The purpose of having a standardized naming convention is to provide an organized framework for the datasets, ensuring interoperability between users and platforms.
(See below for Naming Convention for
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Information Products)
Naming Convention for Datasets
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The naming convention for datasets (which are used to generate information products but are not usually information products in and of themselves) is different from the naming convention for information products. This section describes the naming convention for datasets, including geodata and other datasets.
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In the case where two datasets have the same name and there is insufficient time to clean the data to merge them to one dataset (see Data Cleaning in the Geodata Preparation Manual), numbers are used to differentiate between the two datasets and differences are specified in the metadata title and abstract until the data may be combined to one. The numbers run in descending order from the dataset at the lowest detail to the dataset at the highest detail. Consider the following:
Two sets of population data for a particular country, one has the population for major cities and the other population data for small towns. The data for major cities are labeled with a “1” and the data for small towns are labeled with a “2”.
- Dataset 1: Major cities in Burundi from Government of Burundi at 1:1M scale
- Dataset 2: Cities in Burundi from Government of Burundi at 1:M scale
Dataset Names (interim solution):
- Dataset 1: bdi_pplp1_1m_gov
- Dataset 2: bdi_pplp2_1m_gov
Feature Class Name (long term solution):
- Combine the two feature classes to 1 using guidance from Verifying Geometry. The resulting label would be: bdi_pplp_1m_gov.
Special Case 2: Data do not span an entire country or region
In the case where the dataset only coverts part of a country, administrative names are used to differentiate between administrations and city names are used to differential between urban areas. See example below:
Datasets not covering an entire country:
- Dataset 1: IDP Camps in Aceh, Indonesia
- Dataset 2: IDP Camps Afgooye Cooridor, Somalia
Resulting Dataset Names:
- Dataset 1: idn_aceh_cmpp_idp_1m_unhcr
- Dataset 2: som_afgooye_cmpp_idp_1m_unhcr
File naming within geodatabases
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See also: Folder Structure and Archiving
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