Planning (Urban, Rural and Regional)

Standards Add

DDI (Data Documentation Initiative) Edit

A widely used, international standard for describing data from the social, behavioral, and economic sciences. Two versions of the standard are currently maintained in parallel:

• DDI Codebook (or DDI version 2) is the simpler of the two, and intended for documenting simple survey data for exchange or archiving. Version 2.5 was released in January 2014.
• DDI Lifecycle (or DDI version 3) is richer and may be used to document datasets at each stage of their lifecycle from conceptualization through to publication and reuse. It is modular and extensible. Version 3.2 was published in March 2014.

Both versions are XML-based and defined using XML Schemas. They were developed and are maintained by the DDI Alliance.

FGDC/CSDGM (Federal Geographic Data Committee Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata) Edit

A widely-used, but no longer current standard defining the information content for a set of digital geospatial data required by the US Federal Government.

CSDGM was sponsored by the US Federal Geographic Data Committee.  However, in September 2010 the FGDC endorsed ISO 19115 and began encouraging federal agencies to transition to ISO metadata.

Extensions Add

CESSDA MLI - Council of European Social Science Data Archives Minimum Level of Information Edit

A common base profile of DDI for use by the member archives of CESSDA.

ISO 19115-2 - Imagery and gridded data Edit

An extension of ISO 19115 defining the schema required for describing imagery and gridded data.

Tools Add

DDI Tools Edit

The Data Documentaion Initiative website's list of tools to implement the DDI standard.

DDI on Rails Edit

Server-side software for building a data portal, with a particular focus on survey datasets. It uses DDI to provide access to the data at the level of concepts and variables. For an example of it in use, see the SOEPinfo data portal.

Use Cases Add

CESSDA Catalogue Edit

Provides a seamless interface to datasets from social science data archives across Europe using the CESSDA MLI profile of DDI.

DDI Projects Edit

The Data Documentation Initiative website's list of projects adopting or encouraging DDI as a standard.