Simplify data exchange
The usability of soil data is greatly simplified by standardised data exchange formats. Until now, the format in which soil data was provided to users depended solely on the data provider, which meant often a great effort for users to integrate data into a data evaluation environment. Therefore BGR is involved in various working groups that were or are developing standardised formats at different levels. The aim is to harmonise the resulting formats to such an extent that conversion between the formats is easy.
KA6
Although the Soil Survey Guidelines are a very comprehensive guide to soil mapping, there is still room for interpretation and expansion, leading to differences in data collection and management between the State Geological Surveys (SGD). Initiated by the Working Group Soil (formerly Ad-hoc-AG Soil) of the Federal State Geological Surveys, aiming at a standardised nationwide input mask for soil data recorded in accordance with the Soil Survey Guidelines, 6th edition (KA6), BGR and SGD of the federal states has been developed with an XML-based data exchange structure.
ISO 28258 Digital exchange of soil-related data
At the International Standardisation Organization (ISO), a working group was formed within the Technical Committee 190 Soil Quality that developed a standard for soil data exchange, in which BGR has been involved since 2007. As soil data is recorded very differently in the various countries and organisations, the exchange format is generic and only provides a clearly defined catalogue of the object types that can be described (e. g. soil profiles and horizons), while the attributes are formally defined by the data sender, so that the data can be evaluated by any data recipient. In the GS Soil project, the ISO approach was developed to test maturity and is currently being tested for usability with data from a wide range of European providers. ISO 28258 was published in October 2013. Due to expansion requests and necessary adjustments to further developed standards on which ISO 28258 is based, the immediate revision of ISO was initiated.
INSPIRE
As part of the INSPIRE directive (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe), data specifications for soil were developed in a thematic working group with BGR participation. The ideas from the ISO working group were incorporated into this working group so that both data models are basically the same. For the purposes of INSPIRE, raster data were also included in the data model. INSPIRE is more focussed on data products than ISO 28258 - the latter is also suitable for communication, e. g. between laboratories and clients. Through the networking of the two groups, approaches to the INSPIRE application scheme are made available to the ISO working group in a timely manner. The soil data specifications have been legally published since November 2013 and can be accessed here.The INSPIRE Maintenance and Implementation Group, which has been in existence since July 2013, is supported by BGR with regard to the soil data scheme through participation in the expert pool.
The term and codelists for INSPIRE-compliant data provision are maintained in the GDI-DE code list registry. We recommend the use of the ParticleSizeFractionType as described here for the implementation of soil texture data..
e-SOTER
The work in the e-SOTER project for a data exchange structure for the Soil and Terrain Database and various soil classifications was accompanied by BGR.