| # UAP Consolidated Dataset — Planning Phase |
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| ## What we're building |
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| A single canonical UAP/anomaly dataset on HuggingFace, built from scratch. Not a mirror of existing |
| datasets — a ground-up assembly with provenance discipline, uncertainty modeling, and adapter |
| isolation as first-class concerns. |
|
|
| ## What's being abandoned |
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| The old `uap-spine` project (SQLite + HTML viz on Spark). Its five architecture principles transfer |
| cleanly. Its execution path (HF mirror → SQLite → static HTML) doesn't. This is a HuggingFace |
| dataset, not a local database with a web frontend. |
|
|
| ## Context inventory (what's now in memory) |
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| ### 1. Existing processed data (tau/Ufo_data_clustered) |
| - 327,009 records, JSONL, 142MB |
| - Sourced from Kaggle NUFORC-derived CSVs |
| - Fields: uid, t_utc, lat, lon, text, src, city, state, country, cluster_id, prob, |
| moon_illum, moon_alt_deg, nearest_airport_km, nearest_airport_code, wx_bucket, reports_z |
| - Pipeline: Cleaning → BGE-large-en-v1.5 embeddings → UMAP-15 → HDBSCAN → sidecar enrichment |
| - **Limitations:** |
| - Almost entirely NUFORC-lineage. No Blue Book, no AARO |
| - Local→UTC timestamp conversion unverified (`time_precision = hour` at best) |
| - Cluster labels are text-similarity only, not event categories |
| - Likely duplicates across Kaggle mirror lineages |
| - Shape and duration fields dropped during cleaning |
| - Astronomical sidecars (moon_*) depend on unverified timestamps — do not trust |
| |
| ### 2. Raw source CSVs (from tau source/) |
| - nuforc_reports.csv (116MB), scrubbed.csv (14MB), ufo_sightings_scrubbed.csv (14MB), |
| ufo_sighting_data.csv (14MB), complete.csv (15MB), data.csv (43MB), |
| weatherHistory.csv (16MB), airports.csv (8.7MB), runways.csv (3.0MB), |
| airport-frequencies.csv (1.2MB), definitions_and_sources.csv (57KB) |
| - All Kaggle-derived |
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| ### 3. Raw CSV from downloads |
| - `ufo_sightings_1900_2024.csv` at `/mnt/shared/MyFiles/Downloads/ufo-dataset-downloads/` |
| — alternate source, needs inspection for overlap/redundancy |
|
|
| ### 4. Global dataset landscape (from overview document) |
| - **Civilian:** NUFORC, MUFON, Kaggle mirrors |
| - **US Government:** AARO (imagery, case resolutions), PURSUE (rolling declassification |
| tranches, unredacted kinematics), NARA RG 615/341 (Blue Book, Condon, Roswell, |
| Presidential libraries), FBI/CIA vaults |
| - **International:** GEIPAN (France, weirdness/consistency scoring), |
| SEFAA (Chile, aviation focus), UK National Archives, LAC (Canada), NAA (Australia) |
| - **Academic:** Galileo Project (Harvard, custom calibrated observatories), |
| SCU on Zenodo (morphological analysis, operational presence, Aguadilla), |
| NASA Independent Study |
| - **ML hazard:** acronym collisions with "UAP" (Universal Adversarial Perturbations) |
| and "UFO" (Urban Flood Observations, Unified Fine-grained Perception) |
|
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| ### 5. Architecture principles (from spine project — still correct) |
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| 1. **Spine as canonical schema.** Every source adapts into one fixed record shape. |
| Source-specific extras go in `extra` JSON blob. |
| 2. **Append-only, provenance immutable.** `source`, `source_record_id`, `original_text`, |
| `fetched_at` locked at write time. No overwrites. Reports are separate evidentiary |
| artifacts, not views of one truth. |
| 3. **Uncertainty as first-class fields.** Every fuzzy field gets a companion: |
| `time_precision`, `geocode_method`, `geocode_confidence`, `location_uncertainty_km`. |
| 4. **Environmental context = on-demand join.** Weather, RF, flight, seismic, geomagnetic |
| NOT backfilled into records. Joined at query time against event_time + lat/lon. |
| 5. **Adapter isolation.** Each adapter reads one source. Does not dedupe. Does not |
| cross-reference. Resolution is downstream. |
| |
| ### 6. Canonical spine schema (from spine project — the frozen contract) |
| |
| | field | type | nullable | notes | |
| |---|---|---|---| |
| | `id` | text (uuid4) | no | assigned at ingestion | |
| | `event_time` | text (ISO8601 UTC) | yes | best-known event time | |
| | `time_precision` | text | no | second / minute / hour / day / month / year / unknown | |
| | `latitude` | real | yes | | |
| | `longitude` | real | yes | | |
| | `location_uncertainty_km` | real | yes | | |
| | `geocode_method` | text | no | source_provided / mirror_geocoded / city_centroid / unknown | |
| | `geocode_confidence` | text | no | high / medium / low / unknown | |
| | `source` | text | no | our source tag | |
| | `source_record_id` | text | no | id in source's own namespace | |
| | `original_text` | text | no | verbatim narrative from source | |
| | `fetched_at` | text (ISO8601 UTC) | no | when we pulled it | |
| | `extra` | text (JSON) | yes | source-specific extras | |
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| Constraints: PK on `id`, indexes on `event_time`, `source`, `(latitude, longitude)`. |
| No unique constraint on `(source, source_record_id)` — dedup is downstream. |
|
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| ### 7. Source ingestion plan (from spine project — adapted for HF) |
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| | Order | Source | Tag | What it contributes | |
| |---|---|---|---| |
| | 1 | NUFORC-derived Kaggle data | `hf_mirror_cjc0013` | 327k records, fastest path to working pipeline | |
| | 2 | NUFORC raw | `nuforc_raw` | Shape/duration fields, authentic submission metadata | |
| | 3 | Project Blue Book | `bluebook` | Disposition field (official USAF classifications) | |
| | 4 | GEIPAN (France) | `geipan` | Scientifically vetted, weirdness/consistency scored | |
| | 5+ | AARO, SEFAA, Galileo, SCU | tbd | Document-centric / sensor-validated / academic | |
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| ### 8. Old spine project's open forks (still relevant) |
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| - **Repo name:** `uap-spine` was placeholder. Needs a real name. |
| - **Source order:** HF mirror first (fastest path), then whichever stresses untested |
| architecture. NUFORC-raw stresses geocoding/timezone. Blue Book stresses |
| source-specific field handling. |
| - **disposition field:** stays in `extra`, not promoted to spine (avoids schema pressure |
| from future sources with their own labels) |
| - **AARO adapter shape:** document corpus → OCR/extraction → intermediate events → spine. |
| Two-stage pipeline, not one monolithic adapter. |
| - **Cross-source identity resolution:** downstream queryable relation, not a mutation |
| on the spine. `event_identity` table mapping spine record clusters to canonical event ids. |
| - **Storage:** HF datasets as primary distribution. Parquet format. Local SQLite for |
| development/testing. |
|
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| ## What needs decisions (planning phase) |
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| ### A. Dataset name |
| `uap-spine` was placeholder. Considerations: short, doesn't overpromise, doesn't bind to a |
| single source. Open. |
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| ### B. HuggingFace format |
| Parquet is standard for HF datasets. Could also ship JSONL for line-by-line access. |
| Default: Parquet as primary, JSONL as convenience mirror. |
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| ### C. Adapter implementation language |
| Python with `datasets` library. Each adapter is a script that reads source → writes |
| Parquet shards to `data/` directory → `datasets.load_dataset()` reads them. |
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| ### D. First adapter scope |
| Option A: Clean re-ingestion of the HF mirror (adapt existing JSONL → spine schema |
| with uncertainty fields populated honestly, drop the untrusted sidecars). |
| Option B: NUFORC-raw first (get shape/duration fields, do geocoding properly). |
| Option C: Both in sequence, starting with the mirror for speed. |
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| ### E. What to do with the existing clustered data |
| The `cjc0013/Ufo_data_clustered` dataset already exists on HF. This project is a |
| separate dataset with a different contract (spine schema + provenance). The existing |
| data is a source, not the destination. We map it in, we don't extend it. |
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| ### F. The 1900-2024 CSV |
| The `ufo_sightings_1900_2024.csv` at `/mnt/shared/MyFiles/Downloads/ufo-dataset-downloads/` |
| is unexplored. Need to determine: source lineage, overlap with other sources, field |
| completeness, whether it adds anything NUFORC-derived sources don't. |
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| ## Immediate next step |
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| The planning deliverable is answers to A–F above from Sid (name, format, first-adapter |
| scope, posture on existing data). Then: adapter #1 build. |
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| --- |
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| *Context consolidated 2026-07-30. Sources: tau/Ufo_data_clustered, old spine docs, |
| UFO Datasets Overview and Links.md, freshly built ufo-consolidated repo.* |
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