agINFRA work on Vocabularies for Soil Data as Linked Data by Valeria Pesce, Caterina Caracciolo, Armando Stellato, Luca Matteis and Edoardo A.C. Costantini

agINFRA work on Vocabularies for Soil Data as Linked Data
agINFRA International Knowledge Fair - Agricultural Data Interoperability G. L’Abate Interest Group session
25/06/13
Giovanni L'Abate1
Valeria Pesce2, Caterina Caracciolo2, Armando Stellato3,
Luca Matteis4, Edoardo A.C. Costantini1
1 Consiglio per la Ricerca e la sperimentazione in Agricoltura
Centro di ricerca per l’agrobiologia e la pedologia (CRA-ABP)
Piazza M. D'azeglio, 30 - 50121 Florence (Italy)
giovanni.labate@entecra.it
2 GFAR - The Global Forum on Agricultural Research c/o FAO,
Viale delle Terme di Caracalla - 00153, Roma (Italy)
3 Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Impresa
University of Rome Tor Vergata (Italy)
4 Bioversity International Headquarters - Rome, Italy
Via dei Tre Denari, 472/a
00057 Maccarese (Fiumicino), Italy
Research Data Alliance
Fourth Plenary Meeting, 22 - 24 September 2014 - Amsterdam, The Netherlands
1

About CRA-ABP
G. L’Abate agINFRA International Knowledge Fair - Agricultural Data Interoperability Interest Group session
The Agricultural Research Council –
Research Centre for Agrobiology
and Pedology (CRA-ABP), has for
many years developed soil
survey, mapping, and
informatization methodologies.
Several thousands of soil
observations have been stored on
a Ms Access database. This
Information System was the
starting point to develop the
Vocabularies for Soil Data as
Linked Data
Rese2a5r/c0h6 /D1a3ta Alliance

Some history: Guidelines of the methods of soil survey and
data informatization (Italian)
25/06/13
On 2007 the CRA-ABP
published the ”Linee
guida dei metodi di
rilevamento e
informatizzazione dei
dati pedologici”
(Guidelines of the
methods of soil survey
and data informatization)
a volume with an
attached CD-rom “CNCP
3.0, Database for soil
observations and
pedological units storing,
correlating and
geoexploring”.
3

The CNCP 3.0 software
25/06/13
The software was developed
according to the indication of
the European Soil Bureau
Handbook (Finke et al., 1999)
and the ”Metodologie
pedologiche” project
(Costantini and D'Antonio,
2001).
Was adopted as soil information
system by several regional
soil services.
Can be considered as the Italian
standard for soil database
architecture.
4

About soil international standards
Technical Committee ISO/TC 190, Soil quality,
Subcommittee SC 1, Evaluation of criteria, terminology
and codification. ISO 11074:2005. Soil quality –
Vocabulary
Technical Committee ISO/TC 190, Soil quality,
Subcommittee SC 1, Evaluation of criteria, terminology
and codification. ISO 28258:2013(en) Soil quality —
Digital exchange of soil-related data
The adoption of soil international standards was
developed to enhance interoperability of data for uses
related to agriculture, agro-industry, food, forestry,
natural and geological science.
25/06/13
5

agINFRA work to publish new LOD vocabularies for soil data
In the European legislation, INSPIRE is the
reference standard for soil data organization and
dissemination among European citizens and
institutions.
Since agINFRA is an EC project, the partners
agreed that INSPIRE should be adopted as the
starting point for a LOD metadata vocabulary for
soil data.
INSPIRE is a good starting point for both:
An RDF metadata vocabulary, as it defines
entities and attributes / relationships;
The identification of KOSs that need to be
published, as it defines “registers” of values.

1° step: from ISIS (Desktop-GIS) to SISI (Web-GIS)
Desktop GIS software
25/06/13
In order to allow online data
consultation, the Ms Access
database was converted to a
PostgreSQL database according
to INSPIRE soil standards
(Schentz et al. 2012).
Online publication of the SISI
application was possible with
the support of the agINFRA e-infrastructure
Client
Server
7
project.
The Cloud infrastructure was
chose to ensure higher
performances, more fault-tolerant,
and secure design.
Main Soil Features:
European soil regions
of Italy (1:5.000.000)
Italian soil systems
(1:500.000)
Soil-typological-units
Soil profiles
Download formats:
AtomPub, GIF, TIFF,
GeoRSS, GML, JPEG
KML, OpenLayers,
PDF, PNG, SVG
Service Capabilities:
WCS, WFS, WMS
Shibboleth
protected
proxy server
Registered access Free access
PostgreSQL database
GeoServer
ggTTIIFFFF
Features dataset
Main Soil Features:
European soil regions
of Italy (1:5.000.000)
Italian soil systems
(1:500.000)
Soil-typological-units
ggTTIIFFFF
CNCP
Administrator
Client Personal
computer
CNCP3.0
database
Feature and raster
dataset

result: the SISI webgis application
25/06/13
8
The application
offers both soil
and climatic
information,
related to
1:500,000 scale
geography.
Forms can be
downloaded or
printed both
freely and by the
AgINFRA Science
Gateway
community.

2° step: Models integration
from local Soil Vocabulary to the agINFRA Soil Vocabulary
SISI
INSPIRE
agINFRA
INSPIRE Thematic
Working Group Soil.
D2.8.III.3 INSPIRE
Data Specification on
Soil – Draft Technical
Guidelines; 2013

result: listing exixtent soil vocabularies and publishing
the first agINFRA vocabulary
http://vocabularies.aginfra.eu/soil.html
25/06/13
10

3° step: publishing soil data as Linked Data
Soil (SISI)
https://aginfra-sg.ct.infn.it/rdf/cncp/

4° step: building the SKOS
getting from the 2D database structure to nD SKOS
Table (28) Field (880) Value Term (Alternative) InspireTerm (Preferred) InspireBroaderTerm
Soil_system WRB RG reference soil group (RSG) WRB Reference Soil Group (RSG) Soil Body
sottounita wrb_unità RG reference soil group (RSG) WRB Reference Soil Group (RSG) Derived Soil Profile
sottounita Localita_tipica Quarto Representative site name site name Derived Soil Profile
sottounita mpro_utile 135 potential root depth potential root depth Soil Derived Object Parameter Name
orizz_funzionali mph 8.1 mean soil pH (in water) pH value Soil Derived Object Parameter Name
orizz_funzionali mcarb_org 0.75 mean organic carbon content organic carbon content Soil Derived Object Parameter Name
analisi_routinarie phw 8.0 soil pH (in water) pH value Profile Element Parameter Name
analisi_routinarie azoto_totale total nitrogen content nitrogen content Profile Element Parameter Name
analisi_routinarie carbonio_org 0.60 organic carbon content organic carbon content Profile Element Parameter Name
Naming Classes
and Properties
Linsting all Classes
and Properties
Cleaning up KOS
Using INSPIRE
Adding Controlled
list values
expliciting complexity
(logical gerarchies)
1° approximation:
3 level SKOS
2° approximation
n level SKOS

5° step: linking Soil terms to existing KOSs
3° approximation Expliciting URIs
n level SKOS
prefLabelEn prefLabelIt exactMatch
WRB diagnostic horizon ORIZZONTE DIAGNOSTICO
WRB
https://secure.umweltbundesamt.at/soil/en/concepts/SoilCore_47
WRB edition EDIZIONE WRB http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codelist/OtherSoilNameTypeValue
WRB prefix qualifier PREFISSO WRB https://secure.umweltbundesamt.at/soil/en/concepts/SoilCore_54
WRB suffix qualifier 1° SUFFISSO WRB 2006 https://secure.umweltbundesamt.at/soil/en/concepts/SoilCore_
WRB diagnostic material MATERIALE DIAGNOSTICO
WRB
https://secure.umweltbundesamt.at/soil/en/concepts/SoilCore_48
WRB Reference Soil Group (RSG) UNITA' WRB http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codelist/WRBReferenceSoilGroupValue
WRB Qualifier Place Posizione dei qualificatori WRB http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codelist/WRBQualifierPlaceValue
WRB Qualifiers Qualificatori WRB http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codelist/WRBQualifierValue
WRB Specifiers Specificatori WRB http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codelist/WRBSpecifierValue
http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/registry (270)
http://lod.nal.usda.gov/nalt/ (691)
https://secure.umweltbundesamt.at/soil/en/concepts/ (18)
http://linkeddata.ge.imati.cnr.it:2020/ (10)

6° step: importing agINFRA Soil Terms into VocBench 2.1
http://artemide.art.uniroma2.it/vocbench2/#Concepts

About agINFRA Soil Terms
prefLabelEn exactMatch
INSPIRE Application Schema Soil
INSPIRE registry
Named Place Type
quality control http://lod.nal.usda.gov/nalt/4278
soil analysis http://lod.nal.usda.gov/nalt/179
Soil Theme Coverage http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/featureconcept/SoilThemeCoverage
Soil Typological Unit
Survey Type
8 Topconcepts
5909 Concepts
1001 Different URIs
123 Definitions

Conclusions
The adoption of LOD technologies are expected to
improve the interoperability of soil data.
Providing tools and methodologies for enabling the
soil data-related vocabularies as linked data, the
agINFRA project is enhancing the interoperability
not only between soil data sources but also
between soil data sources and other types of data
sources.
The publication of additional soil-related INSPIRE
compliant vocabularies will be a big step forward
and will represent one of the novel contributions
that agINFRA makes to the agricultural data
management community.
25/06/13
16

Thanks you for your Attention!
25/06/13
17

agINFRA work on Vocabularies for Soil Data as Linked Data by Valeria Pesce, Caterina Caracciolo, Armando Stellato, Luca Matteis and Edoardo A.C. Costantini

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agINFRA work on Vocabularies for Soil Data as Linked Data by Valeria Pesce, Caterina Caracciolo, Armando Stellato, Luca Matteis and Edoardo A.C. Costantini

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