The Keywords Editor

The keywords editor provides a free form user interface for creating keywords. If you are a new user, you should probably use the

Keywords Wizard in preference to the keywords

editor as it provides more hand holding and you are less likely to specify invalid keywords.

For more general discussion on the keywords system used by InaSAFE, please see the keywords system documentation.

The keywords editor graphical user interface

The graphical user interface for keyword editing is divided into two parts:

  1. Minimal mode: In this mode, only following options are provided:
    • Title - a ‘friendly’ name for the dataset which will be displayed in reports, the user interface and so on
    • Source - a field to inform from whom/where the dataset is obtained.
    • Category - A mandatory choice between ‘hazard’ and ‘exposure’.
    • Subcategory - An amalgamated subcategory/units picklist (in the case of hazard) or amalgamated subcategory/datatype (in the case of exposure). In this case, the secondary characteristic (units or datatype) are shown in square brackets after the subcategory name e.g. flood [m] is used for subcategory ‘flood’, units ‘m’.

An example of the keywords editor in minimal mode is shown below.

Opened keyword editor window

Opened keyword editor window

  1. Advanced mode: In this mode several extra options are provided in addition to the minimal mode options. Unlike minimal mode, in advanced mode only basic validation is performed and the user is given more flexibility to manually define and remove key/value pairs. Three sections are provided for this:
  • Predefined - In this section, the user selects from a constrained list of keywords, enters a free-form value and then adds the key/value pair to the keywords list (see below).
  • User defined - In this section, there is no constraint on the keywords entered - any single lower case word will be accepted for both the key and the value components.
  • Current keywords - In this area a complete list of all the keywords for the dataset are displayed. The keywords list here is updated when any changes are made in both the simple and advanced mode editors. It is also possible in this area to manually remove unwanted keywords using the ‘remove selected’ button. Multiple keywords can be removed in a single operation by Control-clicking on multiple keyword entries in the current keyword list and then clicking Remove selected
Advanced mode of keyword editor

Advanced mode of keyword editor

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Switching from hazard to exposure will clear parts of the GUI since in general most keywords are category dependent. In particular, selecting ‘hazard’ will remove the ‘datatype’ key/value pair, and selecting ‘exposure’ will remove the ‘units’ key value pair.

Invoking the keywords editor

The keyword editor can easily be invoked by selecting any layer in the QGIS layers list, and then using the plugin menu to start the editor (Plugins ‣ InaSAFE ‣ Keyword Editor). Alternatively, you may use the keywords editor icon on the plugins toolbar as illustrated below.

Keyword editor icon

Keyword editor icon

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If you have not selected a layer in the QGIS legend, the keyword editor icon in the toolbar and menus will be disabled and appear greyed out.

Saving your edits

To save your keyword edits, simply press the OK button and the *.keywords file will be written to disk.

Cancelling your edits

You can cancel your changes at any time by pressing the Cancel button. No changes will be written to disk and your *.keywords file will remain in its original state.


Contact info@inasafe.org for more information. Source code available on GitHub! Please file a ticket if you have discovered an issue.
This document is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia License.
CCByA, Copyright 2014, Indonesian Government-BNPB, Australian Government-AIFDR and the World Bank-GFDRR.