Making Use of Administrative, Big and Survey Data: An Assessment of the Quality of Canadian Wetland Databases - ARCHIVED

While wetlands represent only 6.4% of the world’s surface area, they are essential to the survival of terrestrial species. These ecosystems require special attention in Canada, since that is where nearly 25% of the world’s wetlands are found. Environment Canada (EC) has massive databases that contain all kinds of wetland information from various sources. Before the information in these databases could be used for any environmental initiative, it had to be classified and its quality had to be assessed. In this paper, we will give an overview of the joint pilot project carried out by EC and Statistics Canada to assess the quality of the information contained in these databases, which has characteristics specific to big data, administrative data and survey data.