TY - JOUR
T1 - The WISERD Geoportal
T2 - A tool for the discovery, analysis and visualisation of socio-economic (meta-) data for Wales
AU - Berry, Robert
AU - Higgs, Gary
AU - Orford, Scott
AU - Jones, Sam
AU - Fry, Richard
PY - 2012/4/1
Y1 - 2012/4/1
N2 - The Wales Institute of Socio-Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD) is an interdisciplinary, cross-institutional academic research group based in Wales, UK. One of the key objectives of WISERD is to develop a spatial framework that enhances a researcher's ability to discover socio-economic research data relating to Wales with the aim of encouraging collaborative research and re-use of existing data. This article describes the development of an online geoportal designed to meet this objective. Using free and open-source software (FOSS) components and services, a range of software tools has been developed to capture standards-compliant metadata for a variety of data sources. The geoportal is unique in that, in our review of over 120 geoportals worldwide, we have not previously encountered a geoportal dedicated to supporting quantitative and qualitative social science academic and policy research. A particularly innovative aspect of the geoportal has involved the building of a rich meta-database of government surveys, geo-referenced semantically-tagged qualitative data (generated from primary research), 'grey' data (e.g. from transcripts, journal publications, books, PhD theses) and Government administrative data. This article describes the challenges faced during the development of the WISERD Geoportal which can be accessed via http://www.wiserd.ac.uk/geoportal/.
AB - The Wales Institute of Socio-Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD) is an interdisciplinary, cross-institutional academic research group based in Wales, UK. One of the key objectives of WISERD is to develop a spatial framework that enhances a researcher's ability to discover socio-economic research data relating to Wales with the aim of encouraging collaborative research and re-use of existing data. This article describes the development of an online geoportal designed to meet this objective. Using free and open-source software (FOSS) components and services, a range of software tools has been developed to capture standards-compliant metadata for a variety of data sources. The geoportal is unique in that, in our review of over 120 geoportals worldwide, we have not previously encountered a geoportal dedicated to supporting quantitative and qualitative social science academic and policy research. A particularly innovative aspect of the geoportal has involved the building of a rich meta-database of government surveys, geo-referenced semantically-tagged qualitative data (generated from primary research), 'grey' data (e.g. from transcripts, journal publications, books, PhD theses) and Government administrative data. This article describes the challenges faced during the development of the WISERD Geoportal which can be accessed via http://www.wiserd.ac.uk/geoportal/.
KW - open source
KW - geoportal
KW - socio-economic meta-data
KW - GIS
U2 - 10.1111/j.1467-9671.2012.01308.x
DO - 10.1111/j.1467-9671.2012.01308.x
M3 - Article
VL - 16
SP - 105
EP - 124
JO - Transactions in GIS
JF - Transactions in GIS
SN - 1361-1682
IS - 2
ER -