The Federal Soil Protection Law outlines the natural functions of soil including its importance as an archive. Suitable criteria are required to evaluate and illustrate these. A soil function is characterised by either one or a combination of different criteria. The criteria for evaluation (cf. Maps 01.12) were selected during the development of the Berlin Soil Protection Concept (Lahmeyer 2000). Characteristic values for each soil property are required to derive these criteria (cf. Maps 01.06). The derivation method based on soil-scientific characteristic values and other data regarding the condition and distribution of soil types was developed by Lahmayer (2000) and applied experimentally. Some modifications and additional data were however necessary for it to be implemented across the entire urban area.
Only criteria which could be derived relatively easily using existing information were used for the evaluation of soil functions.