StAT Pattern
StAT (Standard Activity Template) was the name given to this design by a project manager at Monsanto. This is a template pattern that is customized for individual projects, but serves as a 'common core' that gives data interoperability. The component names came from standard BPM notation.
You will also find similarities with Data Warehouse star modeling. All of these sources see the 'heart' of the model being an activity (something associated with a date). Associated with this date (When) are the:
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Who
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What
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Where
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Status
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Who is the participant and/or the subject. The participant is the person or thing performing the event (ie. taking a measurement), and the subject is what they are measuring.
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What is the name of the activity being performed, the workflow step
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Where is the location of the activity. This may be a latitude and longitude, or the id of a plant, petri dish or machine.
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Status has three parts. There is an overall summary status (In Process, Success, Failure, Canceled), and a custom qualifier (why it failed). An optional comment is also a part of the status.
The main fields of the StAT pattern are:
A business process model is normally used to identify the activities. Each process step is an activity. For citizen science and small projects there often is not a business model, and the only "process" is an observation - the recording of a temperature or some other environmental factor.
Environmental observations are measurements about the environment, the context of the plants: temperature, humidity, lights, etc. These are captured by the participant, which is usually a sensor, but may be done by a person.
Environmental observations in a controlled environment are boring. They are only used to confirm that the perscription/plan was followed, that the thermostat kept the temperature where it was suppose to be.
In a natural setting, Environment Observations are usually the main concern and focus of research.
In plant studies, phenotype observations are critical.
These are measurements about the plant, or parts of the plant. These include height, weight, color, flavor and health. Normally these are recorded by a person, but could be derived from camera images.
Location becomes tricky. Simple observations are of a plant, using a plant id or possibly a pot id. The difficulty comes when the observation is made on a sub-part of the plant (third leaf from the bottom, second fruit harvested).
These are the events of planting seeds, treatments (adding water, fertilizer, etc) and harvesting.