Geolinking Service SoRa: Successful Soft Launch

The Geolinking Service SoRa enables spatial analysis of social science survey data and supports socio-spatial research. Pre-defined geospatial datasets and linking methods will be offered, e.g. spatial indicators from the IOER-Monitor to analyses the living environment (including aspects of accessibility, or density). Furthermore, geocoding (based on BKG Geocoder) is offered to transfer address lists into coordinates.

The service is designed for researchers and can be used via a package in the R programming language. In the future, the aim is also to enable using the Geolinking Service SoRa in Stata. The service is available in two modes, public and private. The so-called public mode allows usage of the Geolinking Service SoRa from elsewhere, but without access to real housing coordinates of survey participants. In the public mode you can use the synthetic structural data set by the SOEP. So, the offered linking methods and datasets can be used for linkages with own (locally available) survey datasets. In Public Mode, there is no access to the real housing coordinates of SOEP survey data. There is the opportunity to use a data set with synthetic housing coordinates from SOEP instead (based on an estimated spatial distribution of the real housing coordinates), to test your linkings before you plan to travel to the SOEP. Currently, the Geolinking Service SoRa is installed within the research data center of SOEP (private mode), and can be used on-site in Berlin, using the original SOEP data.

In addition, there is a thread in Forum4Mica regarding the use of the Geolinking Service SoRa. On May 13, 2026, there was a successfully soft launch with 100 participants via an online event.