Project targets

This is a set of five interim targets for SABAP2. The Steering Committee of the project will revise them and refine them from time to time. This set of targets reflects the balance between breadth of coverage (widely scattered pentads covered) and depth of coverage (some pentads covered multiple times).

1. Our first target is to get at least four pentads covered in each half degree grid cell. It took us four months to get from 60% to 70% on 5 May 2009. We'd love to be at 80% by the end of August. There are still half degree grid cells with no coverage at all, and these are shaded on this map. Please make a special effort to visit these, and to do several (ie four!) pentads in each.

2. Our second target - which is actually our primary target - is to get at least one pentad covered in every one of the 2028 quarter degree grid cells in the SABAP2 area. We reached 50% on 20 January and 60% on 11 June. Given that new quarter degree grid cells are getting harder and harder to reach, it will be a tough ask to reach 70% by the end of October.

Targets 1 and 2 both work towards our absolute minimum coverage goal of getting one-ninth of the atlas area covered in a fairly uniform way - one quarter degree grid cell has nine pentads, and one half degree grid cell has 36. Target 1 is slightly less desirable than Target 2!

3. Our third target is get at least one third of the pentads covered in 75% of the quarter degree grid cells. We reached 25% on 28 December last year, 30% on 15 March 2009 and 35% on 29 May. That's a 10% increase in five months. Another five months takes us to the end of October, and should target growing by another 10% by then, reaching 45%.

4. Our fourth target is to get more than one checklist for 80% of the pentads which are covered. This target goes down as well as up; it goes down a bit when we cover lots of new pentads and the denominator increases. It goes up as we get repeated coverage for pentads, and the numerator increases. We have hovered close to the 48% mark for the past six months, indicating that repeat checklists are being made to roughly half the pentads that have ever being visited. For many pentads a superhuman effort is needed to visit them just once! But, please, wherever possible, try to turn the "yellow" pentads on the coverage map to "orange".

5. Our fifth target is to get 7 or more checklists for 30% of the pentads which are covered. This target also goes both up and down. We reached 10% on 28 November 2008, and 13% on 8 June 2009. We should target reaching 16% by the end of October. It would be great if atlasers tried to get all the pentads they can conveniently atlas regularly to "dark green" status on the coverage map.