Item talk:Q30667

Data Sources

This page describes the data sources for the FRS, which are quite extensive. The knowledgebase will need to be aware of at least some of these as it appears that the FRS data download contains some REGISTRY_ID values that are specific to an underlying system.

NAICS Industry Codes

I found this statement from the data dictionary documentation for the FRS to be interesting.

The description of the first 3 digits of the 6-digit NAICS code associated with the facility. NAICS codes may differ between program data systems, so the NAICS description is chosen from one data system in the following preferential order: TRI, GHG, ICIS-Air, RCRAInfo, ICIS-NPDES. If no NAICS code exists, the SIC code description is displayed. This field may be blank if there are no NAICS or SIC codes associated with the facility. See the Facility/System Characteristics section to view additional Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes and North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes associated with the facility.

So, there has seemingly been no attempt to standardize industry classification across the various EPA systems, and those systems have used different versions of the NAICS or even their own potentially imperfect copy/subset of NAICS codes over time. My plan is to use industry codes as the primary instance of classification in this knowledgebase. But I need to wade through what's going on with the codes to make that work.