Data Guidelines

For a complete CEA dataset, we recommend at least 3 of the following data files.

  • Table for environmental data
  • Table for crop/biological data
  • Metadata: description of the dataset

Table for environmental data

  • High frequency time-series data
  • Logged automatically by sensors/actuators
enviroment data

Table for crop/biological data

  • Low frequency time-series data
  • Input by humans
crop data

Description file (metadata)

Necessary

  • Brief description of data, including date and location of the crop
  • Semantics and unit for each attribute
  • Data owner and contact info
  • Citation if published

Nice to have

  • Funding source
  • Specs of instruments and calibration method use, preferably following NCERA-101 Guidelines
  • Known problems limiting the data use
  • Names of data sets related to this set
  • [anything available and considered useful to other researchers]

For tabular data, CSV is recommended over Excel

CSV XLS
Text format Binary format
Only 1 table per CSV file Can embed multiple tables ("sheets")
Can track changes Can’t track changes
Can be opened in many programs, including Excel
(hence easier cross-dataset analysis)		 Can only be opened in Excel
Can be glanced on the browser

Help?

Please contact Site Manager (Kenneth Tran, x@kentran.net) for assistance.