How to add and edit a location

What is it?

On the Water Rangers data platform, data is organized into locations within a dataset. A location is a specific place in the world where water quality testing is conducted. A location may contain many observations over a period of time.

Data structure hierarchy: Organization, dataset, location, observation, reading

Why is it important?

A location is where you get the full picture of a site. One observation is a snapshot, but a location pulls together every observation ever taken there, so you can compare them and see how things change over time, season to season, year to year. That's how you catch things like oxygen levels dipping every August, or notice a site's stayed healthy for years running.

Who is responsible in your organization?

Anyone who is a member of the dataset can create a new location. If you are the owner of the location you can edit it. Dataset administrators can edit all locations within the dataset.

Dataset administrators are responsible for assigning locations to data contributors. Assigning a location to a volunteer makes it appear in that person’s persona dashboard, to make it easier to regularly add data to it.

How do you do it?

For data explorers and contributors

Data explorers who are not members of the dataset cannot create or edit locations.

Data contributors who are members or admins of the dataset can add a new location by navigating to the locations tab in the sub-menu. Click on the drop-down arrow beside the word “Summary” and select locations or click on the # of locations in the summary stats.

If you are the owner of a location, you can also edit it to change the exact pin coordinates, reference image and description to provide more details about the site.

For dataset administrators

Dataset administrators can follow the same workflow to add new locations as data contributors, though there are two other options available to you.

Use the admin menu bar to quickly create a new location
Import historical data from a CSV to bulk create multiple new locations at once.

Dataset administrators can edit all locations in their dataset.