Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) established during the past two decades “unlocked” heterogeneous geospatial datasets. The European Union INSPIRE Directive laid down the foundation of a pan-European SDI where thousands of public sector data providers make their data, including sensor observations, available for cross-border and cross-domain reuse. At the same time, SDIs should inevitably adopt new technology and standards to remain fit for purpose and address in the best possible way the needs of different stakeholders (government, businesses and citizens). Some of the recurring technical requirements raised by SDI stakeholders include: (i) the need for adoption of RESTful architectures; together with (ii) alternative (to GML) data encodings, such as JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) and binary exchange formats; and (iii) adoption of asynchronous publish–subscribe-based messaging protocols. The newly established OGC standard SensorThings API is particularly interesting to investigate for INSPIRE, as it addresses together all three topics. In this manuscript, we provide our synthesised perspective on the necessary steps for the OGC SensorThings API standard to be considered as a solution that meets the legal obligations stemming out of the INSPIRE Directive. We share our perspective on what should be done concerning: (i) data encoding; and (ii) the use of SensorThings API as a download service.

Established in 2012 by members of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the Global Soil Partnership (GSP) is a global network of stakeholders promoting sound land and soil management practices towards a sustainable world food system. However, soil survey largely remains a local or regional activity, bound to heterogeneous methods and conventions. Recognising the relevance of global and trans-national policies towards sustainable land management practices, the GSP elected data harmonisation and exchange as one of its key lines of action. Building upon international standards and previous work towards a global soil data ontology, an improved domain model was eventually developed within the GSP [54], the basis for a Global Soil Information System (GloSIS). This work also identified the Semantic Web as a possible avenue to operationalise the domain model. This article presents the GloSIS web ontology, an implementation of the GloSIS domain model with the Web Ontology Language (OWL). Thoroughly employing a host of Semantic Web standards (SOSA, SKOS, GeoSPARQL, QUDT), GloSIS lays out not only a soil data ontology but also an extensive set of ready-to-use code-lists for soil description and physio-chemical analysis. Various examples are provided on the provision and use of GloSIS-compliant linked data, showcasing the contribution of this ontology to the discovery, exploration, integration and access of soil data.

Reusability of environmental data is essential for environmental research and control; standardized data models are being created by various organizations to facilitate this process. Due to the evolving nature of environmental science, these data models must be continuously extended for the support of new concepts, thus rapidly breaking the level of standardization achieved. The definition of reusable properties would allow for standardization of this extension process. In this paper, we first analyze the requirements to reusable properties, and explain the rational for the decision that reusable properties tightly bound to a URI would be the most apt solution; the following list of requirements was defined in order to compare the viability of the options proposed: URI Coupling, DataType Coupling, Semantics Coupling and Persistence. We then go on to explore possible avenues for implementation of reusable URI-Properties, whereby the following approaches where analysed for applicability: Data Types, Interfaces, MOF level adjustment of UML and a solution utilizing stereotypes for the definition and use of reusable URI-Properties. Of these approaches, all were deemed feasible except for the MOF level adjustment of UML; MOF level adjustment is not possible due to cardinality constraints within the MOF definition. Examples were created for the other 3 possibilities, including serialization options towards XML Schema. These examples were then compared with the requirements defined for URI-Properties; based on this analysis, the UML Stereotype based solution for the specification and use of reusable URI-Properties was deemed as most viable and is described in further detail.