Conceptual design of the Global Soil Information System infrastructure

In 2021 the Global Soil Information System (GloSIS) has been designed as a federation of soil information systems, which share interoperable soil data sets via web services. GloSIS connects soil information users with soil data providers. The soil information systems that host and publish the soil data are referred to as “nodes” in the federation. These nodes could be national (country) systems, regional systems (e.g. the Latin American Soil Information System, SISLAC) or a soil information system of an (inter)national research organization or NGO that wishes to share its soil data.

The document outlines the overall design of the Global Soil Information System (GloSIS) infrastructure at higher level. It explains the architectural and engineering building blocks of the system, presents a number of implementing units, and enumerates some of the technologies on which it may depend. The broad aim is to have an implementation that is lightweight, cheap and easy to deploy by data holders, while at the same time relieving dataproviders from technical details.

Conceptual design of the Global Soil Information System infrastructure was prepared by technical experts from the GSP Soil Data Facility (ISRIC), GSP Secretariat and Pillar 4 Working Group and endorsed by the International network of Soil Information Institutions (INSII) at the fifth INSII Working Session in 2019.