A Standards-Based Soil Information System Architecture for Soil Health Indicator Computation and Data Interoperability in the SOILS4MED project 

A Soil Information System (SIS) is a comprehensive information framework developed to support the collection, storage, analysis, management, and dissemination of soil-related data. Despite significant technological advances over the last decade, many regions – specifically the Mediterranean, Near East, and North Africa – still rely on non-digital soil records, which significantly limits their accessibility and usability.Enhancing the availability and accessibility of soil data is therefore essential for effectively assessing and monitoring soil health and for promoting sustainable soil management practices across the Mediterranean region.In this context, the PRIMA-funded SOILS4MED project aims to assess soil health and develop data systems that support sustainable soil management. The project will deploy a network of country-based soil information systems based on a harmonized data model aligned with the World Reference Base for Soil Resources (WRB 2022), other initiatives, such as Soil4Africa, and notions or contents that have been designed/conceived by the project partners.The objective of this network is to strengthen interoperability, improve data management and foster the effective use of soil information throughout the region.The SIS platform developed adopts an Object-Relational Mapping methodology within a GeoNode-based architecture, an open-source geospatial content management framework that integrates advanced WebGIS functionalities, fully compliant with Open Geospatial Consortium standards, ensuring API interoperability according to the ISO 28258 soil data exchange protocol. The platform architecture supports automatic computation of selected soil health indicators based on monitoring data and the application of data interpolation techniques. In addition, it allows the calculation of user-defined soil indicators using the data available within the system.