New data infrastructure service strengthens interdisciplinary research
The "Geolinking Service SoRa" research data infrastructure helps to close a gap in the German research landscape. Many questions—such as those regarding social inequality or environmental justice—can only be answered through interdisciplinary analyses, such as linking social science and spatial science data: Does the proportion of green space in a residential neighborhood affect health and…
The Geolinking Service SoRa is a new data infrastructure service that aims to strengthen interdisciplinary research in Germany. This platform bridges the gap between social and spatial science data, enabling researchers to answer complex questions such as the impact of green space on health and well-being or the influence of transportation infrastructure on mobility patterns.
SoRa facilitates the integration of diverse data types, including survey data on life satisfaction and political attitudes from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and geographic data detailing residential neighborhood characteristics. However, harmonizing these data from various sources has traditionally been a challenging task due to issues like privacy protection, data standardization, and the need for specific technical expertise.
To address these challenges, SoRa offers a comprehensive solution that supports researchers at every stage of the data linking and analysis process. Users can easily select appropriate survey and geodata sets and apply suitable analysis methods, with the service handling the technical aspects of data handling and linking. SoRa currently integrates data from the SOEP, census data, and geodata from the Monitor of Settlement and Open Space Development (IOER Monitor), as well as official geodata from the Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG).
The service's user-friendly interface includes a search function to help users identify suitable data sets and methods. Additionally, SoRa automatically documents the data, methods, and settings used for each linkage, ensuring reproducibility and traceability of results. Users can also take advantage of SoRa's "Public Mode" to test data linking methods and assumptions before applying them to actual residential coordinates in "Private Mode," which only allows access within the secure environment of the FDZ SOEP in Berlin.
This ensures the protection of respondents' privacy while still allowing for valuable public testing of the linking process.
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