Additional (geospatial) data for Migration, Health, and Finance-Market Research

The German Data Forum (RatSWD) accredited four new research data centres during its 55th meeting (28/29 May 2020 via video conference)

These new additions make now 38 accredited research data centres (FDZ), which offer researchers structured and data-protection-compliant access to quality-assured data. The accreditations have been provisionally issued, seeing as the research data centres are still in the process of being structured.

DeZIM.fdz (German Centre for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM))
The research data centre DeZIM.fdz provides research data on migration and integration, resulting from quantitative and qualitative surveys, as well as from research with text corpora; data from DeZIM Institute projects, and from the DeZIM community, are also provided. Additionally, the Institute has a repository component for in-house researchers as well as partners. The archiving of external data will be offered in the future as well.

IÖR Monitor (Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development (IOER))
The IÖR-Monitor provides information on the structure of land use and its developments, as well as the landscape quality of Germany. The research data centre offers access to small-scale geodata, which can be used e.g. for descriptions of living environments, density of settlements, or for green space. Social science data sets can be enhanced by the data from IÖR-Monitor; the project “Building a Social Spatial Research Data Infrastructure” (Aufbau einer Sozial-Raumwissenschaftlichen Forschungsdateninfrastruktur- SoRa) is already a prototype for this type of crossover. This creates considerable potential for qualitative surveys.

GePaRD research Database (Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology)
The research database GePaRD (German Pharmacoepidemiological Research Database) contains information from insured persons on the participating health insurance companies and their billing data. This includes information on demographics, drug prescriptions, as well as outpatient and inpatient services and diagnoses. The data records are comprehensively gathered so that, for example, familial relationships between insured persons can be extracted easily from the data.

SAFE-FDZ (Leibniz Institute for Financial Research)
The SAFE-FDZ (Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe) offers a focused range of data for interdisciplinary research into financial markets in Europe and their players. It currently provides historical corporate financial indicators, financial research data with an emphasis on European finance, and a European panel on current money market policies.

Access to police crime statistics, judicial statistics, and other research data
The German Data Forum (RatSWD) actively campaigned for the further development of crime and judicial statistics during its 6th appointment period, as well as provided specific recommendations to politicians and authorities (2019, 2020). The initiated exchange between science, the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection (BMJV), and the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) has underlined the fundamental willingness of the relevant stakeholders to make judicial statistics, police crime statistics (PKS), and in-house research data (e.g. victimisation surveys) more accessible and optimisable. The German Data Forum (RatSWD) welcomes these developments, and in conversation with data producers and the various user groups, it will continue to support the implementation of its recommendations. The German Data Forum (RatSWD) intends to make crime and justice statistics, as well as the needs of the specialist communities, more visible . The aim is to support the necessary expansion of research data access to justice statistics.