Metadata, Licensing & Provenance
A layer nobody can describe, cite or re-run is a layer nobody should use.
The question that ends most spatial analyses is not technical: where did this come from, which version is it, and are we allowed to publish it? These guides cover the record that has to travel with the data — what a metadata document must state, which standard to write it in, how to keep it inside the file rather than beside it, how to checksum and version a dataset so two people can prove they have the same one, and how to read a licence well enough to know what combining two layers produces.
Start here
The cornerstone guide — the whole workflow end to end. Everything after it goes deeper into one part of it.
Step 1 Spatial metadata explained: what a dataset must tell you spatial metadata Begin the path →The full path, in order
20 guides: the concepts underneath the work, then each task, then the errors that task produces. Work down, or jump to the step you need.
- Open data licences explained for spatial data open data licence gis 🧭 Concept
- Provenance and lineage explained for spatial workflows spatial data lineage 🧭 Concept
- Dataset versioning explained dataset versioning gis 🧭 Concept
- Metadata standards compared: ISO 19115, STAC and Frictionless iso 19115 stac compared 🧭 Concept
- Attribution requirements explained: OpenStreetMap, Copernicus and national data openstreetmap attribution requirement 🧭 Concept
- How to write a metadata record for a dataset in Python write spatial metadata python ⚙️ How-To
- How to read the metadata already inside your spatial files read gis file metadata python ⚙️ How-To
- How to embed provenance tags in a GeoTIFF geotiff metadata tags python ⚙️ How-To
- How to store metadata inside a GeoPackage geopackage metadata python ⚙️ How-To
- How to checksum spatial datasets so you can prove they match checksum spatial dataset python ⚙️ How-To
- How to build a STAC item for your own raster build stac item python ⚙️ How-To
- How to record lineage automatically in a pipeline record lineage pipeline python ⚙️ How-To
- How to check licence compatibility before combining datasets licence compatibility gis python ⚙️ How-To
- How to publish a dataset with a citable identifier publish dataset doi python ⚙️ How-To
- Metadata disappears when you convert the file metadata lost format conversion 🔧 Fix
- You cannot tell which data version produced a map which data version produced map 🔧 Fix
- A downloaded layer has no licence you can find layer has no licence 🔧 Fix
- A STAC item is rejected by the validator stac item validation error 🔧 Fix
- Metadata extents and dates do not match the data metadata extent does not match 🔧 Fix
Topics this path covers
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