This site gives an overview of ways to link georeferenced data to survey or administrative data. Why Geodata? describes how different levels and types of spatial data can be linked. Accessing georeferenced data provides information on where to find different types of geo-referenced data.
Social-Spatial Science Research Data Infrastructure (SoRa)
For linking georeferenced survey data with spatial information, we recommend the Geolinking Service SoRa. SoRa provides curated spatial datasets and standardised linking methods through an R package, allowing researchers to enrich survey data with contextual measures such as accessibility, density, or characteristics of the residential environment.
It operates under strict data-protection safeguards:
- a Public Mode lets you develop and test linkages from anywhere using synthetic coordinates that mimic the real spatial distribution,
- while a Private Mode, installed within the secure environment of the FDZ SOEP at DIW Berlin, enables linkage on the actual residential coordinates on-site. Both modes and the measures they produce are described in SoRa’s documentation of the linking methods.
On request, SoRa also generates a permanently stored provenance record documenting each linkage, supporting reproducibility in line with the FAIR principles.
Social-Spatial Science Research Data Infrastructure (SoRa)
For linking georeferenced survey data with spatial information, we recommend the Geolinking Service SoRa. SoRa provides curated spatial datasets and standardised linking methods through an R package, allowing researchers to enrich survey data with contextual measures such as accessibility, density, or characteristics of the residential environment.
It operates under strict data-protection safeguards:
On request, SoRa also generates a permanently stored provenance record documenting each linkage, supporting reproducibility in line with the FAIR principles.
Access to the georeferenced SOEP data that a linkage runs on is applied for separately, through the data access route at DIW Berlin.