Innovating the Wheat Community through the Research Data Alliance services and outputs
There's a Wheat Community Datathon event coming up that you'd really like to participate in. You will get acquainted with data formats, services, protocols and needs of the Wheat Community, as well as find out about the fascinating innovative ideas regarding Wheat & Agriculture. You can also present your ideas or prototypes for services and win a prize!
“One of the main topics for discussion is the infrastructural requirement for scientific agricultural data and its management in standard forms and methods … The challenge is being able to provide intuitive services to end users that span continents with widely varying requirements in terms of data-based services. There are various stakeholders, from data producers to consumers, and their needs have to be satisfied in terms of services and researched products” (Opening and Linking Agricultural Research Data, D-LIB Magazine).
RDA does many things that are of great pragmatic value – developing standards, detailing best practices, supporting the nitty-gritty technical work to make data shareable (RDA: Rethinking what data is).
The Wheat Initiative aims to reinforse synergies between bread and durum wheat national and international research programmes to increase food security, nutritional value and safety while taking into account societal demands for sustainable and resilient agricultural production systems (RDA Working group “Wheat data interoperability”).
The Research Data Alliance (RDA) Interest group on Agricultural Data (IGAD) was set up in 2013 to promote good practices in the research domain, including data sharing policies, data management plans, and data interoperability, and to provide a forum for sharing experiences and providing visibility to research and work in agricultural data.
IGAD has served as a platform that has led to the creation of a series of focused domain-specific Working Groups, - that are important to the development of global agriculture: Wheat Data Interoperability WG, Agrisemantic WG, Rice Data Interoperability WG, Soil Data Interoperability WG.
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To address and support further issues related to agricultural data and information systems, RDA and ATHENA Research Center are organizing WHEAT COMMUNITY DATATHON EVENT, which will take place on 13th and 14th of July 2016, at the Athena research Center in Marousi, Athens.
This event aims at getting researchers, students and other stakeholders acquainted with datasets, services, vocabularies & guidelines, meta(data) formats and needs of the Wheat Agriculture community.
FREE REGISTRATION for the Wheat Community Datathon event will cover the two-day period, July 13 to July 14, 2016, and will feature the following activities (according to this AGENDA):
July 13, 2016 - presentations of various case studies/services used within the Wheat group domain, sample data, services and outputs the RDA community has produced.
July 14, 2016 - the participants will have the opportunity to participate in a hands-on session (a laptop will be required) that will involve the use of RDA services and their application together with external related services on the relevant data.
Moreover, the participants will be able to:
create their own prototype services/applications (e.g. a web based app or a mobile app), present them and win a prize! (familiarity with technologies like: REST, XML, JSON, RDF is necessary).
First prize: Visit to a European Agriculture Organization, most probably to FAO in Rome; further details will be available at the time of the event. Second prize: a tablet.
More information about the event can be found HERE.
Useful links & resources:
Wheat Data Interoperability Recommendation
Wheat Data Vocabularies portal
Three years of IGAD: progression and evolution
Interest Group on Agricultural Data (IGAD) Pre-plenary meeting (28 - 29 February, University of Tokyo)
Opening and Linking Agricultural Research Data
Open and Interoperable Data for data- and knowledge-driven innovation:
GODAN: Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition
CIARD: a global movement dedicated to Open Agricultural Movement
European map of research projects, initiatives and institutions on big data in agri-food sector
BioPortal: the world’s most comprehensive repository of biomedical ontologies
E-Infrastructures: Making Europe the best place for Research and Innovation - Booklet
A Cloud on the 2020 Horizon. Realizing the European Open Science Cloud - first report and recommendations
The Bouchout Declaration for Open Biodiversity Knowledge Management
