This presentation was presented during the second workshop of the International Network of Soil Information Institutions (INSII) that took place at FAO headquarters 24-25 november 2016. The presentation was made by Rainer Baritz from the GSP Secretariat

1. The Global Soil Information
System and SoilSTAT
Pillar 4
Pillar 5 aspects related to its
implementation

2. Deliverables
Pillar 4
Soil Polygon map
 SoilSTAT concept
Soil profiles
 Data overview
 Web platform and portal
 Tier 1 data base
 Tier 2 specifications
 Copyright/data use policy
 Code of ethics
 Capacity development programme
2016
SoilSTAT
Soil grids
 Tier 1 (continued)
 Tier 2 data base
2017 - 2020
 Specifications
 SOTER mapping and
data exchange
 HWSD Specifications
 Proof-of-concept (PoC)
 HWSD final product
 Grid v0: data overview
 Web portal and PoC
 v0 gridded product
 Grid v1: specifications
and data

3. Global Soil Information System (GSIS)
1. Overarching term for GSP Pillar 4 (country) products
2. Building on Pillar 5 harmonization, soil exchange model
and indicator selection
 Very ambitions, lots of resources needed
 Network establishment (INSII, P4WG, complementary RSP
design, GSSDIC)
 Capacity building
 Links: national statistics and infrastructure and reporting
 Complementary role Pillar 5
After 1 year entering implementation.

4. Core technical elements to deploy the
infrastructure for GSIS:
GSSDIC
SoilSTAT
global SDI design
SoilML
+ voluntary contributions/tools by partners
National
SDIs

5. Progress SoilSTAT
1. Concept note for SoilSTAT, including the GSP soil
information portal with products and services based on an
underlying infrastructure for spatial soil data (SDI for soil)
(by FAO)
2. Feasibility study for soil monitoring (P4WG)
SoilSTAT acc. to P4IP

6. Concept Note SoilSTAT/SDI
FAO Task force Table of Contents
1. BACKGROUND AND REQUIREMENTS..................................................................................... 3
1.1 Principles for data exchange: distributed system ............................................................... 3
1.2 Network............................................................................................................................... 4
2 SPATIAL DATA INFRASTRUCTURE (SDI) AT FAO .................................................................4
2.1 Functionalities and tools .................................................................................................5
2.1.1 GSP soil data portal............................................................................................... 5
2.1.2 Soil data discovery services .................................................................................. 5
2.1.3 Soil data view services .......................................................................................... 6
2.1.4 Soil data download services .................................................................................. 6
2.1.5 Rights management and licensing.........................................................................6
2.1.6 Transformation services ........................................................................................ 6
2.1.7 Other domain-specific services..............................................................................7
3 CONCEPTUAL ARCHITECTURE................................................................................................ 8
4 REFERENCE ARCHITECTURE ..................................................................................................8
4.1 GeoNetwork....................................................................................................................... 9
4.2 GeoServer........................................................................................................................10
4.3 Partner-SDIs ....................................................................................................................10
5 Soil-SDI DEPLOYMENT ARCHITECTURE...............................................................................10
5.1 Soil SDI for the Global Soil Partnership.........................................................................1
5.2 Hardware (incl. cost) ........................................................................................................1
5.3 Software (incl. cost)..........................................................................................................1
5.4 Maintenance (incl. cost)...................................................................................................1
Planning document
Review:
P4WG and GSSDIC

7. Soil SDI: technical concept of the Global Soil Information System
GSP Soil Portal
WMS, WFS, WCS
National data
Sufficient
technical capacity
Capcity building
Pillar 4/SoilSTAT
Metadata editor
Catalogue Service
Thesaurus
Quality control
Documentation
Data upload tools and
data storage
(centralized)
Registry
Standards (Pillar 4+5):
— SoilML
— Content
specifications
— Transformation
services
Lack of technical capacity
Liscensing Web Security Service
SDI Tools
Discovery services
Invoking services
Web processing services
Register products in GEOSS
Update SWSR
View service Download service
Central DB
(centralized repository)
Web Services
Requires bilateral
data sharing
agreement

8. GSP Portal
Portal Start page/
Portal services
Home, my GSP soil, Site map, Help, Contact, Languages
Main menu: Search, Service, Maps, Printing, About GSP
GSIS
Function
alities
Discovery: Metadata
and address
management/
search
Client Application:
 Management of search queries1): browsing of content of
the FAO metadata catalogue, or other catalogues from
distributed catalogue services
 Catalogue service web interface: access to metadata;
link with other metadata catalogues
Web editor  Access to metadata
 Address management (record, update)
 Build and manage work flow from Search to View to
Download
 Metadata entries, link with metadata catalogue
 Language of the editor is English.
View Map Viewer: load WMS from the Search-result list to the
viewer.
Download Register and execute download services (GML data)

9. General architecture blueprint
Advantages:
 FOSS software
can be easily
implemented
nationally
 Installation
guideline and
good practice

10. Pillar 5
SoilML Information Model
= the core element of the specification to develop
interoperable soil data web services (WMS, WFS)

11. Existing
activities:
GSP
Soil Sciences
IUSS WG Soil
Information standards
Global Soil Infor-
mation System
Interoperability
experiment
OGC ISO
SoilML
ISO 28258 Conceptual
Model
Pillar 4 and 5
Ag Domain WG
 Integration and resource mobilization needed

12. OGC Interoperability Experiment: results
A new draft generic model has been designed:
Soil IE (Ritchie et al. 2016):
ISO Standard development SoilML
• Will stop the stop the revision process and wait for joint
(GSP/OGC/ISO/IUSS) follow-up in cooperation with GODAN WG
www.opengeospatial.org/docs/er
– it matches the conceptual needs of the GlobalSoilMap specifications
– it exceeds the coverage of the ISO 28258 (SoilML), IS0/IUSS and
eSoTerML schema;
– it is broadly equivalent to the INSPIRE soil model (Europe);
– it requires further reworking in order to better allow class and
property extensions.

13. GODAN supports the proactive sharing of
open data to make information about
agriculture and nutrition available,
accessible and usable to deal with the
urgent challenge of ensuring world food
security.
Agriculture Data Interest Group
(IGAD): a domain-oriented interest
group to work on all issues related
to data important for the
development of global agriculture
New
GODAN Soil Data
Working group !
 Joint venture to align initiatives towards
SoilML
 Currently CSIRO, ISRIC, Landcare, FAO
 Interact with larger public-private soil data
interest group
 Mobilize resouces for building the distributed
system as envisaged by GSP

14. GODAN Soil Data Working group
 http://www.godan.info/working-groups/soil-data
1. Travel funds for GSP partners in need, in order to engage in the
building of a distributed system/SoilML
 2016: RDA-IGAD/GODAN technical workshop, Tokyo (invited
members from Pillar 4/5 Asian Soil Partnership)
 2017: RDA-IGAD/GODAN technical workshop, Barcelona (1 or 2 day
workshop during 3 – 7 April): members of the European Soil
Partnership are especially welcome
2. Project development and discussion with potential funders

15. Other ongoing Pillar 5 activity:
Exchange of harmonized soil profile descriptions
 FAO (2006) soil profile description is basis
 Revision of FAO (2006) is task identified in Pillar 5
 Reasons for ISO revision, e.g. improve encoding (link to ISO
28258 SoilML)
Ongoing revision of ISO 25177 „Soil Quality – Field Description“
since Oct 2014
GSP-INSII received 3 month informal time window to review
current community draft!
Document wil be circulated to INSII members for voluntary
review.