SOILWISE: ADVANCING A FAIR DATA AND KNOWLEDGE INFRASTRUCTURE FOR HEALTHIER SOILS IN EUROPE.

Soil is a foundational resource for biodiversity, climate resilience, food security, and ecosystem services. Yet, over 60% of European soils are classified as degraded, underscoring the urgent need to reverse this trend through informed decision-making. Achieving this requires evidence-based approaches, which in turn depend on the availability of reliable, interoperable, and actionable data and knowledge to support to support effective policymaking and sustainable soil management (Panagos et al., 2024).
The SoilWise project, funded by the EU Mission Soil, addresses this challenge by developing the SoilWise Repository (SWR), a central access point, FAIR-aligned, and future-ready infrastructure for soil-related data and knowledge. The SWR serves as an open, modular, and scalable platform for harvesting, harmonizing, transforming, and cataloguing soil data and knowledge across Europe. The system will be strategically integrated with the European Soil Observatory (EUSO) and aligned with evolving EU legal and policy frameworks, including the Data Governance Act, Open Data Directive, AI Act, and the upcoming Soil Monitoring Law. 
The SWR builds upon established international open standards (e.g., INSPIRE, ISO, DCAT, GloSIS) and leverages cutting-edge technologies , including Artificial Intelligence, semantic web principles, knowledge graphs, and large language models. This enables persistent identification, smart interlinking, and intelligent discovery of soil resources. It captures structured data and explicit knowledge from within and beyond European research and innovation (R&I) projects, especially those aligned with Mission Soil priorities, making them accessible through an user friendly metadata catalogue (Řezník et al, 2024).
Crucially, SWR is built through co-design, co-creation and co-validation with a diverse stakeholder community: land managers, researchers, public authorities, businesses, agri-tech developers, and policymakers. Practically, efforts are being made on stakeholders interactions, to ensure that SWR matches the different communities’ needs. As of February 2025, the second SWR prototype illustrates the potential of AI-enhanced search, FAIR-compliant workflows, and stakeholder-centric design to significantly enhance the visibility,
accessibility, and reuse of soil intelligence. This contribution will share early results, outline the roadmap towards the integration with EUSO , and demonstrate how SoilWise is helping to realize the ambitions of the Mission Soil, enabling healthier soils, more informed decisions, and a sustainable future for Europe.