Welcome to the Soil Observation System (SOS)

This Open Source platform was created in order to facilitate the collection, storage, sharing and analysis of soil data.

The project was realised with the Orio Carlini grant awarded by the GARR Consortium. The project was carried out in the Department of Architecture of the University of Sassari.

Project Goals

Facilitating soil data collection actions in the field or laboraatory through the use of purpose-built digital forms.

Functional and open storage of soil data collected in the field or laboratory in an open and accessible relational database

Sharing soil data and allowing users to download the data or to be able to process it in a specially designed report, in order to present the data loaded in the database in a functional and complete manner.

Importance of the soil system and relevance of a digital data management infrastructure for soil characteristics

Soil is an essential but limited resource for human communities and is under constant threat from intensifying human activities and climate change. In most countries, the availability of arable land is steadily decreasing. Against this background, the scientific community, legislators and land managers are increasingly interested in developing solutions for the protection and rational management of soil.

«Soil contains more than 25 per cent of the planet's total biodiversity and underpins the food chains that feed humanity and surface biodiversity. By 2050, this fragile layer is expected to nourish and filter drinking water for a world population of around ten billion people»

(European Commission Communication (2021), "EU Soil Strategy 2030, Healthy soils for the benefit of people, food, nature and climate").

Indeed, attention to this type of resource has reached the social and academic spheres of our society and has become the subject of long-term initiatives and projects. Emblematic of this growing awareness is the United Nations' 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in which four of the seventeen proposed goals directly relate to the quality and management of soil as a resource. The importance of soil protection, management and design can therefore be understood in an international context. In order to implement the 2030 Agenda and the European directives on soil quality and to guarantee the population's access to the primary goods it produces, it is first necessary to know its qualities, characteristics and different uses.

For this reason, one of the objectives of the EU's Soil Strategy 2030 is to improve knowledge of soil. Among the initiatives of the last two decades, the implementation of digital tools and infrastructures aimed at creating spatial databases and digital soil information bases with high spatial and temporal accuracy is of particular importance.

«It is essential to make more and better soil knowledge and data available and to use such knowledge and data [...] Digital technologies offer new and unexplored opportunities to monitor the state of soils and the pressures on them [...] These activities will contribute radically to innovative soil research and use. Thanks to these activities, it will also be possible to make increasing use of machine learning techniques and artificial intelligence solutions»

(Communication from the European Commission (2021), "EU Soil Strategy 2030, Healthy soils for the benefit of people, food, nature and climate").

This is where the project fits in.

If you want to know more about the SOSystem Project, see “About SOS” or contact us at the email: soilobservationsystem@gmail.com