Dear IPUMS Team,
I am currently working with the Historical GIS Datafiles for the German Empire Statistical Units (1871-1931): https://mosaic.ipums.org/historical-gis-datafiles
I was not able to find the description of the variables in the dataset and was wondering whether you could point me in the right direction. Help would be much appreciated!
Data for the Mosaic project is provided by its partners, which include an international team of historians, demographers, economists and other researchers from institutions in Europe and beyond. We do not have additional documentation for this data beyond what is available on the project website. I recommend reaching out to our partners regarding documentation of the variables in the GIS files as noted in the citation provided with the 1871-1931 Germany files (at the Max Planck Institute and the University of Rostock).
I was able to review the files and can share my own thoughts of what it appears the variables may be referring to. This is not definitive and I am unable to provide further support on this data, but I hope that this is a helpful starting point.
Area appears to be the area of the unit in square kilometers.
RB appears to refer to the abbreviated Regierungsbezirk (administrative district name).
Status seems to be used for areas that were not part of an RB district. I suspect that these are the codes for the different types of areas:
Amtshauptmannschaften (AM)
Kreise (K)
Stadt (S)
Bezirksamt (BA)
Amt (A)
Oberamt (OA)
Shape_Area is most likely the area of the unit in decimal degrees.