Datasets: attributes#

Entities: parcels, buildings, etc. are the rows in a table. Datasets provide the columns: attributes linked to each entity.

Datasets can come in many formats: tables, vectors, rasters, XML. What distinguishes them from entities is that datasets are not yet organized by entity: the rows don’t refer to the entity yet (and therefore require some linkage algorithm).

For instance, a user might have a dataset of elevation, flood risk, or hurricane wind fields and wants to link it to buildings, a type of entity.

Themes#

Datasets are grouped into themes. The top-level themes are pre-defined, so the data/folder space does not get cluttered. They are:

Theme

Description

climate

Temperature, precipitation, change

land

Topography, geology, soils

landcover

Land cover (usually remotely sensed)

water

Rivers, lakes, coasts

bio

Vegetation, species, land cover

built

Buildings, infrastructure, roads & accessibility

population

Demographic data (aggregate)

persons

Data of persons, e.g. property owners (sensitive)

risk

Floods, storms, wildfires

rules

Zoning, conservation