Guide
How to read a dataset before you trust it
Six things to check on any public dataset: publisher, coverage, update rate, last update, licence and location.
- Publisher. Who keeps it? An agency's own data beats a copy.
- Coverage. Which place and which years? A city dataset may leave out the county around it.
- Update rate. Daily, weekly, yearly, or "when it changes"?
- Last update. A weekly dataset last touched in 2023 has stopped.
- Licence. Can you reuse it? "Not stated" means read the terms first.
- Location detail. Address, parcel, block, ZIP or only a district? That decides what you can map.
SOS.city shows all six on every source, plus whether we opened and checked it.