AIMS

IGAD Agricultural Data Interest Group

Formed in 2013, since its inception the Interest Group on Agricultural Data (IGAD) has grown in community strength to over 200 members, becoming one of the RDA’s most prominent Thematic Groups

IGAD is a domain-oriented group working on all issues related to global agriculture data. It represents stakeholders in managing data for agricultural research and innovation, including producing, aggregating and consuming data

Beyond this IGAD promotes good practices in research with regard data sharing policies, data management plans, and data interoperability, and it is a forum for sharing experience and providing visibility to research and work in agricultural data.

One of IGAD’s main roles is to serve as a platform that leads to the creation of domain-specific Working Groups. To date, five successful Working Groups (WGs) have been formed under IGAD, these are: Wheat Data Interoperability, Rice Data Interoperability, AgriSemantics, On-Farm Data Sharing and Capacity Development for Agricultural Data WGs. The groups play an active role at the RDA Plenaries.

Objectives

  • To promote good practices in the research domain: data sharing policies, data management plan, data interoperability
  • To provide a platform for networking and cross-fertilization of research ideas in data management and interoperability
  • To solicit and promote interactions and projects among the major international institutions and groups worldwide which work on agricultural research and innovation
  • To achieve data interoperability

Working Groups

Birds of Feather Groups

Events at RDA

The RDA holds its plenary meetings every six months at different locations around the world. Built around the RDA Working and Interest Group meetings the sessions are designed to consolidate the RDA’s work and that of its interest groups in building social and technological bridges towards open data sharing. IGAD’s role since its inception at the RDA Gothenburg has expanded with every successive Plenary. The outcomes of the Wheat Data Interoperability Group have proved to be a success and the challenge is now on to replicate those successes with other groups, e.g. the Rice Group.

IGAD has used the Plenary meetings as a place to reach out and forge new alliances with other groups, as well as creating new offshoot groups aimed at specific solutions. During Plenary sessions IGAD has hosted a wide array of speakers and discussions and it continues to work alongside major international initiatives among others.