SoilWise – Advancing a FAIR Data and Knowledge Infrastructure for Healthier Soils in Europe: LivingSoiLL Workshop

This presentation introduces SoilWise, a Horizon Europe Mission Soil project developing a FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) data and knowledge infrastructure to improve the discoverability, interoperability and reuse of soil-related information across Europe. Prepared for the LivingSoiLL Living Lab workshop on 26 October 2026, the presentation explores practical approaches for applying FAIR data principles in Mission Soil Living Labs, with particular attention to the LivingSoiLL project and its soil data management ecosystem. The presentation addresses: The SoilWise metadata catalogue and its role in connecting distributed soil data and knowledge resources. Collaboration with the European Soil Observatory (EUSO) and prospects for long-term integration. FAIR data management in multi-actor Living Labs, including harmonisation of soil parameters, units, sampling methods, identifiers and vocabularies. Governance of sensitive farm-level data, distinguishing open metadata, aggregated results and restricted datasets. Data Management Plan (DMP) recommendations covering data stewardship, ownership, consent, access conditions, licensing and attribution. A practical workflow for publishing versioned datasets from the LivingSoiLL Soil Database through trusted repositories, enabling metadata harvesting by SoilWise via OpenAIRE. The presentation encourages Living Labs to adopt shared data standards, clarify governance arrangements and pilot the publication of well-documented soil datasets to support long-term discoverability and reuse. Funding: SoilWise has received funding from the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 101112838.