Potentials of a Research Infrastructure for Linking Survey an Spatial Data to Enable Interdisciplinary Research. 2025

Abstract

An interdisciplinary approach to the spatial analysis of survey data and the usage of social science and spatial science research data is a proper way to analyse questions of spatial justice and spatial inequality in more detail. The required technical linkage entails a number of hurdles such as data privacy, data access, reproducibility, and technical knowledge. The ’Geolinking Service SoRa’ is being developed to operationalise this linkage and make it easier to offer for research. The linking methods offered, their parametrisation and the expected output are presented in this article. Furthermore, the linkage process is demonstrated using the ’Practise Dataset’ by the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and a spatial indicator of the ’IOER Monitor’ as an example to show the functionalities of the presented linking service. Challenges of implementing the SoRa service (such as usability, performance or handling of uncertainties) are discussed, with a focus on spatial science.