reading the vocabulary description more closely, I realized we're going against our own recommendations there (to use gov_state for example to represent Canadian provinces), but I think it's best just to go ahead with the new terms as we decided.

I will leave this open so we can remember (hopefully) to add a vocabulary reference for the _country attributes in the IOOS Metadata Profile as referenced here.