Fourth Working Session of the International Network of Soil Information Institutions (INSII) 6-8 November 2018 | FAO HQ – German Room, Rome, Italy

1. Design of the GLOSIS
infrastructure
Bas Kempen, Luis de Sousa,
Yusuf Yigini, Kostiantyn Viatkin

2. Content
• Pillar 4 implementation plan
• Proposal for the design of GLOSIS
• Building blocks
• Architecture & Engineering
• Participation levels
• Implementation tools: ‘CountrySIS’
• Progress and work plan 2018-2019

3. Pillar 4 Implementation Plan
“Towards a Global Soil Information System” (February 2016)
• Based on the recommendations of the “Plan of Action for Pillar Four”:
• Establishment of an enduring and authoritative global system to monitor and
forecast the condition of the Earth’s soil resources.
• Use soil data primarily from national and within-country systems through a
federated design.
• Integrated into GEOSS.
• Implementation should include a training programme.
• General timeline GLOSIS (proposed during INSII3):
• 2018: development technical specifications of GLOSIS and its data products
• 2019: implementation and testing
• 2020: population

4. Vision for a GLOSIS implementation
Principles:
• Infrastructure bringing together soil information collected by (national) institutions in a de-
centralized way.
• GLOSIS is to be a federation of soil information systems.
• Source institutions retain their data and control access.
• Data sharing according to data policy of data providers.
• Implementation that is lightweight, cheap to deploy, “simple”.
• Based on open source software.
• Should empower countries (and other data providers) to develop their national soil information
system as a centre for national soil information.
• Existing SIS can be linked to GLOSIS through a common data exchange model.
Vision document: a proposal for the design of GLOSIS: building blocks,
technologies, participation levels.

5. A federation of soil information
systems

6. GLOSIS building blocks
• Domain model
• Data exchange
• GLOSIS node
• Support node
• Discovery hub

7. Domain model
• Defines how data stored in GLOSIS will be structured.
• Common understanding of what soil profile data are; defines what is a
soil profile, horizon and how these concepts relate to each other.
• Defines structure of the data sharing vehicle.
• Temporary solution while waiting for an endorsed soil data exchange
standard (P5).

8. Data exchange
• Each node must publish its soil data while adhering to the structure
defined by the domain model (respecting all relationships).
• Existing standards for data publication and exchange will be adopted:
OGC Web Feature Service (WFS) standard + Application Schema to
structure the attribute data associated to the spatial features.
• Implementation allows adoption of future standards (Pillar 5); adoption
would be facilitated if the new standard can be integrated with WFS.
• Data exchange governed by GSP Data Policy; respects the data policy set
by the data provider.

9. GLOSIS node
• Two different implementations of a country or institutional GLOSIS node
are foreseen:
• Reference implementation: off-the-shelf deployable bundle of techs that
performs the functions of a node. Cheap and fast vehicle to setup a SIS that can
function as a GLOSIS node. Includes tools for load, management and
publication of data
• Ad hoc implementation: an existing SIS able to publish data complying with the
GLOSIS data exchange. Requires implementation of the GLOSIS Application
Schema in its services. (no hosting of a parallel system required).
• Note: names of the implementations are suggested only and can be
changed.

10. Support node
• Instance of the reference implementation deployed and managed by
the GSP.
• Harbour data from institutions not able to set up their own node.
• Protocol will be established that will prescribe how institutions can
submit their data to the GSP to be loaded in the support node.
• Data providers will be responsible for data standardization and quality
assurance.
• Can be used a temporary solution.

11. Discovery hub
• Web-based gateway to the GLOSIS federation.
• Two functions:
• Registrar of all the nodes compliant with the application.
• Search engine for soil data.
• Registrar: catalogue of GLOSIS nodes, able to verify the correct
application of the data schema, guarantee correct identification of each
soil profile and its origin (e.g. through UUIDs or DOIs).
• Search the federation by spatial location, meta-data, data fields.
• Software solutions: GeoPortal, GeoNode, geoOrchestra, iGUESS.

12. Reference node architecture I
• Functionalities of the reference implementation:
1. Data load and management
2. Data publication
• Data load and management:
• Database management system (e.g. PostgreSQL/PostGIS)
• Extraction, Transformation and Load (ETL) tools for automated data load. Tool
maps fields from existing data repositories to fields in the GLOSIS data model
(e.g. GeoKettle).
• Data management tool offering management functionality (CRUD), for instance
through web-forms. Developed by with a Rapid Application Development tool
(e.g. Django).

13. Reference node architecture II
• Data publication
• Web mapping application to serve a
mapped view of the soil data in a web
browser (e.g. Mapbender, QGIS Web
Client, MapGuide, Geomajas).
• GeoServer as the reference
implementation of the WFS standard
(tabular soil data) and the WMS standard
(map data).
• Meta-data service compliant with the OGC
Catalogue Services for Web (e.g.
GeoNetwork).

14. Deployment of the reference
implementation
• Principle: setting up an institutional SIS should be made as easy as
possible, limiting infrastructure admin work.
• Implementation should be a ready-to-run block, i.e. one package that
bundles all software.
• Making use of container technologies (e.g. Docker).
• Container is a lightweight virtual system into which different tools may
be installed and connected, producing a single bundle.

15. Data exchange

16. Participation levels: adhesion to
GLOSIS

17. Implementation programme:
‘CountrySIS’
• GLOSIS, being a federated system, relies on the participation of data
providers.
• Many countries (and other data holders) do not have a SIS yet.
• The GSP Pillar 4 ‘CountrySIS’ programme will provide tools and support
to set up soil information systems.
• Main aim: support data providers to set up their own (institutional or
national) SIS.
• Link institutional or national SIS as a node to GLOSIS if the data provider
wishes to do so.

18. Progress GSP-SDF
• Developing technical documents (2018):
• GLOSIS vision document (draft completed, August 2018).
• Technical specifications of the Tier 1 and Tier 2 soil profile databases (draft
completed, July 2018).
• Domain model specifications (Nov 2018 – Jan 2019).
• Data exchange specifications (Dec 2018 – Jan 2019).
• Data model specifications (Dec 2018 – Jan 2019).
• Testing generate the data model and application schema from the
domain model; exploring software Enterprise architect for this purpose
• Refinement of the domain model.

19. Proposed work plan Q4 2018 –
2019
• Review and finalize technical documents (Q1 2019).
• Develop GLOSIS node reference implementation (Jan – May 2019).
• Develop beta-version of the Data Discovery Hub (Jan – Jun 2019).
• Develop GLOSIS Guidelines (Jan – May 2019).
• GLOSIS implementation pilot phase with few selected countries (Apr – Dec
2019).
• Develop GLOSIS Cookbook (Aug – Dec 2019).
• Technical specifications of the fine-resolution grids, in collaboration with
the IUSS WG GlobalSoilMap (2019).
• GLOSIS technical documents and Guidelines presented to the GSP Plenary
Assembly 2019.

20. Why joining GLOSIS?
• Provide tools (software, guidelines) to organize and standardize soil data
assets and to setup a soil information system.
• Improve visibility of a national SIS; enhance usability of (national) soil
data.
• Contribute to more consistent and accurate global soil data products to
be used in SDG-related global assessments (informing national policy
development).
• Make national soil data compatible and exchangeable with other soil
data sources:
• to support (inter)national scientific research;
• to address trans-boundary issues.
• Remember: existing (national) SIS can be retained!

21. What do we ask of the INSII?
• To endorse the GLOSIS document outlining a proposal of the
design of the GLOSIS infrastructure.
• This document will provide direction to the P4WG for
further developing and implementing GLOSIS.

22. bas.kempen@wur.nl
yusuf.yigini@fao.org