AIMS

FOODIE Data Models : rationale for Community for On-Farm Data Sharing

While taking varying approaches to modeling space and geography, different organisations are presenting a geospatial interoperability challenge of different formats, divergent coordinate systems, and varying collection or aggregation units. The FOODIE project aims at building an open and interoperable agricultural specialized hub on the cloud for the management of spatial and non-spatial data relevant for farming production. 

IT'S ALL ABOUT INTEROPERABILITY:

There’s a growing interest in data-driven digital agriculture and, consequently, in integrating a range of farmer data (particularly soils, climate) with other datasets (e.g. with govermental data: DATA.GOV). The main goal is to develop some innovative processes/analytics and products that will be valued/used by the farming community. 
To that end, greater interoperability of agricultural data (in many forms and formsts) is required to meet a number of data sharing and integration goals.
To support this kind of interoperability in a sustainable way, common standards with ‘common agriculture features’ are needed.  These may help different organizations (engaged in building data models or interchange specifications) to meet a number of data sharing and integration goals. 

Agricultural innovation requires a degree of concerted action in a network of interdependent actors (with roles suiting the particular expertise), based on mutual expectations and agreement on how to move forward. 

In general though, they take varying approaches to modeling space and geography, presenting a geospatial interoperability challenge of different data formats (most of which are proprietary), divergent coordinate systems, and varying collection or aggregation units. 

In some cases these are complementary and in other cases overlapping. Accordingly, there is a need of a standard and unified agricultural feature model capable to include all the nuances of the underlying data models and which could be incorporated into various agricultural data specifications and provide a form of consistency and validity to the representation of space +/- time. 

In this regard, FOODIE (FARM-ORIENTED OPEN DATA IN EUROPE) project is creating a platform hub on the cloud where spatial/temporal and non-spatial data (thematic) [as well as meta-information] related to agricultural sector are available for agri-food stakeholders groups and interoperable.

Conceptual model of FOODIE relies upon the following basic pillars:

  1. Data and service modelling in the geospatial domain relies upon the series of ISO / OGC geospatial standards and best-practices,
  2. Data and service modelling in the agriculture domain relies upon specific agriculture standards and best-practices such as the INSPIRE data model for Agricultural and Aquaculture Facilities, Transport and Monitoring Facilities.

FOODIE follows a brokering approach for data discovery and access, which allows to account for a diversity of data models and to translate available information in the desired data model(s), in particular, the FOODIE data model.

FOODIE data model specification ensures:

Regarding the initial import of data, it is possible to re-use the data already contained in an LPIS. In that sense INSPIRE data model and LPIS concepts are complementary approaches for FOODIE. 

Three application schemas have been developed in order to support the complex modelling of the (precision) agriculture applications:

  1. FOODIE core application schema;
  2. Sensor application schema;
  3. Transport application schema.

Sources: 

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Related content: 

Topics: