Based on the INSPIRE directive and its Implementing Rules GS Soil aims at establishing a European network to improve the access to spatial soil data for public sector bodies, private companies and citizens. This network can be seen as example for practical implementation of a European Geodata Infrastructure for soil and soil related data. Thereby aspects of data organisation, data harmonisation as well as semantical and technical interoperability will be taken into account in order to produce seamless geospatial information. The accessibility of digital soil data for better (re)usage and exploitation will be the focal aspect of the project. Data access will be achieved by applying widely accepted standards that are aligned with INSPIRE. The specification of the structure for describing and the harmonisation of spatial soil data within Europe as well as the operation of a corresponding spatial infrastructure are main objectives of GS Soil. The Member States, here represented as partners in GS Soil, will establish and operate a network of services for spatial datasets and metadata. This network includes distributed services as discovery, view, download and transformation services. Aspects of multilingualism and different kinds of data interpretation will be considered in order to ensure cross-border usability. In this respect the harmonisation of metadata will also be a key topic. Strategies for the seamless combination of the information (addition of data as well as superposition) will be developed and tested for single products. The project’s objective to improve accessibility of geospatial data will significantly lower the barriers to use data from different sources. To improve the data flow from governmental bodies to the public (g2p) and inbetween governmental bodies (g2g), the project will assess standards and create practical guidelines to remove organisational barriers and qualify public authorities to distribute their geospatial soil information.

Results

The project GS Soil will extensively support the implementation of the INSPIRE requirements on basis of available experience in selected European countries and regions on different organisational levels. Users will be able to discover, view and download soil data across Europe. The results of the project will be:
1. A consolidated soil-related theme catalogue and consolidated soil-related theme content-framework standards
2. A INSPIRE compatible metadata profile for spatial soil datasets, dataset series and services
3. Generic application schemes for soil information
4. A web portal (GS Soil Portal) which provides access to all project soil data, including
– a view service which provides access to spatial soil data
– discovery and view of the INSPIRE conform metadata for the provided soil maps
– interoperable spatial soil datasets (for exemplary soil products)
– case studies on cross-boarder delivery of harmonised soil data access
5. Best practise guidelines for
– creating and maintaining metadata for soil database
– data harmonisation

Publications