NPWS Project Data Standards

‎NPWS Research Project Data Standards and Project Delivery

The following information is relevant to individuals or organisations about to undertake a research project on behalf of NPWS. When you start a NPWS research project you will be supplied with a Project Delivery Pack by NPWS or referred to this web page where the latest revision of the Pack is available for download. This project pack contains guidelines, project requirements, templates and checklists to help you to prepare for project delivery from the start of the project.

NPWS is undertaking a rationalisation and streamlining of all research project resources held by the organisation. As part of this initiative a review of the naming of project resource files and directory structures has been undertaken, leading to a proposed standardization of structures and naming conventions. As a result guidelines have been drawn up for use in delivery of future project resources to NPWS. The term resource as used here generally relates to the digital files or groups of files that form the products of the project.

In tandem with the project resource organization NPWS have drawn up a set of data standard guidelines for the delivery of data associated with NPWS research projects. These guidelines are provided to ensure consistency and compatibility with other datasets within NPWS.

The downloadable zip archive (10.3 MB), NPWS project data standards and directory template, contains a project directory tree populated with the most current versions of forms, documentation and templates. The current release of the Project Delivery Pack is version 8.3 (updated January 2023).

You are referred to the document: NPWS Data Standards and Project Delivery Guidelines as a starting point for learning about the content and use of the template in the archive. The document is supplied as part of the archive. [Document filename: NPWS_Data_Standards_and_Project_delivery_guidelines_v1_9.pdf]

You can also download a skeletal sample project directory tree to get an insight into the expected approach. This can be downloaded from the zip archive Sample NPWS Project Delivery Directory Tree (6.76 MB).