SoilWise – An Open Access Knowledge and Data Repository to Safeguard Soils

Project aim: SoilWise project will provide an integrated and actionable access point to scattered and heterogeneous soil data and knowledge in Europe, making them FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) and improve trust, willingness, and ability to share and re-use soil data and knowledge.
About the project: More than ever, soil health is an issue, as recent assessments state that 60-70% of European soil can be considered unhealthy. The Soil Deal for Europe aims to have 75% of EU soil healthy or significantly improved by 2030. Reaching such an ambition requires, among others, access to reliable, harmonized existing and new data and knowledge collected at local, national, and EU levels to allow informed decision-making at all scales to support the Soil Health Law and the EU Soil Strategy. In three project development cycles, co-creation and co-validation by multi-stakeholder groups are the center of project activities. SoilWise recognizes existing workflows and repositories for specific user needs and aims to work with them to enhance their discoverability, approachability, and interconnection. An open, modular, and extensible knowledge and data repository building on existing and new technologies will be provided while respecting data ownership, access policies, and privacy. AI- and ML- techniques will be employed to interlink scattered data and knowledge, automatize the processes, infer new knowledge, and increase FAIRness. SoilWise applies infrastructure thinking instead of project thinking to design a repository for at least a decade to support EUSO evolvement accordingly. The SoilWise repository and community are designed to be a joint starting point and common ground for countries, the European Commission, and other stakeholders to jointly guide soil and related spatial policy and informed decision-making towards the 2030 goals of the Green Deal, achieve healthy soils in 2050 and ensure broad uptake and implementation by land managers, policy, research and industry.