digital agriculture | data for research and decision

Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation

Digital AgricultureA CeRDI view

A/Prof Peter DahlhausA/Prof Helen Thompson

10st February 2017

Federation University AustraliaOrigins: 1870 Ballarat School of Mines

Campuses: Ballarat, Gippsland, Wimmera, Berwick,

Brisbane, Malaysia

Faculties & Schools:

(dual sector)

• Business• Education & Arts• Health• Science & Technology• Industry Skills• Federation College

Federation University Australia

University of New England

University of Southern Queensland

Southern Cross University

Central Queensland University

University of the Sunshine Coast

Precision Agriculture FlagshipWater Landscapes Future

Collaboration: research, PhD students, facilities

Centre for eResearch and

Digital Innovation

CeRDI - www.cerdi.edu.au

~ 30 staff: multidisciplinary mix of researchers, technical, support and administration

Unaligned to Faculties - report to DVCR

x =

CeRDI capability: eResearch

National & FedUni research priorities

CeRDIGovernment, industry and community needs

Research expertise

Technological expertise

Real world applications

A variety of applications:agriculture, biodiversity, catchment management, citizen science, climate change, endangered species, emergency management, fire, groundwater, history, municipal information, natural resource management, regional planning, sports participation, etc.

Allows integration of cross-disciplinary data sets

spatial.federation.edu.au

CeRDI capability: spatial data portals

Depth to watertable

www.vvg.org.au

Federates around 80 groundwater data sets from 8 custodians. Some data are real-time, some are scheduled updates, some are linked data

Bore parameters

Information on over 400,000 bores accessed from the source databases

Predicted depth to watertable and groundwater quality

3d model of aquifers

204,146 Sessions

83,135 Users

488,852 Pageviews

60% Returning visitors

Primary impactSite usage has grown: • 43% industry users, • 20% government, • 11% community, • 11% water authority, • 10% research.

Analytics

Practice impact: reduced time finding data, preparing data, responding to enquiries.

Sector impact: changed data custodian’s thoughts on how to provision data.

http://jh.iwaponline.com/content/18/2/238 Journal of Hydroinformatics (open access)

“VVG technology provides an opportunity to add extra data sets without having to rebuild.”

International data interoperability standardsGroundwater Interoperability Experiment 2 (GW2IE)Soil Data Interoperability Experiment (Soil IE)

Collaborators include: CSIRO, European Commission, US Department Agriculture, World Soil Information (ISRIC), Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Landcare Research NZ, Geological Surveys of US, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, Poland, UK, etc.

data.cerdi.edu.au/soil_demo.php

Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) 2015 soil data interoperability experiment. Designing, implementing and testing a soil data exchange standard.

The Research and Innovation Network for Precision Agriculture Systems 

www.farmtrials.com.au

Federating farm trial data for all Australia

www.croppro.com.au

Crop disease diagnostics and information

agprice.grainandgraze3.com.au

Historical commodity price metrics

www.swclimatechange.com.au

Climate change predictions (spatial), impacts and adaptation information.

www.ozdsm.com.au

Digital soil mapping (PhD project completed 2016)

probetrax.sfs.org.au

Soil moisture and temperature probes (telemetered data)Includes SMS/email alert services

www.ccmaknowledgebase.vic.gov.au/soilhealth

Soil eLibrary (grey documents, webpages, videos, etc.)Spatial mapping portal (maps, tests, profiles, etc.)

Federating soil data from SLGA & DEDJTR

http://ccma.tism.cecc.com.au/ccma_shkb/soilprop_viz.php

Community contributed soil test data

27Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation www.cerdi.edu.au

CeRDI capability in eResearch

Collaborate with our research, industry and community partners:

To take advantage of the eResearch tools to:

Interoperably integrate data (open data, research data, big data, sensor

data, legacy data, crowdsourced data… any data)

Answer the frequently asked data/information questions

Dynamically generate conceptual and predictive models

Make new discoveries and avoid repeating past research

Measure the impacts on decision making and facilitate practice change

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CeRDI collaborative investment opportunities in eResearch

Opportunities exist for the CBA to co-invest with our research, industry and

community partners in:

Centre of Excellence?

CRCs?