Metadata, licensing & provenance
The record that travels with the data: what it describes, who may use it, which version it is, and what produced it.
Everything on Spatial Workflow about metadata, licensing & provenance, in the order that usually works: understand the idea, then run the task, then fix it when it goes wrong. 20 guides in total.
One learning path runs through this topic — follow it if you would rather work through a route than pick a single guide.
🧭 Start with the concepts
The ideas the how-to guides below assume you already have.
- Spatial metadata explained: what a dataset must tell you spatial metadata
- Open data licences explained for spatial data open data licence gis
- Provenance and lineage explained for spatial workflows spatial data lineage
- Dataset versioning explained dataset versioning gis
- Metadata standards compared: ISO 19115, STAC and Frictionless iso 19115 stac compared
- Attribution requirements explained: OpenStreetMap, Copernicus and national data openstreetmap attribution requirement
⚙️ Then do the task
Step-by-step walkthroughs with code you can copy and adapt.
- How to write a metadata record for a dataset in Python write spatial metadata python
- How to read the metadata already inside your spatial files read gis file metadata python
- How to embed provenance tags in a GeoTIFF geotiff metadata tags python
- How to store metadata inside a GeoPackage geopackage metadata python
- How to checksum spatial datasets so you can prove they match checksum spatial dataset python
- How to build a STAC item for your own raster build stac item python
- How to record lineage automatically in a pipeline record lineage pipeline python
- How to check licence compatibility before combining datasets licence compatibility gis python
- How to publish a dataset with a citable identifier publish dataset doi python
🔧 When it breaks
The errors this topic produces, with the cause explained rather than just the command.
- Metadata disappears when you convert the file metadata lost format conversion
- You cannot tell which data version produced a map which data version produced map
- A downloaded layer has no licence you can find layer has no licence
- A STAC item is rejected by the validator stac item validation error
- Metadata extents and dates do not match the data metadata extent does not match
Learning paths through this topic
A curated route rather than a list — the guides in the order that builds on itself.
Related topics
Subjects that keep coming up alongside this one, most overlap first.