To classify and structure the content on the website, the Land Portal makes use of several standard and controlled vocabularies. Using controlled lists of terms to describe the topical of geographical coverage of a resource (whether that be a statistical indicator, publication or news item), makes the resource much more discoverable. This way, users that search for information concerning a particular topic or country, will not miss information that was tagged with a synonym of that topic or a slightly different name for a country - as would happen when the list of terms is 'open' and not controlled.
Below you can find some of the vocabularies that the Land Portal users can use to classify content.
LandVoc
To classify the topical coverage of a resource, the Land Portal website uses a controlled thesaurus called LandVoc jointly with cross-cutting Themes. Go to this page to learn more about LandVoc.
Regions & Countries
Identifying countries may seem as an easy element when you classify content. Apart from areas that are disputed as being an indepedent country or part of another, it will more or less be clear whether a resource focuses on a particular country or region. However, people may call countries by their different names. For example, a user might search for resources that focus on 'Laos', but if they enter only that word in a search engine - they might miss resources that are tagged with 'Lao', 'Lao PDR', 'Lao People Democratic Republic' and more variations. Using a controlled list according to ISO-3 standards (a unique three-letter code for each country), ensures that content related to a particular country remains discoverable, even when people have different ways to name the country.
In the case of continental and sub-continental regions, the UN M.49 alpha code, a standard for area codes used by the United Nations is used. In this standard, each area code is a 3-digit number which can refer to a wide variety of geographical, political, or economic regions, like a continent, a country, or a specific group of developed or developing countries.
Languages
The Land Portal website uses a controlled list for the languages that can be identified as the language of a resource. This list does not include all languages. If you would like to see a particular language added, please contact us.
Licenses
In order to enable the ability for others to re-use and therefore increase the impact of the content a user adds to the Land Portal website, it is very important to state the conditions under which the particular resource can be re-used. The license of a resource determines these conditions. Through our licenses taxonomy, you will be able to see the standard licenses of the Creative Commons.
Land Library Resource Types
The Land Portal Foundation aggregates information from a wide range of sources and data providers. Each individual source has a slightly different way of classifying the type of resource they publish. The Land Portal Foundation has therefore developed a controlled list of broad categories of resource types, to accommodate the different classifications from all kinds of sources. Through the link above you can view the resource types the Land Portal Foundation has identified.
Organization Types
When an organization is profiled on the Land Portal website, the type of organization will be classified. This can be valuable information to see what types of organizations are most active around land, which organizations publish the most materials about land, etc. The classification for organizations used by the Land Portal Foundation can be found through the link above.
Event Types
When an event is published on the Land Portal website, the type of event will be classified. This can be valuable information to see what types of events are organized around land topics. The classification for events used by the Land Portal Foundation can be found through the link above.
Currencies
The Land Portal Foundation aggregates information about projects. When a project has a budget, it is attached to a currency.