SoilWise

The Soil Deal for Europe aims to have 75% of EU soils healthy or significantly improved by 2030. Reaching such an ambition requires, among others, access to reliable, harmonised 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. 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.

An open, modular, scalable 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 Project applies infrastructure thinking instead of project thinking to design a repository for at least a decade to support EUSO (European Soil Observatory) evolvement accordingly. It is not merely a technical endeavor; it is a collaborative effort that brings together diverse stakeholders, including farmers, land managers, agri-business, policymakers, researchers, and industry leaders, through the implementation of 5 cross-scale use cases.

The SoilWise Project 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.