Glossary
- Abstracting and indexing service (A&I)
- Abstracting and indexing service is a service, e.g. a search engine, that abstracts and indexes documents, and provides matching and ranking functionality in support of information retrieval (source: wikipedia{target=_blank).
- Acceptance Criteria
- Acceptance Criteria can be used to judge if the resulting software satisfies the user's needs. A single user story/requirement can have multiple acceptance criteria.
- API
- Application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other (source wikipedia)
- Application profile
- Application profile is a specification for data exchange for applications that fulfil a certain use case. In addition to shared semantics, it also allows for the imposition of additional restrictions, such as the definition of cardinalities or the use of certain code lists (source: purl.eu).
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Artificial Intelligence is a field of study that develops and studies intelligent machines. It includes the fields rule based reasoning, machine learning and natural language processing (NLP). (source: wikipedia)
- Assimilation
- Assimilation is a term indicating the processes involved to combine multiple datasets with different origin into a common dataset, the term is somewhat similarly used in psychology as
incorporation of new concepts into existing schemes(source: wikipedia). But is not well aligned with its usage in the data science community:updating a numerical model with observed data(source: wikipedia) - ATOM
- ATOM is a standardised interface to exchange news feeds over the internet. It has been adopted by INSPIRE as a basic alternative to download services via WFS or WCS.
- Catalogue
- Catalogue or metadata registry is a central location in an organization where metadata definitions are stored and maintained (source: wikipedia)
- Code list
- Code list an enumeration of terms in order to constrain input and avoid errors (source: UN).
- Conceptual model
- Conceptual model or domain model represents concepts (entities) and relationships between them (source: wikipedia)
- Content negotiation
- Content negotiation refers to mechanisms that make it possible to serve different representations of a resource at the same URI (source: wikipedia)
- Controlled vocabulary
- Controlled vocabulary provides a way to organize knowledge for subsequent retrieval. A carefully selected list of words and phrases, which are used to tag units of information so that they are more easily retrieved by a search (source: Semwebtech). Vocabulary, unlike the dictionary and thesaurus, offers an in-depth analysis of a word and its usage in different contexts (source: learn grammar)
- Cordis
- Cordis is the primary source of results from EU-funded projects since 1990
- Corpus
- Corpus (plural: Corpora) is a repository of text documents (knowledge resources); a body of works. Typically the input for information retrieval.
- Catalogue Service for the Web (CSW)
- Catalogue Service for the Web is a standardised protocol from the Open Geospatial Consortium to filter and exchange metadata records. The standard is endorsed by the INSPIRE regulation for discovery services.
- Data
- Data is a collection of discrete or continuous values that convey information, describing the quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted formally (Wikipedia).
- Data source
- Data source/provider is a provider of data resources.
- Data management
- Data management is the practice of collecting, organising, managing, and accessing data (for some purpose, such as decision-making).
- Dataset
- Dataset (Also: Data set) A collection of data (Wikipedia).
- Dataverse
- Dataverse is open source research data repository software
- Datacite
- Datacite is a non-profit organisation that provides persistent identifiers (DOIs) for research data.
- Datacite metadata scheme
- Datacite metadata schema a datamodel for metadata for scientific resources
- Destination Earth (DestinE)
- Destination Earth is an initiative of the European Commission to develop a digital model of the Earth to model, monitor and simulate natural phenomena, hazards and the related human activities. The features assist users in designing accurate and actionable adaptation strategies and mitigation measures.
- Digital exchange of soil-related data
- Digital exchange of soil-related data (ISO 28258:2013) presents a conceptual model of a common understanding of what soil profile data are
- Digital soil mapping (DSM)
- Digital soil mapping or pedometric mapping is the creation of soil maps by using field and laboratory observation methods coupled with environmental data through quantitative relationships (source: wikipedia)
- Discovery service
- Discovery service is a concept from INSPIRE indicating a service type which enables discovery of resources (search and find). Typically implemented as CSW.
- Download service
- Download service is a concept from INSPIRE indicating a service type which enables download of a (subset of a) dataset. Typically implemented as WFS, WCS, SOS or Atom.
- Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- Digital Object Identifier a digital identifier of an object, any object — physical, digital, or abstract
- Encoding
- Encoding is the format used to serialise a resource to a file, common encodings are xml, json, turtle
- Europian soil data centre (ESDAC)
- Europian soil data centre is the thematic centre for soil related data in Europe at the Joint Research Centre
- EU Login
- EU Login is the European Commission's user authentication service. It allows authorised users to access a wide range of Commission web services, using a single email address and password
- European Soil Observatory (EUSO)
- European Soil Observatory is a a dynamic and inclusive platform that aims to support policymaking, by facilitating soil knowledge and data flows, supporting EU Research & Innovation on soils and raising societal awareness of the value of soils
- GDAL OGR
- GDAL and OGR are software packages widely used to interact with a variety of spatial data formats
- Geography Markup Language (GML)
- Geography Markup Language is a standardised encoding for spatial data.
- GeoPackage
- GeoPackage a set of conventions for storing spatial data a SQLite database
- Geoserver
- Geoserver java based software package providing access to remote data through OGC services
- Global Soil Information System (GloSIS)
- Global Soil Information System (GLOSIS) is an activity of FAO Global Soil Partnership enabling a federation of soil information systems and interoperable data sets
- GLOSIS domain model
- GLOSIS domain model is an abstract, architectural component that defines how data are organised; it embodies a common understanding of what soil profile data are.
- GLOSIS Web Ontology
- GLOSIS Web Ontology is an implementation of the GLOSIS domain model using semantic technology
- GLOSIS Codelists
- GLOSIS Codelists is a series of codelists supporting the GLOSIS web ontology. Including the codelists as published in the FAO Guidelines for Soil Description (v2007), soil properties as collected by FAO GfSD and procedures.
- Glosolan
- Glosolan network to strengthen the capacity of laboratories in soil analysis and to respond to the need for harmonizing soil analytical data
- Green Deal
- A program of the European commission setting out a plan to transform Europe’s economy, energy, transport, and industries for a more sustainable future (source: EC).
- Green Deal DataSpace (GDDS)
- Green Deal Dataspace is a German association aiming to build an open ecosystem for resilience and sustainablility, towards the optimization of circular economy and transparency of supply chains.
- Humboldt Alignment Editor (HALE)
- Humboldt Alignment Editor (HALE) java based desktop software to compose and apply a data transformation to data
- Harmonization
- Harmonization is the process of transforming two datasets to a common model, a common projection, usage of common domain values and align their geometries
- Information retreival
- Information retreival (IR) is the task of identifying and retrieving information system resources (e.g. digital objects or metadata records) that are relevant to a search query. It includes searching for the information in a document, searching for the documents themselves, as well as searching for metadata describing the documents.
- Iteration
- An iteration is each development cycle (three foreseen within the SoilWise project) in the project. Each iteration can have phases. There are four phases per iteration focussing on co-design, development, integration and validation, demonstration.
- Joint Research Centre (JRC)
- Joint Research Centre is a part of the European Commission Directorate General. The JRC provides independent, evidence-based science and knowledge, supporting EU policies to positively impact society. Relevant policy areas within JRC are JRC Soil and JRC INSPIRE
- Knowledge
Knowledge is facts, information, and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. SoilWise mainly considers explicit knowledge -- Information that is easily articulated, codified, stored, and accessed. E.g. via books, web sites, or databases. It does not include implicit knowledge (information transferable via skills) nor tacit knowledge (gained via personal experiences and individual contexts). Explicit knowledge can be further divided into semantic and structural knowledge.
- Semantic knowledge: Also known as declarative knowledge, refers to knowledge about facts, meanings, concepts, and relationships. It is the understanding of the world around us, conveyed through language. Semantic knowledge answers the "What?" question about facts and concepts.
- Structural knowledge: Knowledge about the organisation and interrelationships among pieces of information. It is about understanding how different pieces of information are interconnected. Structural knowledge explains the "How?" and "Why?" regarding the organisation and relationships among facts and concepts.
- Knowledge graph
- Knowledge graph is a representation of a network of real-world entities -- such as objects, events, situations or concepts -- and the relationships between them. Typically the network is made up of nodes, edges, and labels. Both semantic and structural knowledge can be expressed, stored, searched, visualised, and explored as knowledge graphs.
- Knowledge resource
- Knowledge resource is a digital object, such as a document, a web page, or a database, that holds relevant explicit knowledge.
- Knowledge source
- Knowledge source/provider is a provider of knowledge resources.
- Knowledge management
- Knowledge managmenet is the practice of collecting, organising, managing, and accessing knowledge (for some purpose, such as as decision-making).
- Large Language Model (LLM)
- Large Language Model is typically a deep learning model based on the transformer architecture that has been trained on vast amounts of text data, usually from know collections scraped from the Internet.
- Mapserver
- Mapserver C based software package providing access to remote data through OGC services
- Metadata
- (Descriptive) metadata is a summary information describing digital objects such as datasets and knowledge resources.
- Metadata record
- Metadata record is an entry in e.g. a catalogue or abstracting and indexing service with summary information about a digital object.
- Metadata source
- Metadata source/provider is a provider of metadata.
- Mission soil
- Mission Soil is a research and innovation programme of the European Commision, with a strong social science component, putting in place an effective network of 100 living labs and lighthouses to co-create knowledge, test solutions and demonstrate their value in real-life conditions developing a harmonised framework for soil monitoring in Europe, and raising awareness on the vital importance of soils (source: EC research and innovation)
- Mission Soil implementation platform (MIP)
- Mission Implementation Platform is a tool to discover Mission Soil, progress, funded projects, activities and tools to promote cooperation between projects and Mission Soil communities, funding opportunities, news, and events
- Natural Language Processing (NLP)
- Natural Language Processing is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and artificial intelligence, primarily concerned with providing computers with the ability to process data encoded in natural language. It is closely related to information retrieval, knowledge representation and computational linguistics.
- Observations, Measurements and Samples (OMS)
- A conceptual model for Observations, Measurements and Samples (OMS), certified as ISO19156:2023
- OGC API
- OGC API building blocks that can be used to assemble novel APIs for web access to geospatial content
- Ontology
- Ontology is a formal representation of the entities in a knowledge graph. Ontologies and knowledge graphs can be expressed in a similar manner and they are closely related. Ontologies can be seen as the (semantic) data model defining classes, relationships and attributes, while knowledge graphs contain the real data according to the (semantic) data model.
- Persistent identifier (PID)
- Persistent identifier is a long-lasting reference to a (digital) object (source wikipedia). In academia, various systems exist which facilitate the creation of PIDs, such as DOI (for publications), ORCID (for authors), and ROR (for organisations).
- Product backlog
- Product backlog is the document where user stories/requirements are gathered with their acceptance criteria, and prioritized.
- QGIS
- QGIS desktop software package to create spatial vizualisations of various types of data
- Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)
- Retrieval Augmented Generation is a framework for retrieving facts from an external knowledge base to ground large language models on the most accurate, up-to-date information and enhancing the (pre)trained parameteric (semantic) knowledge with non-parameteric knowledge to avoid hallucinations and get better responses.
- Research Executive Agency (REA)
- The European Research Executive Agency has a mandate is to manage several EU programmes and support services.
- Relational model
- Relational model an approach to managing data using a structure and language consistent with first-order predicate logic (source: wikipedia)
- Resource Description Framework (RDF)
- Resource Description Framework (RDF) a standard model for data interchange on the Web. Common serialisations of RDF are turtle, xml/rdf and json-ld.
- Representational state transfer (REST)
- Representational state transfer a set of guidelines for creating stateless, reliable web APIs (source: wikipedia)
- Reportnet
- Reportnet is the e-Reporting platform for reporting environmental and climate data to the European Environment Agency (EEA). The platform embraces the strategic goals of the European Commission's Green Deal and Digital Strategy and hosts reporting tasks on behalf of EEA and the Commission.
- Requirements
- Requirements are the capabilities of an envisioned component of the repository which are classified as ‘must have’, or ‘nice to have’.
- Rolling plan
- Rolling plan is a methodology for considering the internal and external developments that may generate changes to the SoilWise Repository design and development. It keeps track of any developments and changes on a technical, stakeholder group level or at EUSO/JRC.
- SensorThings API (STA)
- SensorThingsAPI is a formalised protocol to exchange sensor data and tasks between IoT devices, maintained at Open Geospatial Consortium. The protocol can also be used to exchange field and laboratory observations on soils and soil samples.
- Sensor Observation Service (SOS)
- Sensor Observation Service is a formalised protocol to exchange sensor data between entities, maintained at Open Geospatial Consortium.
- Single Sign-On (SSO)
- Single Sign On is an authentication scheme that allows a user to log in with a single ID to any of several related, yet independent, software systems (source: wikipedia).
- Sprint
- Sprint is a small timeframe during which tasks have been defined.
- Sprint backlog
- Sprint backlog is composed of the set of product backlog elements chosen for the sprint, and an action plan for achieving them.
- Soil classification
- Soil classification deals with the systematic categorization of soils based on distinguishing characteristics as well as criteria that dictate choices in use (source: wikipedia)
- Soil health
- Soil health is a state of a soil meeting its range of ecosystem functions as appropriate to its environment. In more colloquial terms, the health of soil arises from favorable interactions of all soil components (living and non-living) that belong together, as in microbiota, plants and animals. It is possible that a soil can be healthy in terms of ecosystem functioning but not necessarily serve crop production or human nutrition directly, hence the scientific debate on terms and measurements.(source: wikipedia)
- Observed property
- An observed property identifies the phenomenon or characteristic that is being measured or observed in a dataset, such as "sea surface height" or "temperature" (source: OGC)
- Soil biological property
- The biological properties refer to the soil biological components in the soil, including microbial life such as bacterial and fungal colonies, which are affected by changes in soil chemical and physical properties, such as acidity and organic matter content (source: Annals of Agricultural Sciences, 2020)
- Soil chemical property
- Soil chemical properties refer to the chemical attributes of soil that influence its ability to supply nutrients to plants, retain harmful elements, and affect plant growth and microbial populations. These properties include nutrient concentrations, pH levels, and the presence of elements such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, which are critical for soil quality assessment and agricultural productivity. (source: Ecological Indicators, 2022)
- Soil health indicator
- Single characteristic that represents a sustainability effect, whether benefit or negative impact, which may be compared across alternative remediation strategies, comprising one or more remediation (3.380) techniques and/or institutional controls, to evaluate their relative performance (source: iso11074)
- Soil map
- Soil maps are geographical representations showing diversity of soil types or soil properties (soil pH, textures, organic matter, depths of horizons etc.) in an area of interest. It is typically the result of a soil survey inventory, i.e. soil survey. (source: wikipedia)
- Soil physical property
- The physical properties of soil, such as texture, structure, bulk density, porosity, consistency, temperature, colour and resistivity. (source: wikipedia)
- SoilWise Use cases
- The SoilWise use cases are described in the Grant Agreement to understand the needs from the stakeholder groups (users). Each use case provides user stories epics.
- Task
- Task is the smallest segment of work that must be done to complete a user story/requirement.
- Traditional soil mapping
- Traditional soil mapping is the creation of soil maps of spatial distribution of soil properties and soil bodies, by inferring from mental models, leading to manual delineations (source: wikipedia)
- UML
- Unified Modeling Language (UML) a general-purpose modeling language that is intended to provide a standard way to visualize the design of a system (source: wikipedia)
- Usage scenarios
- Usage scenarios describe how (groups of) users might use the software product. These usage scenarios can originate or be updated from the SoilWise use cases, user story epic or user stories/requirements.
- User story
- A User story is a statement, written from the point of view of the user, that describes the functionality needed by the user from the SoilWise Repository.
- User story epic
- A User story epic is a narrative of stakeholders needs that can be narrowed down into smaller specific needs (user stories/requirements).
- Validation framework
- Validation framework is a framework allowing good communication between users and developers, validation of developed products by users, and flexibility on the developer’s side to take change requests into account as soon as possible. The validation framework needs a description of the functionalities to be developed (user stories/requirements), the criteria that enable to verify that the developed component corresponds to the user needs (acceptance criteria), the definition of tasks for the developers (backlog) and the workflow.
- View service
- View service is a concept from INSPIRE indicating a service type which presents a (pre)view of a dataset. Typically implemented as WMS or WMTS.
- Web service
- Web service a service offered by a device to another device, communicating with each other via the Internet (source: wikipedia)
- Web Map service (WMS)
- Web Map service is a formalised protocol to exchange geospatial data represented as images
- Web Feature Service (WFS)
- Web Feature Service is a formalised protocol to exchange geospatial vector data
- Web Coverage Service (WCS)
- Web Coverage Service is a formalised protocol to exchange geospatial grid data
- XML Schema Definition (XSD)
- XML Schema Definition recommendation how to formally describe the elements in an Extensible Markup Language (XML) document (source: wikipedia)