Short description

The year in which an occurrence was observed.

Description

The year in which an occurrence was observed.

The ALA provides access to all records where a date, scientific name and location are given. However, occurrence records with a year value prior to 1700 should be treated carefully as identification is likely to have been retrospectively applied.

Invalid year values, for example, a year in the future, will be flagged with a data quality assertion.

In some cases occurrence records have been provided without a year value, these are populated with a year value of "Not Supplied".

Relevant standards

The ALA year format is compliant with ISO 8601, in that it is a Gregorian calendar and the expected input is a 4 unit digit [YYYY]. The year value is the most minimal date accepted by the ALA as a valid input.

For more information on ISO 8601 see: https://www.iso.org/iso-8601-date-and-time-format.html

Expert vocabulary

Not applicable. The format for the year values are set out in the standard, rather than being an authoritative list.

ALA usage

Year values range from the 1600s through to present day. Not all years have associated occurrence records. Where a year has not been provided, the occurrence record year value is populated with "Not Supplied".

Technical description, provenance, code

Superseded - this infrastructure is no longer in use by the ALA - https://github.com/AtlasOfLivingAustralia/biocache-store/blob/2bed497d30c2ea2d5240724736df0f35bd7cd36e/src/main/scala/au/org/ala/biocache/processor/EventProcessor.scala