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History
ANZSoilML was derived from OzSoilML, which was developed in Australia by CSIRO under the auspices of the Australian Collaborative Land Evaluation Program's ACLEP. Later, CSIRO worked with New Zealand's Manaaki Whenua to test and refine OZSoilML, this new version was re-branded as ANZSoilML.
CSIRO defined OzSoilML (official site) as part of the ACLEP's Soils Data Exchange project. This was to enable delivery of soil data from CSIRO's Australian Soil Resource Information System (ASRIS) - a system that hosts databases such as NatSoil (soil profile data) and the National Soil Archive register - to various stakeholders. It also defined a common format by which contributors to ASRIS (Australian state and territory agencies) could provide their data.
The conceptual model underpinning OzSoilML were the procedures for collecting the data as specified in the "Australian Soil and Land Survey Field Handbook" (National Committee on Soil and Terrain) - a nationally endorsed resource. OzSoilML was therefore, at least initially, based around delivering data as specified in the handbook. This is consistent with the design of the NatSoil database.
CSIRO had hoped that an existing soil data exchange standard could be used and undertook a review of candidate models:
- SoTerML (link)
- INSPIRE Soil (link)
- ISO DIS 28258 SoilML (link)
- Global Soil Map profile of Observations and Measurements (link)
None were appropriate, being insufficiently detailed enough to carry the data required by the Australian Soil and Land Survey Field Handbook. As such a new model was created, however care was taken to use patterns from the above models wherever possible. OzSoilML also recognizes a soil's place in the larger environment, and the resulting need to integrate cross-domain data sets, so it made extensive use of data models from other domains (Observations and Measurements 2.0 (O&M) and the GeoScience Mark-up Language 3.0 (GeoSciML)).
New Zealand's Manaaki Whenua (MW) reviewed OZSoilML as a candidate data exchange model. As it matched the New Zealand Soil Description Handbook well they approached CSIRO with a view to collaborating on future versions. CSIRO agreed and OzSoilML was renamed and subsequently modified:
- ANZSoilML 1.0.0 was created a simple 'lift and shift' where the model stayed the same but 'Oz' was replaced with 'ANZ'
- ANZSoilML 2.0.0 was a major revision co-developed by CSIRO and MW based on both parties experience implementing OzSoilML and ANZSoilML Web Feature Services
- ANZSoilML 2.0.1 was a minor revision where the model was made more permissive (almost no mandatory properties) and MW's work on a Global Soil Map profile of Observations and Measurements was added as a package with ANZSoilML
In 2015 the CSIRO, MW, Federation University of Australia and ISRIC World Soil Information lead an OGC Interoperability Experiment (see the SoilDataIE GitHub repository) to attempt to reconcile the data exchange models reviewed for OzSoilML and ANZSoilML. Despite being by far the most comprehensive model, ANZSoilML was not acceptable to IE participants outside of Australia and New Zealand so a limited, alternative model was proposed instead. The rejection of ANZSoilML 2.0.1 is perhaps in part due to the fact that the XML implementation specification for ANZSoilML is complex and difficult to work with. Future work on ANZSoilML aims to learn from this experience.