Attribution - OpenWaterFoundation/owf-data-co-river-outfitters GitHub Wiki

The data sources for this dataset are listed below.

• This dataset began as a list of river outfitters who have River Outfitter License IDs as assigned by Colorado Parks and Wildlife. The list is in PDF format and is current as of July 2017. The PDF's contents were copied and pasted into an Excel spreadsheet. These data are the source for the RiverOutfitterName and ROL_ID data columns. If the "Additional DBA Names if Applicable:" data column (DBA = doing business as) in the original dataset was filled out, then that column was used for the RiverOutfitterName column. For example, Rocky Mountain Adventures replaced the parent company name Ignacious Ventures because the "doing business as" name is likely to be more well known and is the basis for outfitter websites. This means that some river outfitters who have the same parent company also have the same ROL_ID.
• The BusinessEntity_ID is from the Colorado Information Marketplace's Business Entities in Colorado dataset and is a state-assigned identification number. Because this dataset contains over 1.6 million records, OWF first filtered the dataset based on the words "adventure", "river", "angler", "raft", "guide", "whitewater" and "flyfish". This reduced the number of records to about 12,600 and this dataset was saved in CSV format. This file was then reformatted and joined to the river outfitter dataset using a TSTool command file (Process-original-data.TSTool). Note that this only joined BusinessEntity_IDs for some outfitters due to misspelling of names or if the outfitter was not in the original dataset due to limitations in filtering data. This dataset is also the source for the Business_Address, Business_Municipality, State, Business_ZipCode and Formation_Date data columns. At this time, the business address of the parent company is listed, rather than a more local physical address of the outfitter. This may change to local addresses in a future version.
• The Colorado Department of Local Affairs (DOLA)'s Local Government Information System uses a local government ID (LG ID) for municipalities. OWF is using DOLA_LG_ID instead of LG ID to add more description to the identifier. Municipality_DOLA_LG_IDs come from the Colorado Municipalities dataset created by OWF.
• Each river outfitter has a business or physical address listed in the dataset, but not latitude/longitude coordinates. To obtain coordinate data, the dataset was opened in Google Sheets. An add-on named Geocode by Awesome Table can take an address and convert it to coordinates, as long as the street address, city, state and zip code are provided. Note that the coordinates are for business offices and may not necessarily be the same as the local office, especially if the river outfitter is owned by a parent company.
• The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)'s Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is the Federal and national standard for geographic nomenclature. The USGS developed the GNIS in support of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names as the official repository of domestic geographic names data. Most streams in Colorado have a GNIS Name and GNIS ID. GNIS names and identifiers are also used within the Source Water Route Framework, a spatial data layer that contains measured, named streams from the National Hydrography Dataset. GNIS names were confirmed for each outfitter by viewing the outfitter's website to determine on which streams rafting services are provided.
• The Colorado River Outfitters Association (CROA) is a trade association that represents professional river rafting outfitters. The website lists the CROA members that operate on specific rivers. Links to outfitter websites are also provided. This website is the source of the CROA_Member and Website data columns.