Select locations based on XG3 availability and XG3 series' properties

Source: R/selectlocs.R

Select locations that comply with user-specified conditions, from a dataset as returned by get_xg3, or from a list with the outputs of eval_xg3_avail and eval_xg3_series. Conditions can be specified for each of the summary statistics returned by eval_xg3_avail and eval_xg3_series.

selectlocs_xg3(
  data,
  xg3_type = NULL,
  max_gap = NULL,
  min_dur = NULL,
  conditions,
  verbose = TRUE,
  list = FALSE
)

Arguments

data

Either an object returned by get_xg3, or a named list of two tibbles: "avail" and "ser". In the latter case, "avail" must be the output of eval_xg3_avail and "ser" must be the output of eval_xg3_series, whereby each function was applied to the same dataset and used the same setting for the xg3_type argument. See Details.
xg3_type

Only relevant when data is an object formatted as returned by get_xg3. In that case, must be a character vector of length 1, 2 or 3, which will default to "L" if not specified. Defines the types of XG3 which are taken from data for the eval_xg3_xxx() functions. Specifies the 'X' in 'XG3': either "L", "H" and/or "V". Together with the available variables in data, xg3_type determines the meaning of the variable "combined".
max_gap

A positive integer (can be zero). It is part of what the user defines as 'an XG3 series': the maximum allowed time gap between two consecutive XG3 values in a series, expressed as the number of years without XG3 value.
min_dur

A strictly positive integer. It is part of what the user defines as 'an XG3 series': the minimum required duration of an XG3 series, i.e. the time (expressed as years) from the first to the last year of the XG3 series.
conditions

A dataframe. See the devoted section below.
verbose

Logical. If TRUE, give feedback on dropped locations because of (specific) unused conditions and other 'mismatch' reasons.
list

Logical. If FALSE (the default), the function only returns the end-result (a tibble with selected location codes). If TRUE, the function returns a list with the end-result plus useful intermediate results (see Value).

Value

If list = FALSE: a tibble with one column loc_code that provides the locations selected by the conditions.

If list = TRUE: a list of tibbles that extends the previous end-result with intermediate results. The below elements nrs. 2 and 3 are only given when at least one XG3 availability condition was given, nrs. 4, 5 and 6 only when at least one XG3 series condition was given, and nr. 7 is only returned when both types of condition were given. All list elements are named:

  1. combined_result_filtered: the end-result, same as given by list = FALSE.

  2. result_avail: the test result of each computed and tested availability statistic for each location and XG3 variable: 'condition met' (cond_met) is TRUE or FALSE.

  3. combined_result_avail: aggregation of result_avail per location. Specific columns: cond_met_avail is TRUE if all availability conditions for that location were TRUE, and is FALSE in all other cases. pct_cond_met_avail is the percentage of 'met' availability conditions per location.

  4. result_series: the test result of each computed and tested series statistic for each location and XG3 series: 'condition met' (cond_met) is TRUE or FALSE.

  5. combined_result_series_xg3var: aggregation of result_series per location and XG3 variable. Two consecutive aggregation steps are involved here:

    1. per XG3 series: are all series conditions met?

    2. per XG3 variable: is there at least one series where all series conditions are met?

    Specific columns: all_ser_cond_met_xg3var is the answer to question 2 (TRUE/FALSE). avg_pct_cond_met_nonpassed_series is the average percentage (for a location and XG3 variable) of 'met' series conditions in the series where not all conditions were met. (Note that the same percentage is 100 for series where all conditions are met, leading to all_ser_cond_met_xg3var = TRUE at the level of location and XG3 variable.)

  6. combined_result_series: aggregation of combined_result_series_xg3var per location. Specific columns: cond_met_series is TRUE if all XG3 variables (that have series and on which series conditions were imposed) were TRUE in the previous aggregation (all_ser_cond_met_xg3var = TRUE), and is FALSE in all other cases. pct_xg3vars_passed_ser is the percentage of a location's XG3 variables (that have series and on which series conditions were imposed) that were TRUE in the previous aggregation (all_ser_cond_met_xg3var = TRUE). avg_pct_cond_met_in_nonpassed_series is the average of avg_pct_cond_met_nonpassed_series from the previous aggregation step, over the involved XG3 variables at the location.

  7. combined_result: the inner join (on loc_code) between combined_result_avail and combined_result_series. Locations that were dropped in either evaluation because of missing information, are dropped here too, because the function is to return locations for which all conditions hold and hence could be verified.

    The last column, all_cond_met, requires both cond_met_avail = TRUE and cond_met_series = TRUE to result in TRUE for a location.

    Notes:

    • locations with all_cond_met = FALSE are not discarded in this object;

    • filtering locations with all_cond_met = TRUE will result in exactly the locations given by combined_result_filtered, see list element 1;

    • the object is only returned when both availability and series condition(s) were given (at least one of each family). In the other cases, you can directly look at combined_result_avail or combined_result_series, from which combined_result_filtered is derived.

Details

selectlocs_xg3() separately runs eval_xg3_avail() and eval_xg3_series() on the input (data) if the latter conforms to the output of get_xg3. See the documentation of eval_xg3_avail and eval_xg3_series to learn more about how an 'XG3 variable' and an 'XG3 series' are defined, and about the available summary statistics. Each condition for evaluation + selection of locations is specific to an XG3 variable, which can also be the level 'combined'. Hence, the result will depend both on the XG3 types (HG3, LG3 and/or VG3) for which statistics have been computed (specified by xg3_type), and on the conditions, specified by conditions. See the devoted section on the conditions dataframe.

Only locations are returned:

  • which have all XG3 variables, implied by xg3_type and present in conditions, available in data. (In other words, all conditions must be testable.)

  • for which all conditions are met;

As the conditions imposed by the conditions dataframe are always evaluated as a required combination of conditions ('and'), the user must make different calls to selectlocs_xg3() if different sets of conditions are to be allowed ('or').

Regarding conditions that evaluate XG3 series, it is taken into account that one location can have multiple series for the same XG3 variable. When the user provides one or more conditions for the series of a specific XG3 variable, the condition(s) are regarded as fulfilled ('condition met') when at least one series is present of that XG3 variable for which all those conditions are met.

selectlocs_xg3() joins the long-formatted results of eval_xg3_avail and eval_xg3_series with the conditions dataframe in order to evaluate the conditions. Often, this join in itself already leads to dropping specific combinations of loc_code and xg3_variable. At least the locations that are completely dropped in this step are reported when verbose = TRUE.

For larger datasets eval_xg3_series() can take quite some time, whereas the user may want to repeatedly try different sets of conditions until a satisfying selection of locations is returned. However the output of both eval_xg3_avail() and eval_xg3_series() will not change as long as the data and the chosen values of max_gap and min_dur are not altered. For that reason, the user can also prepare a list object with the respective results of eval_xg3_avail() and eval_xg3_series(), which must be named as "avail" and "ser", respectively. This list can instead be used as data-input, and in that case xg3_type, max_gap and min_dur are not needed (they will be ignored).

Specification of the conditions dataframe

Conditions can be specified for each of the summary statistics returned by eval_xg3_avail and eval_xg3_series. Consequently, XG3 availability conditions and XG3 series conditions can be distinguished.

The conditions parameter takes a dataframe that must have the following columns:

xg3_variable

One of: "combined","lg3_lcl","lg3_ost", "vg3_lcl", "vg3_ost","hg3_lcl","hg3_ost".

statistic

Name of the statistic to be evaluated.

criterion

Numeric. Defines the value of the statistic on which the condition will be based.

direction

One of: "min","max","equal". Together with criterion, this completes the condition which will be evaluated with respect to the specific xg3_variable: for direction = "min", the statistic must be the criterion value or larger; for direction = "max", the statistic must be the criterion value or lower; for direction = "equal", the statistic must be equal to the criterion value.

Each condition is one row of the dataframe. The dataframe should have at least one, and may have many. Each combination of xg3_variable and statistic must be unique. Conditions on XG3 variables, absent from data or not implied by xg3_type, will be dropped without warning. Hence, it is up to the user to do sensible things.

The possible statistics for XG3 availability conditions are: nryears, firstyear, lastyear.

The possible statistics for XG3 series conditions are: ser_length, ser_nryears, ser_rel_nryears, ser_firstyear, ser_lastyear, ser_pval_uniform, ser_mean, ser_sd, ser_se_6y, ser_rel_sd_lcl, ser_rel_se_6y_lcl. The last six are not defined for the XG3 variable 'combined', and the last two are only defined for variables with a local vertical CRS.

See also

eval_xg3_avail, eval_xg3_series

Other functions to select locations: selectlocs_chem()

Examples

if (FALSE) {
watina <- connect_watina()
library(dplyr)
mylocs <- get_locs(watina,
                   area_codes = "TOR",
                   loc_type = c("P", "S"))
mydata <-
 mylocs %>%
 get_xg3(watina, 2000)
mydata %>% arrange(loc_code, hydroyear)
# Number of locations in mydata:
mydata %>% distinct(loc_code) %>% count
# Number of hydrological years per location and XG3 variable:
mydata %>%
  group_by(loc_code) %>%
  collect %>%
  summarise(lg3_lcl = sum(!is.na(lg3_lcl)),
            hg3_lcl = sum(!is.na(hg3_lcl)),
            vg3_lcl = sum(!is.na(vg3_lcl)))
conditions_df <-
  tribble(
  ~xg3_variable, ~statistic, ~criterion, ~direction,
  "lg3_lcl", "ser_lastyear", 2015, "min",
  "hg3_lcl", "ser_lastyear", 2015, "min"
  )
conditions_df
result <-
  mydata %>%
  selectlocs_xg3(xg3_type = c("L", "H"),
                  max_gap = 1,
                  min_dur = 5,
                  conditions = conditions_df,
                  list = TRUE)
# or:
# mystats <- list(avail = eval_xg3_avail(mydata,
#                                        xg3_type = c("L", "H")),
#                 ser =  eval_xg3_series(mydata,
#                                        xg3_type = c("L", "H"),
#                                        max_gap = 1,
#                                        min_dur = 5))
# result <-
#   mystats %>%
#   selectlocs_xg3(conditions = conditions_df,
#                  list = TRUE)
result$combined_result_filtered
result[2:4]
# Disconnect:
dbDisconnect(watina)
}