Glossary¶
- Attribute
Any information associated with an observation or group of observations. Example: the attribute ‘status’ might have a value of “Provisional” or “Final”, related to a statistical agency’s process of publishing preliminary and then final values.
- Assumptions
Quantities used in data processing.
- Concept
Both background concepts and specific, systematic, defined meanings. Example: ‘energy demand’ and ‘fuel use’.
- Conversion factor
Used to convert between alternate measures of the same concept. Example: energy content of fuel is used to convert ‘fuel use’ from volume to energy units.
- Data
Collective noun for of observations of specific measures for general concepts, organized in one or more dimensions, with attributes.
- Modelled data
Data that are produced from an existing model or calculations.
- Data processing
Algorithms that combine raw data and assumptions to produce a dataset with greater coverage or quality; or to derive certain measures from raw data.
- Data set
A collection of individual observations.
- Data source
A person, agency, or web service that provides data.
- National source
National organizations such as national statistical agencies, ministries of transport or energy, etc. who directly measure quantities or collect measurements from subsidiary organizations, and provide these as data.
- Aggregator
An agency or person who collects and assembles data into larger data sets. These may include data from multiple upstream sources (such as national sources), with or without any cleaning, adjustment, or harmonization.
- Dimension
A named list of labels or values used to organize multiple observations in a set of data. Example: ‘year’ (a sequential list of annual periods), ‘country’ (names or codes for countries).
- Measure
An operational definition, including units, of a systematic concept. Multiple measures may exist for the same concept. Example: ‘fuel use’ may be measured in terms of the volume of fuel (litres) or its energy content (joule).
- Observation
A single value for a measure.
- Parameter
Used to derive one measure from another in a data processing calculation. Example: ‘occupancy of passenger vehicles’ (persons per vehicle) is used to calculate ‘passenger travel’ (in kilometres) from ‘vehicle travel’ (kilometers).
- Upstream
Data (or software) used as an input. Sometimes the term “raw data” is incorrectly used for “upstream data”.