Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit1 European Soil Data Centre: current status and outlook Panos Panagos, Marc Van Liedekerke Institute for Environment and Sustainability Joint Research Centre of the European Commission

Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit2 1.Background 2.Requirements 3.Information providers 4.Current Status 5.Future Outline

Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit3 CONTEXT - Background CONTEXT Technical arrangement on Data Centres (November 2005) Joint Commitment of ENV, EEA, ESTAT and JRC ("Group of 4) for the establishment of Environmental Data Centres to share responsibilities, enhance collaboration and coordination JRC: Soil and Forest Data Centers INSPIRE Directive (May 2007) Shared Environmental Information System Forest Action Plan EFDAC / ESDAC Implementation Plan GOALS Establishment DC as the focal point at the EU level. Provision of high-quality, timely available data and information to policy makers for sound knowledge-based decision making. Contribution to the enhancement of data collection, management and dissemination.

Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit4 Need to collect and assess soil data and information Establishment of ESDAC as one centre in the new system of European Data Centers for the environment, decided by the group of four (Go4) (DG ENV, ESTAT, JRC, EEA) Go4 Background

Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit5 The technical arrangement in the Go4 specifies for each data centre that: It will act as the primary data contact point for DG ENV in order to fulfill DG ENVs information needs. It will have the task of ensuring that the collected data fit DG ENVs requirements, that data collection is organized in an efficient way, that the necessary quality assurance is performed and that all relevant existing data are accessible to other parties. It will have the primary responsibility for organizing the availability and quality of the data required for policy. Data collection and quality control activities in relation to such data need to be fully co-ordinated with the data centre, which should also take steps to ensure that user needs are taken fully into account Background Data Centres are driven by DG ENV requirements

Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit6 DG ENV Requirements for ESDAC Initial DG ENV overall requirements : scientific and technical support for issues in relation to the Soil Thematic Strategy and the proposed Soil Framework Directive such as Guidelines on the identification of risk areas Guidelines on data issues (quality, methods, access, data-exchange formats) scientific and technical support for the development of European datasets (e.g. maps of risk for the different soil threats in the EU) access to soil related data, maps, information at EU levelShared Environmental Information System Within SOIL Action organize activities that respond to these requirements. 2006: preparatory work: Identify data and information providers; Inventory of existing data at EU level Metadata Implementation plan

Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit7 EC and JRC soil related activities: SOIL Action, BioSoil, LUCAS, SoCo… JRC in house developments: European Soil Database EC funded projects results: ENVASSO, RAMSOIL, GS-SOIL… Research Collaborations: EuroGeoSurveys, FAO, ISRIC European Soil Bureau Network: Working Groups EIONET National Reference Centers Member States e.g. in future Soil Framework Directive Data and Information Providers ESDAC

Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit8 JRC European Soil RegionsSoil regions of Europe (scale 1:5,000,000) European Soil Database (ESDB) and derived products Soil geometry and attribute data for Eurasia obtained through harmonization of national soil data (scale 1:1,000,000) PESERASoil erosion map for Europe (1k cells) OCTOPOrganic Carbon map for Europe (1k cells) Various datasets at 1:250,000Italy, Albania, Odra basin, Meuse basin Various soil profile datasets (point data) Soil Profile Analytical Databases for Europe (SPADE), Danube basin European Digital Archive of Soil Maps (EuDASM) Archive of >5000 scanned soil related maps for all continents. Forest Focus, BioSoilForest soil (point )data SINFOESDB data expanded for the Crop Growth Monitoring System (CGMS) ESTAT Soil data from LUCAS project EEA, EIONET, ETC/TE Data on progress in management of contaminated sites for EU Compiled data related to the following indicators: Soil sealing, Diffuse contamination (Heavy metal accumulation and Sewage sludge application), Soil erosion EC Data from various EC funded soil related projects (e.g. ENVASSO (Environmental Assessment of soil for monitoring)) Member States Currently : existing soil data documented in EUR Reports "Soil Resources in Europe" Future : possibly risk area data for major soil threats identified in context of Soil Thematic Strategy and Soil Framework Directive ESDAC Inventory of available data

Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit9 TitleThe ESDBv2 Raster Library - 1km x 1km SubjectPrepared raster images for 73 soil attributes of the European Soil Database v2.0 (ESDBv2) KeywordsSoil, Raster, Grid, SGDBE, Soil Geographical Database, PTRDB, Pedotransfer Rules Database, LAEA, INSPIRE PublisherEuropean Commission – DG JRC and European Soil Bureau Network StatusFinal DescriptionThe library contains raster (or grid) data files (in native ESRI GRID format) for most attributes (73 in total) of the SGDBE and PTRDB databases of the ESDB v2.0; cell sizes are 1km x 1km and the grid is aligned with the reference grid recommended during the 1st Workshop on European Reference Grids in the context of the INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe) initiative. …. DatasourceEuropean Soil Databasev2.0 TypeRasters (grids) FormatESRI GRID CoverageThe grid origin is defined ,0 m west and ,0 m south of projection centre point (52N, 10 E), centre point. The grid extent is such that it covers all EU25 countries. Width : ,0 m ; Height : ,0 m ; 7500 columns, 5500 rows. Scale/ResolutionCell sizes of 1km x 1km Frequence of UpdatesOne time effort Last updateApril 2006 ContactMarc Van Liedekerke Rights / AccessibilityFree for download after registration URL Inventory – metadata example

Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit10 ESDAC will become the single focal point for policy relevant soil data and information at EU level (one of the 10 Data Centers) DG ENV and EEA requirements will be taken into account (yearly) New data will be produced by JRC and quality-controlled and hosted in the ESDAC ESDAC will be one node in a system consisting of distributed data nodes: as a soil data node, it will hold soil data at European level, while other soil data nodes at regional, national or global level will focus on data of different scales. ESDAC will allow linking to data and information from National providers, fully complying with the INSPIRE principle of delocalized data systems in a networked approach (interoperability) ESDAC will be as open as legally possible, meaning that if data and information resident in the ESDAC can legally be published, the system will do. Even when a product is protected for access by only privileged users, efforts will be made in order to present its metadata to the user Implementation Plan

Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit11 Soil Portal: 80 major updates in 2008

Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit12 Data (e.g. European Soil Database) Maps (e.g. EuDASM archive of sacanned maps) Documents (e.g. ESBN Research Reports) On-line applications (e.g. using ESDB) Projects … and much more Data distribution Help Desk for problem solving Download of data (some data are protected and access is subject to registration) User base : users have been registered Communication with User Base: Mailing list, free subscription Regular mails for communication of updates In 2007, European Soil Portal re-design: Could be considered as ESDAC Technical Platform but was lacking: targeted search possibility to interconnect to other systems ESDAC Technical Platform (2007)

Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit13 Data (eg European Soil Database) On-line services/applications (eg ESDB data) Maps (as images) ESDAC: data, maps, applications

Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit14 OCTOP -- Organic Carbon in topsoils (as images) Pan-European Soil Erosion Risk Assessment (PESERA) ESDAC: value added products

Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit15 In 2008, a technical platform was developed: In essence a Metadata system Contains metadata on data, applications/services, reports, events, links and projects Metadata points to actual resource For data and services: use of Metadata catalogue according to INSPIRE suggested standard (ISO19115) – populated with metadata for all JRC- local data holdings Browse and Local search of the metadata ESDAC Technical Platform browse and search Metatata data, services, … ESDAC Technical Platform (2008)

Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit further developments: Launch the new technical platform and seek feedback Extend this new technical platform in order to make it interoperable with other meta-data catalogues (de-centralized; distributed search) Incorporate new data/metadata (including Biosoil and LUCAS) Started work with a ESBN working group on INSPIRE: contribute to INSPIRE soil data specifications (by 2012) to make ESDAC interoperable with Member States in terms of soil data (European INSPIRE compliant soil data community) ESDAC ESDAC: EU - node Member State - nodes Soil Metadata; Soil data ESDAC outlook 2009

Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit17 Metadata Catalogue: Catalogue of soil related data, services, applications, documents and projects at EU level ESDAC Technical Platform ESDAC Map Viewer: Web application for the viewing of subset of available soil data Interoperable with EFDAC

Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit18 ESDAC Metadata Catalogue Browsing metadata of all datasets Viewing all metadata for one dataset

Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit19 ESDAC Metadata Catalogue

Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit20 ESDAC Map Viewer example Integration of all Soil layers in one place Navigation (Zoom, Pan) Overlay of layers Query Interoperability EFDAC

Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit21 ESDAC will be one node in a system consisting of distributed data nodes: as a soil data node, it will hold soil data at European level, while other soil data nodes at regional, national or global level will focus on data of different scales. ESDAC and National Nodes

Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit22 Within the European Soil Bureau Network, ESDAC is leading the Working Group on INSPIRE to contribute in the data specification process INSPIRE data specifications for the soil

Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit23 Test the Data Center by partners, feedback on usability of the system and suggestion of new functionalities Continue retrieval, analysis and fulfillment of data/information needs of DG ENV and EEA Development of an Implementation Plan for after 2009 Contribute further to the interoperability of DCs through: Continued input to the work of the Common Architecture Drafting Team Definition at developers level of common use of data and services with partners (on line data processing, common services, etc.) Implementation of future INSPIRE rules concerning data specifications and services Strengthen collaboration of the networks of national representatives for the development of ESDAC (ESBN and EIONET) for data and service provision, all in line with INSPIRE WAY FORWARD

Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit24 What ESDAC expect from the GS Soil? JRC ensures the cooperative development of GS Soil Portal Share the same objectives: –Data Harmonisation –Data Standardisation ESDAC and GS-SOIL can be Complementary and not in competition Data Excahnge: –ESDAC can provide to GS-SOIL data which are not available to the general public –GS-SOIL can provide to ESDAC data in order to develop added value products Interoperability between the 2 portals: –Interoperable datasets in place –Metadata Availability –Interoperability of Services –Collaboration of 2 catalogues

Land Management and Natural Hazards Unit25 18 countries represented with 25 Data Providers: –Increase networking capacity –Cover countries with poor participation in Soil data Management INSPIRE Directive: contribute in the data specification process initiated in JRC / Soil / ESBN Awareness increase: –Section in the European Soil Portal about GS-SOIL –Monthly Newsletter distribution After the end of the project: –Knowledge transfer to ESDAC –Use of best practice output of the project –Fill existing gaps What ESDAC expect from the GS Soil? (Contd)