2026-12-08, 16:00–16:45 (Europe/Athens), Amphitheater I
If you produce soil data or knowledge in a Mission Soil project, will anyone find it after your website goes offline? The SoilWise Project, a Horizon Europe Mission Soil project (2023–2027), builds an open-access catalogue that harvests soil metadata from across Europe and makes it discoverable through a search interface (the SoilWise Finder) and an AI chatbot (the Soil Companion), which will later be part of the European Soil Observatory (EUSO). But what surfaces in SoilWise, and how well, is decided by the publishing choices data providers make. This hands-on session shows providers exactly what, how, and why to publish so their outputs are found and reused.
We use the journey of a single metadata record as our teaching device. Following a real soil dataset as our worked example, we walk through what happens at each stage of the SoilWise pipeline (harvesting, harmonisation, validation, augmentation, storage, and discovery) and, at every stage, show the concrete publishing decision that makes it succeed: a DOI and grant-agreement number so the harvester picks the record up via OpenAIRE; a community standard so it harmonises cleanly; complete core fields so it passes validation; and recognised-vocabulary keywords and geographic extent so augmentation and search work in the provider’s favour.
Participants then get hands-on with the SoilWise publishing tools: the Tabular Soil Data Annotation tool, the SoilWise GeoPackage , and the DOI Resolution Widget.
The session is aimed at data providers: Mission Soil project data managers and coordinators, data stewards, researchers, and Living Lab participants. Attendees leave with a clear publishing checklist and a working understanding of how following the SoilWise guidelines makes their soil data findable in the catalogue and, ultimately, in the European Soil Observatory at the JRC, the platform’s foreseen long-term home. Bring a laptop.
Dr. Radu Giurgiu is a researcher at ILVO, the Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and the project coordinator of SoilWise, a Horizon Europe project funded under the EU Mission “A Soil Deal for Europe”. He has a background in agronomy and holds a PhD in plant science.
Within his team at ILVO, Radu works at the intersection of climate, soil, and digital innovation, focusing on how data-driven tools and user-centred services can support the transition towards healthier and more resilient soils in Flanders and across Europe. Through SoilWise, he coordinates efforts to build a European Soil Health Data Space and to make FAIR soil data more accessible and useful for science, policy, and practice. The outputs of SoilWise are expected to be integrated into the European Soil Observatory (EUSO) and further developed and maintained by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission, supporting the long-term sustainability and impact of the initiative.
Dr. Wannes De Man works as a researcher at the Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (ILVO), where he contributes to and coordinates Horizon Europe projects on data-driven innovation in the agri-food sector. He has a background in food science, NMR spectroscopy, and international project management, and holds a PhD in Bioscience Engineering.
Within his team at ILVO, Wannes works at the intersection of climate, soil, and digital innovation, focusing on how data-driven tools and user-centred services can support the transition towards more sustainable agrifood systems in Flanders and across Europe. Through the SoilWise project, he coordinates efforts to build a European Soil Health Data Space and to make FAIR soil data more accessible and useful for science, policy, and practice.