On 14 October, we celebrate World Standards Day. This day highlights the importance of standards in making systems, information and practices work together globally. For soil scientists, standards provide something fundamental: a common language.
Importance of standards: globally and for soil information
Standards enable information produced by different organisations, institutions, countries, and systems to be understood, exchanged, compared, and reused. They are closely connected to the FAIR principles—making data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. Without common definitions and structures, datasets may technically be available but remain very difficult to combine, understand, or use together. At their core, standards are agreements within a community to do or describe something in a consistent way. In soil science, this can range from agreeing on how soils are classified, described and measured to defining common, more abstract terminology such as “soil health”.
For ISRIC, World Standards Day highlights the invisible, behind-the-scenes standards play in defining a common language across the soil information workflow (i.e., soil products, services, data, and systems). Agreed terminology and definitions, both for data and metadata help ensure that soil information can be understood, exchanged, compared and reused across organisations, institutions, countries and systems.
This allows scientists, governments, policymakers, and other stakeholders to work from the same evidence, supporting collaboration, transparency, traceability and better decision-making.
Standards are becoming increasingly important because soil data are used widely in digital advisory systems, including those that use artificial intelligence, and these systems perform better when using harmonised, well-structured information.
Applying and contributing to standards
With 60 years of experience and its role as an international reference centre for soil information, ISRIC helps develop and apply soil information and classification standards and the language around them. This work spans all steps in the soil information workflow – from soil sampling and field and laboratory methods to soil data collection, mapping and data serving.
ISRIC contributes to developing this common language in different ways, sometimes taking a leading role and at other times providing technical expertise, information or evidence. Additionally, ISRIC is involved in key global networks and working groups, including the International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS) and its World Reference Base for Soil Resources (WRB), the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), the Global Soil Partnership (GSP) and others.
Applying standards in practice can reveal where an existing standard is no longer fit for purpose and needs to be improved. In this way, ISRIC not only applies standards but also draws on its practical experience, expertise, data holdings and international partnerships to contribute to the revision and continued development of existing standards. Standardisation is therefore never truly finished: as science, technologies and applications evolve, standards need to be reviewed and adapted to remain fit for purpose. Developing and maintaining standards is therefore a long-term process across decades that requires continued collaboration, testing and refinement.
ISRIC also works to make current standards easier to navigate and apply. This includes tools and guidance on international soil classification, soil data collection, storage, and the provisioning and sharing of soil data. The soil information system (SIS) framework, for example, brings together available standards, methods and tools across different stages of the soil information workflow. Another example is an open-source database application of the ISO28258 soil data standard.
Putting soils and standards higher on the agenda
Today, global developments are advancing the recognition of standards for soil information, such as language, definitions, and terminology. For instance, the European Union is stimulating the development of soil standards through Mission Soil projects (e.g. SoilWise and SoilHarmony EU Horizon projects), the (revision of) the INSPIRE legislation and the Open Data Act. The Africa Fertiliser and Soil Health Action Plan by the African Union is aiming to develop a harmonised soil information systems across the continent, and global initiatives and networks like GLOSOLAN, IUSS, CODATA and ISO work on soil standards. However, soil standardisation remains low on the international agenda, receives limited funding and these practices often develop alongside other projects, or are carried out by experts in their own time, rather than being adequately resourced.
While these developments are encouraging, a gap remains between recognising the importance of standards, funding them, and ensuring they are widely developed and applied. Closing this gap requires greater commitment from the soil community, particularly from those in a position to prioritise and support this work.
The key message is: Standards help us speak the same language, make better use of soil information and support better-informed decisions. But standardisation is a community effort, requiring all soil (science) stakeholders to work together to develop, apply and maintain standards as soil science evolves. Additionally, the soil community needs more leaders to stand behind this work, speak up about its importance, incentivise and recognise good practice, and, notably, allocate resources to standardisation efforts. If we want soil information to support better evidence and decision-making, continued investment is needed to sustain the ever-evolving world of soil science and technologies.