Guidance on geospatial data reporting for national experts
This is a short description of the information that is expected from countries delivering geospatial data, in response to reporting obligations so that the national data can be processed at the European level.
Data deliveries should contain geospatial data files (GIS data) including metadata. Metadata can be embedded in the data files, e.g. as an xml file, or can be an additional text document.
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Requirements |
Description |
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The attribute table of the geospatial data file should contain, as a minimum, a unique identifier that is needed to link this data to separately reported tabular data. The unique identifier will depend on the dataset but it is often a European or national code, e.g. a designated area’s code or a monitoring station’s number. The reporting guidelines document will specify the name and definition of the unique identifier that should be used. It is important to follow the specifications exactly so that your geospatial data can be joined to relevant tabular data. |
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The accepted file formats for reporting geospatial data are shape file (shp) or Mapinfo Exchange file (mif) for vector format and Erdas Imagine (img) or GeoTiff (tif) for raster format. Information about datum and projection is essential for combining the different national deliveries into a European dataset. This information is sometimes embedded in the file format, e.g. as a .prj file as part of the shape file format. If the datum and projection information is not embedded in the file format it must be provided as part of the metadata, see below. |
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Point of contact |
Provide organisation name, contact person name, telephone, email address, url of the organisation responsible for the delivered geospatial data. |
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Metadata should include the original title of the dataset, a short abstract about the content of the data and a version number. It is also valuable to know if the data is free to be used by anyone or if there are any constraints. Please provide the terms of use or a hyperlink if they are published on the internet. It is also important to provide information about the scale of the data in the delivery (e.g. 1:100 000) and/or geographic accuracy (e.g. 25 m). Information on datum and projection parameters should also be provided here if not already included in the data format, see above. A metadata checklist for geospatial data is available below. |
Example of work flow
