Thank you for clarifying! I’d hear the term “population equivalent” before for measuring the capacity of a wastewater treatment plant, but “inhabitant equivalent” was new to me.
It’s an interesting point you bring up, and I’d like to hear more of your perspective. As it stands, because polygons and sites can be many different kinds of areas or places, we don’t store capacity as metadata in those tables any longer since it would be empty very often. Instead, capacity is recorded as a site measure (like the ones from your question here: Where to report sites characteristic data).
In practice, this may look something like this (some columns removed for clarity):
Polygons:
| Polygon ID | … | Name | … | Polygon Population | Geography Type | … |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| brxHlth01 | … | Bruxelles Health Region | … | 1,200,000 | Health Region | … |
| bxlSewer01 | … | Bruxelles Sewer catchment area 01 | … | 700,000 | Sewer catchment Area | … |
| bxlSewer02 | … | Bruxelles Sewer catchment area 02 | … | 500,000 | Sewer catchment Area | … |
Sites:
| Site ID | … | Polygon ID | Site Type | Sample Shed | … | Name | … | Population Served | … |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| wwtpBRXnorth | … | bxlSewer01 | Wastewater treatment plant | Municipality | … | WWTP Bruxelles Nord | … | 700,000 | … |
| wwtpBRXsouth | … | bxlSewer02 | Wastewater treatment plant | Municipality | … | WWTP Bruxelles Sud | … | 500,000 | … |
Measures:
| Report ID | … | Polygon ID | Site ID | Dataset ID | … | Compartment | Specimen | … | Measure | Value | Unit | Aggregation | … |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| measRepX0 | … | bxlSewer01 | wwtpBRXnorth | wwBelgium | … | water | sample | … | covN1 | 0.00243 | gc/mL | mean | … |
| siteRepX | … | bxlSewer01 | wwtpBRXnorth | wwBelgium | … | water | site | … | WWTP Capacity | 1,200,000 | population equivalents | single | … |
| siteRepY | … | bxlSewer02 | wwtpBRXsouth | wwBelgium | … | water | site | … | WWTP Capacity | 1,500,000 | population equivalents | single | … |
I think with this example you can see how the site measures and the details on the sites and polygons can link together. But my question to you, and where I’d like to hear more of your input, is:
a) whether you this makes sense to you, and
b) if you think this is adequate for storing this kind of information.
If you think that it should be made a metadata header for sites again, I’m happy to hear that feedback as well. Let me know!