Sub-project (TP) 7

Project institute:

Rostock University, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Institute for Management of Rural Areas, Professor of Geodesy und Geoinformatics

TP-Title:

Investigation of workflow modelling in precision agriculture through the example of the construction of a geodata infrastructure for precision farming

TP short title:

Geodata infrastructure for Precision Farming

TP goals:

The first aim of the sub-project is to produce a comprehensive model of all information-driven site-specific business processes in precision farming. From this model, the necessary data, metadata, data transfer standards and components for a geodata infrastructure (GDI) supporting these processes will be identified, with defined use cases implemented to illustrate how the GDI may be used in practice.

Position of TP within the network:

A close cooperation with TP8 (Process documentation) and the other information management sub-projects (TP17-19) is expected. TP8 will supply information on what data may be automatically collected and aggregated. From TP17 comes the descriptions of an organisation's data and from TP18 guidelines as to how the data may be used within precision farming software. TP19 will specify the AgroXML standard, which will be necessary for the configuration of the web-services. The GDI designed within this sub-project will be implemented within the platform of the project information system developed by TP22.

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Research in the area of information-driven plant production aims for the optimisation of farming processes and organisations. Currently a major problem in this area is the incompatibility between the various software systems in use. The result of this project should therefore be to promote interoperability between software from different vendors and to automate many data processing tasks. Most information systems are based on a vertical architecture, with each system performing a limited subset of tasks. The links between the systems, both within the farm and between the farmer's and partners' and contractors' systems, are rarely considered. Since it is likely that farmers will not adopt information-driven precision farming effectively without the help and cooperation of service providers and partners, integration in both directions is necessary. The data integration should enable a consistent and transparent access method for the heterogeneous datasets, as well as providing possibilities for new system-wide applications. Alongside the integration of data, the integration of functions, allowing applications to access functionality from other applications, is also desirable. Once data and functions are accessible to all applications via a common infrastructure, this will allow service-chaining to automate data transfer and processing within precision agriculture businesses.

The overall aim of TP7 is the creation of an information- and workflow-model describing all the necessary agricultural processes. The focus of this model will not be on the structure of the business, rather the value-adding processes such as the data-intensive horticultural processes required for data-driven crop production. Which data are required, or through these developments may be used, in which processes and the interaction between agents will be analysed. From this analysis, a minimal model of spatial data and metadata sufficient for precision farming will follow. After the specification of which data are available and required under which conditions, the use-cases for the processes in precision farming will be modelled and the agents and their roles in these outlined (see example in Figure 1). From this modelling and analysis it will be possible to begin specifying and building a geodata infrastructure for precision farming (GDI-PF) supporting the identified use cases.

Figure 1 UML Diagram for the use-case "Soil Testing"