PRED Bank 3.0

Citation

Wang, C. (2003), "PRED Bank 3.0", Online Information Review, Vol. 27 No. 3, pp. 214-215. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520310481481

PRED Bank (Population, Resources, Environment and Development Databank) 3.0 is a CD‐ROM database mostly providing time‐series data on various aspects of population, resources, environment, development, and policy pertaining to individual countries and geographical entities under different categories. The categories include major areas (e.g. Latin America and Caribbean, Africa), regions (e.g. Central America, Eastern Africa) as well as more developed, less developed, or least developed countries. The database also offers full texts of selected international treaties and conventions of significant importance related to major issues of environment and development.

The database consists of 131 variables for retrieving national, regional and sub‐regional data for 229 countries and geographical entities from 1950 to 2001, or to 2050 for demographic projections. There are 38 variables for demographic topics including size and distribution, structure, and population dynamics, 19 variables for topics of resources including land, water, energy, and food, 16 variables for environment topics of the natural world related to human‐induced soil/land degradation and of carbon dioxide emissions, 44 variables for a variety of economic and social development issues, and 14 policy variables for population‐related policy and international treaties. Data for most variables are arranged in time series referring to one year (e.g. 1990, 1995) or to time‐spans (e.g. 1985‐1990, 1990‐1995). Data for some variables, particularly for environment variables, are arranged in one single time, either one single year or one single time‐span of five years, or in periods which do not conform to those used for other variables.

The sources of data include a number of related UN agencies and departments such as Population Division, Food and Agriculture Organization, Environment Programme, and the World Bank. The five selected documents of UN treaties and conventions are provided by the UN Office of Legal Affairs.

The first version of PRED Bank was published in 1989, consisting of only 55 variables dealing with data on population, agriculture, and economic development. In 1998, a revised and updated version, PRED Bank 2.1, was published, providing data related to 94 indicators. With great improvement in scope, coverage, and design, PRED 3.0 is supplemented with a separate print copy of easy‐to‐follow User’s Guide, of which the electronic version is included in the database itself.

The database presents three access points of Data Retrieval, Documentation, and the User’s Guide. While the latter two offer helpful information on documentation and usage in detail, the Data Retrieval is for users wishing to retrieve core data with convenient selection and retrieval mechanisms. The obtained data and documents can be exported or saved into excel format (*.xls), text format (*.txt), or delimited format (*.csv) for further analysis and management.

The computer requirements to install and use the database are a PC with operating system Windows 95 or higher, Windows Internet Explorer Version 4.0 or higher, and 45 MB hard disk space.