Last edited 21 Oct 2022

Structured data

Digitisation for construction product manufacturers: a plain language guide, published by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) in 2021 states:

Structured data has been defined and organised in such a manner that it’s searchable, immediately identifiable and machine readable within an electronic file. It must be:

  • Defined in a standardised way, for example, identified by naming conventions.
  • Presented in a standardised format.
  • Transferrable and translatable between users of the data and their software choices.

NB The Geospatial Glossary, published by the Geospatial Commission, and accessed on 17 September 2022, defines unstructured data as: ‘Any document, file, graphic, image, text, report, form, video, or sound recording that has not been tagged or otherwise structured into rows and columns or records. This term has some inaccurate connotations, as there is usually some structure (for instance, paragraphs and chapters) in these formats.’

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