For further information: www.gssoil-portal.eu

INSPIRE provides the framework for the establishment of a European Spatial Data Infrastructure. The cross-border use and applicability of data requires that specific standards and rules are fulfilled by data providers. Such rules are currently being developed as data specifications. Soil as a theme in the INSPIRE annex III is included in this process, and was selected as the target theme for the EU best practice network GS SOIL „Assessment and strategic development of INSPIRE compliant Geodata-Services for European soil data". The project contributes to the harmonization and provision of interoperable soil geodata in Europe. The main deliverable of the project is the web portal http://gssoil-portal.eu/, which provides information, data management tools and links to data sources. Examples are the soil specific multilingual thesaurus, a metadata editor and catalogue service, provision of WMS and prototype WFS.

The partners will establish and operate a network of services for spatial datasets and metadata. This network includes distributed services for data transformation, discovery, view and download. The final result of the project will be a central GS SOIL Portal, where European soil data from heterogeneous sources will be bundled. In order to ensure cross-border usability of the portal and related services, aspects of multilingualism and data interpretation will be considered thoroughly.