Sharing soil information with the help of INSPIRE, key challenges with soil data management Katharina Feiden e-mail: gssoil@portalu.de
GS Soil: project outline GS Soil: Assessment and strategic development of INSPIRE compliant Geodata-Services for European Soil Data EU-Programme: econtentplus* Funding: 4,1 Mio (overall budget 5.1 Mio ) Duration: 06/2009 05/2012 (3 years) Coordinator: Coordination Center PortalU (German Environmental Portal) Consortium: 34 Partner 18 EU member states 24 soil data providers * http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/econtentplus/index_en.htm
Core activities Study of the frame conditions for improved soil data access in Europe Development of an infrastructure for soil data exchange, components: Data sets technical infrastructure Guidance for harmonizing soil data under INSPIRE and beyond
Achievements: Content Provision Framework Requirement & Gap Analysis Review and analysis of the existing soil content framework Review of existing inventories, questionaire of target groups (data provider, policy-makers, keystakeholders) Analysis of requirements regarding harmonisation defined by INSPIRE Best practice guidelines for developing a content framework for interoperable soil data in Europe
Harmonisation of metadata Development of an ISO 19115/INSPIRE-compliant Metadata profile for spatial soil data Analysis of framework conditions of INSPIRE for metadata (Annex I). Best Practice Guidelines for creating & maintaining metadata for soil databases
Harmonisation of metadata Analysis of multilingual needs for meta-data content SoilThes - Thesaurus Provision of metadata via the GS SOIL portal Debate about the need for more content-related meta information for harmonization
GS Soil at the beginning of the project Hardly any metadata available Hardly any WMS, no WFS Lack of knowledge about interoperability, XML/GML, exchange format, Web-GIS, and how to efficiently make use of it The content of soil map data has not yet been described in detail
GS Soil WP4 test cases to study harmonisation Overview: 4 Pillars of harmonisation Objectives of TEST CASES (see also D4.1) FI 250 BG 200 Celtic 250 DE-FR 200/250 AT 10 BE SI 20 1) 25 Reference comparability of terminology terminology support GS Soil Thesaurus X X X X X X X X Harmonizing compare parameter definitions soil profile with FAO soil profile data description X X X X X X X (Ch. 1.4.1) support WRB correlation Harmonizing Align the equivalent of each soil mapping guideline to one classification another and compare and X X X X X X X X X X (Ch. 1.4.2) evaluate discrepancies Harmonizing check list for maps X X X X X X soil maps (Ch. 1.4.3) analysis of geometry X X X HU 50 SK 20 RO 2) 200 GR 100
Brief sips from the domain test cases Single country Adjoining areas of two countries Complete WRB cover for three partners 9
Some general threads through the test cases All partners Some partners Translation of soil profiles and/or map legends to WRB Geometric harmonisation Compatibility of local soil profile classification systems with FAO Guidelines for Soil Profile Description 10
Single country Country Finland Hungary Slovenia Greece Tests Harmonise different data sets within one country Evaluate methods for translation of local soil profile classifications to WRB Methodology for geometry quantification 11
Adjoining areas of two or more partners Austria Slovakia France Germany Bulgaria - Romania Geometry comparison Edge-matching at borders 12
Austria Slovakia cross-border Slovakia 1:10 000 Austria 1:20 000 13
France - Germany Joëlle Sauter and Annett Pätzold 14
Bulgaria Romania - Greece Bulgarian Dobrich region showing the dissolved largescale map contours (1.10,000) 15
Complete partner coverage with three partners Scotland Northern Ireland Ireland 16
GS Soil harmonization at the end of the project lifetime INSPIRE data specifications vers. 2 were reviewed. GS Soil/ISO application schema was tested using the WP5 transformation tool (and lots of domain knowledge). The INSPIRE requirements can be clearly identified. Soil property data incl. WRB are extremely difficult to harmonize without analytical data sets; harmonization at this level requires strong incentives. Knowledge has been compiled which could improve existing reference material for soil data base development in Europe. The data may not be fit in the sense of best practice harmonization, but the data providers are now!
Technical network Establishment of an Integrated Network and Soil portal. Common Data provider 1 Map service Data provider 2 Central Portal Data provider 3 Rights Management Service Data provider 4 Transformation Service Catalogue Service Catalogue Service Map Service Central Portal (Web 2.0) Unique and common entry point (URL address) Semantic Service Integration (Theasurus, Gazetteer, Classification) Resource Search, mapping client, metadata harvesting, metadata editor Distributed Services (following the INSPIRE rules and recommendations) Metadata Catalogue View Service Download Service (direct-access e pre-defined datasets) Transformation Service Right Management Service 18
GS Soil Portal Web:http://gssoil-portal.eu/ Portal surface supports currently 13 Languages: English, German Portuguese Dutch (fm. Belgium) Czech Hungarian Slovak Bulgarian Greek Slovene Romanian French Finish 19
Portal Search, Thesaurus & Gazetteer Gazetteer: Locations, POI s, Administrative Boundaries Thesaurus: Similar Terms from GEMET or SoilThes 20
View and Download Service View Service with Crossborder Harmonised Data (Legend) Portal Map Viewer WFS/Download Services Portal Map Viewer WMS/View Services 21
Ingrid Catalogue & GeoFOSS Open Tools Catalogue and Map Server GeoFOSS DP s Catalogue GeoNetwork GsSoil Catalogue InGrid GeoFOSS Map Server GeoServer 22
Back-Office transformation tool (harmonisation) GS Soil HALE tool 23
What IT partners learned from the cooperation with DPs? Fix, from the beginning, a common language/terminology between IT and Thematic partners to facilitate dialogue and understanding (e.g.: what is a use case?) IT Infrastructure is not always available, so the support must begin from scratch IT support is normally needed (hardware & software). for deployment and activation of the IT infrastructure At least minimum training is required for DPs in the operation of the several software packages (open tools & portal metadata editor). Documents were created (e.g.: instructions, cookbooks and experiences). Not always easy, even for IT partners, to configure some software packages (e.g.: IPR/RM software vs. DP IT infrastructure). DPs needed to be pushed forward on most situations. IT always stimulated DPs proactively by showing them the example of the most experienced / advanced ones. 24
GS SOIL for INSPIRE Co-funded by the community programme econtentplus
GS Soil for INSPIRE Best Practice Infrastructure/Tools/Portal Output Metadata profile WP3 Metadata catalogue Soil Theme Catalogue and inventory of soil data providers Product catalogue Application schema for ISO 28258 (SoilML) WP4 Content framework Harmonisation WP2 WP4 Thesaurus Schema transformation WP5 Reference terminology Soil profile properties Classification Geometries WMS (WFS)
Can we expect a new phase of data availability?
Data availability under INSPIRE Scales likely to be covered (from 18 EU MS in GS Soil): Country Map scale Austria (AT) 1:20,000 Slovakia (SK) 1:10,000 Finland (FI) 1:250,000 France (FR) 1:250,000 Germany (DE) 1:200,000 Greece (GR) 1:50,000/100,000 Romania (RO) 1:200,000 Bulgaria (BG) 1:200,000 Hungary (HU) 1:50,000, 1:100,000 Ireland (IE) 1:250,000 N. Ireland (NIR) Scotland (SCT) Slovenia (SI) 1:10,000/1:25,000 Belgium 1:20,000/1:250,000
Data availability under INSPIRE GS Soil: data from all kinds of scales and resolutions were catalogued, and described by metadata Soil analytical data is mostly excluded Especially smaller-sized countries provide high-resolution soil maps and applications The structure of the data bases has similar complexity across scales Harmonization faces the same difficulties and challenges in large-scale as well as more generalized data bases
http://eusoils.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ The European Soil Portal
http://eusoils.jrc.ec.europa.eu/library/esdac/index.html
http://esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ European Soil Data Center - ESDAC
The GS Soil Portal www.gssoil-portal.eu By regional / national partners (18 MS) Domain experts Small-scale regional and national data INSPIRE-relevant Harmonised metadata Data fit for exchange Best practice in harmonisation Destributed system (data stored and maintained by regional / national owner)
Cooperation and streamlining needed! Aim: increase soil data availibility!
Thank you