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Glossary

Glossary

Table of contents by the first letter of the term: 

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Please send suggestions for glossary items, or other comments, to OCHA-FIS-GVA@un.org 

Underlined terms in the definitions refer to other defined terms.  Links go to other documents.

Humanitarian Terms definition page on Relief Web

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3

Term

Definition

Term

Definition

3W

Who does What Where When' maps or tables. These depend heavily on CODs and particularly their associated gazetteers. 3W information and examples


A

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Term

Definition

Term

Definition

Administrative boundary

A geographic polygon or polygons representing the perimeter of one administrative unit.  

Administrative hierarchy

A set of recognised and hierarchical levels of administrative authority and geographic partition of a country or territory. Increasing administrative level numbers represent lower (geographically smaller and administratively subservient) units, with administrative level 0 representing the entire country, administrative level 1 representing the next lower level, and so on.

  • EXAMPLE: Afghanistan is divided into provinces, which are in turn divided into districts. Thus Afghanistan's administrative level 0 is the country (Afghanistan), administrative level 1 is the provinces, and administrative level 2 is the districts.

In some countries, an administrative level may consist of more than one type of administrative unit.

  • EXAMPLE: The United States of America's administrative level 1 consists of States, the District of Columbia, and further remote units.

  • EXAMPLE: Canada's administrative level 1 consists of 10 provinces and three territories.

Administrative level

The numeric level in the Administrative hierarchy. Level 0 represents the entire country, and larger numbers represent deeper hierarchical levels. The term 'administrative level' is a useful generic replacement for actual terms that vary between countries and sometimes which are not consistent within a country. For example, as some administrative level 1 units in Canada are 'provinces' and others are 'territories', and as administrative level 1 units in Cameroon are called 'regions'. Furthermore these terms can be represented differently in different languages.

The suggested standard abbreviation for particular levels is “ADM1”, “ADM3”, etc.

Administrative unit

An individual place in the administrative structure of a country. “Texas”, for example, is an administrative unit at administrative level 1 for the United States of America. Each administrative unit occupies a record in the gazetteer or COD-AB or COD-PS tables for its particular administrative level. That record contains the administrative unit name, in one or more languages, and the administrative unit P-code.


B

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Term

Definition

Term

Definition

Business intelligence

Business intelligence comprises the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis of business information.


C

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Term

Definition

Term

Definition

Common Operational Dataset (COD)

Authoritative reference datasets needed to support operations and decision-making for all actors in a humanitarian response. They provide essential baseline data and data standards that allow humanitarian actors to collaborate, coordinate and exchange information. CODs provide the basis for a common operational picture and a shared situational awareness. .

COD-AB

An administrative boundary COD is a spatial dataset that identifies the various administrative level boundaries, names and unique codes (P-codes) in a country. It is a core COD, and provides a spatial/visual way to view and analyze data as well as a common way of referring to places allowing datasets to be aggregated and analyzed more easily. See Administrative Boundaries (COD-AB).

COD-PS

A population statistics COD is a tabular baseline demographic dataset that is (ideally) disaggregated by age and sex and presented at various levels of administrative levels in a country and includes P-codes. It is a core COD that is used to identify initi