OGC Soil Data Interoperability Experiment

This engineering report describes the results of the Soil Data Interoperability Experiment (the IE) conducted under the auspices of the OGC Agriculture Domain Working Group in 2015. Soil data exchange and analysis is compromised by the lack of a widely agreed international standard for the exchange of data describing soils and the sampling and analytical activities relating to them. Previous modeling activities in Europe and Australasia have not yielded models that satisfy many of the data needs of global soil scientists, data custodians and users. This IE evaluated existing models and proposed a common core model, including a GML/XML schema, which was tested through the deployment of OGC web services and demonstration clients. IE time constraints and limited participant resources precluded extensive modeling activities. However, the resulting model should form the core of a more comprehensive model to be developed by a future OGC Soil Data Standards Working Group