Open Call – Deploy Open Call #2 - DEPLOY

About the Open Call

Up to €150,000 equity-free funding per consortia available per successful project.

The DEMETER Open Call #2 – DEPLOY aims to increase the outreach of the DEMETER value proposition by funding small consortia of 2-3 partners for the deployment of new, high-value pilots in the agri-food sector. These pilots will focus on employing DEMETER methodologies and technologies, addressing clear farmer needs, with particular focus on EU geographic regions not currently represented within DEMETER pilots: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, France, Hungary, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Slovakia and Sweden.

This will expand the technological and/or business coverage of the project, towards digitalising and boosting the European agro-business sector.

DEMETER currently has 20 pilots running that can be an example for potential applicants to develop similar or different pilots to be funded under Open Call #2 – DEPLOY.

Deadline: Apply before 16^th February 2022 at 17:00 CET

Open Call Challenges and Objectives

The new pilots to be funded under the DEMETER Open Call #2 – DEPLOY must address specific farmers’ needs and fit into one or more DEMETER challenges and objectives listed below:

Who Should Apply?

The DEMETER Open Call #2 – DEPLOY will fund consortia composed of two or three:
• micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs),
• secondary and higher education establishments, research institutes and other not-for profit research entities.

How to apply?

DEMETER Open Calls will be handled using the F6S platform.

DEMETER Challenges – Open Call

The new pilots to be funded under the DEMETER Open Call #2 – DEPLOY must address specific farmers’ needs and fit into one or more DEMETER challenges and objectives listed below

The DEMETER Challenges

Challenge #1 – Control of Knowledge

Farmers should be in control of the knowledge they can obtain from the data relevant to their specific requirements and activities, i.e., moving from the present situation in which farmers can be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data to one in which they benefit from the insights of that data.

Challenge #2 – Deployment Models

A context where the lifespan of agricultural technology extends in some cases over 20+ years requires solutions and innovations to be deployed over existing machines. Protecting the existing investments made by farmers while making them part of a digitally enriched environment is a major driver for DEMETER.

Challenge #3 – Optimal Data Analysis

For useful trends and patterns to emerge, there is a need to work on large sets of data obtained across multiple farms. A key transformation resides in the ability to collect more data and measurements about the production: soil quality, irrigation levels, weather, presence of insects and pests, etc. In this context, reaping the full value of data requires the creation of trusted cooperation spaces in which data can be collected and shared, taking into account conflicting interests, competition etc. However, this is also an opportunity to put farmers fully in control of their rights on the data they generate.

Challenge #4 – Overcoming Market Barriers

Large players have aimed, early on, to establish themselves in dominant positions through supplier-operated technological and data platforms. This effectively increases the lock-in of farmers to a single or a selected group of suppliers, limiting their access to innovation. The challenge is in creating an innovative ecosystem for SMEs and entrepreneurs.

Challenge #5 – Interoperability

Interoperability and adoption of technological standards are key to ensure compatibility and to support data exchange and standardised communication that links the different systems together in a unified system covering all aspects of the agricultural exploitation.

DEMETER Objectives – Open Call

The new pilots to be funded under the DEMETER Open Call #2 – DEPLOY must address specific farmers’ needs and fit into one or more DEMETER challenges and objectives listed below

Based on the identified challenges, DEMETER defines 6 objectives to empower farmers and farmer cooperatives to:

• better exploit their existing operational context, i.e., the platforms, machinery, sensors they have, to extract new knowledge on which they can improve their decisions and
• ease the acquisition, evolution, and update of their context by focusing their investments where these are needed, based on their goals measured by key performance indicators (KPIs) that they select.

Objective 1 – Information Modelling

Analyse, adopt, enhance existing (and if necessary, introduce new) Information Models in the agri-food sector easing data sharing and interoperability across multiple Internet of Things (IoT) and Farming Management Information Systems (FMIS) and associated technologies. Use the information models to create a basis for trusted sharing/exposure of data between farmers.

Benefits: enable connection from different platforms, sensors, information sources and proprietary (to the farmer/cooperative) knowledge through a DEMETER services model.

Objective 2 – Knowledge Exchange Mechanisms

Build knowledge exchange mechanisms, delivering an Interoperability Space for the agri-food domain, presenting technologies and data from different vendors, ensuring their interoperability, and using (and enhancing) a core set of open standards (adopted across all agri-food deployments) coupled with carefully planned security and privacy protection mechanisms (also addressing business confidentiality).

Benefits: ease the deployment of novel solutions based on different platforms, sensors, information sources using the new information models from Objective 1. Ease the uptake of future (not yet developed) services, data sources, technologies by farmers, with the Interoperability Space allowing the farmers and relevant other stakeholders to increase the range of choices for the most appropriate combination of tools from different suppliers in order to support their expected innovation, limiting the vendor lock-in. Allow the combination of existing systems / machinery with new technologies.

Objective 3 – Data Ownership

Empower the farmer, as a prosumer, to gain control in the data-food-chain by identifying and demonstrating a series of new IoT-based, data-driven, business models for profit, collaboration and co-production for farmers and across the value chain, leading to disruptive new value creation models.

Benefits: introduce the benefits of data ownership to farmers as a valuable source of income and knowledge sharing.

Objective 4 – Benchmarking

Establish a benchmarking mechanism for agriculture solutions and business, targeting end-goals in terms of productivity and sustainability performance of farms, services, technologies, and practices based on a set of key performance indicators that are relevant to the farming community.

Benefit: ease the comparison between competing services, machineries, sensors, platforms prior to acquisition.

Objective 5 – User Orientated Solutions

Reverse the relationship with suppliers, through an innovative model in which suppliers are responsible for ensuring that a final solution is optimal to the farmer’s existing context and expressed needs.

Benefits: ease the adoption of technologies by farmers, by decreasing the burden of the choices and clarifying the responsibility model, linked to needs and performance improvements defined by the farmers.

Objective 6 – Real World Impact

Demonstrate the impact of digital innovations across a variety of sectors and at European level.

Benefits: ease and streamline mechanisms for all stakeholders, with clearly identified incentives to participate in a sustainable and value creation ecosystem. Structure collaboration channels in a security and privacy aware approach.

The Multi-Actor Approach

DEMETER follows a Multi-Actor Approach (MAA) which aims to make innovation fully demand-driven, involving various actors during the whole cycle. The aim of the DEMETER MAA approach is to create systems that are useful and usable by focusing on the end users. New pilots must include farmers at the earliest stage of design and development, among other relevant stakeholders. This can involve user focus groups, workshops or interviews to identify and gather farmers’ needs that will feed the development of technical requirements.

To ensure MAA is user-centric, stakeholders should regularly be contacted for input in a balanced way, through surveys or testing prototypes / new builds of the final software.

The applicants should register the farmers and other stakeholders involved in the innovation ecosystem as active actors and co-creators of the solutions, not only those involved directly in the call as applicants. Events involved in the co-creation process and their outcomes needs to be also reported and tracked as part of the process.

Finally, special attention to gender and ethical issues will be very much appreciated, requesting measurable information on the actions addressed supporting these initiatives from any of the stakeholders involved in the pilot.

DEMETER Technical Information

The goal of the DEMETER Open Call #2 – DEPLOY is to deploy high value and impactful pilots employing DEMETER methodologies and technologies. In this section, the DEMETER technological ecosystem, available for the implementation of the new pilots, is briefly presented.

The DEMETER Reference Architecture (RA) follows a modular approach that allows the composition of systems and apps from various enablers: these enablers either provide the necessary data or the necessary processing capabilities (e.g., analytics, decision support, visualization) needed to compose complete applications. In addition, key to the DEMETER architecture is the Agricultural Information Model (AIM) developed, which provides a common ontology in order to allow all enablers to communicate with one another (and which is described later in this report). To this end, another category of DEMETER enablers allows for the translation of various data formats (as needed) to and from the AIM model and format and these allow the communication of the various components to each other, thus achieving the desirable interoperability between existing components and new enablers.

Central to whole architecture is the DEMETER Enabler Hub (DEH), which centralises the full description of all the components, devices, services, data sources and platforms, accessible for exploitation and ultimately for deployment and which provides the tools and facilities that allow to compose DEMETER enabled apps and systems from the various enablers registered in it. The DEH is supported by the DEMETER Brokerage Service Environment (BSE), which facilitates the deployment of a DEMETER enabled application by providing information regarding the endpoints offered by the various DEMETER enabled entities (e.g., endpoints for getting data, for processing information in offered enablers) which have already been discovered and consumed through the DEH. In this way, the enablers have all the necessary information to execute the application. Another component crucial for this process is the DEMETER Access Control Server (ACS) that provides part of the security and authentication facilities needed. Finally, the DEMETER Stakeholders Open Collaboration Space (SOCS) focuses on resolving the needs of the farmers and provides an endpoint for them to access DEMETER.

On the other hand, the Agricultural Interoperability Space (AIS), focuses on delivering a full set of interoperability mechanisms to develop, validate and then deploy the solution, providing an endpoint for the developers and advisors to access DEMETER. Both SOCS and AIS are instantiations of the DEMETER Dashboard which is the entry point to the DEMETER ecosystem for all DEMETER Stakeholders, enabling them to access SOCS and AIS, and, through these, to the DEMETER Enabler HUB (DEH).

In order to facilitate the interoperability between the various enablers of the architecture, a key component is the DEMETER Agriculture Information Model (AIM) which provides a common data model for any DEMETER enhanced entities, and which is interoperable with the best known ontologies and models used in AKISs. This can be seen in the following diagram, which presents the high-level view of the DEMETER Reference Architecture.

Now, to implement this high-level view of the architecture, DEMETER needs to provide several modules that interact with each other, with the various stakeholders as well as with a wealth of existing devices, platforms, systems and data sources. In addition to the DEH, SOCS and AIS which have already been presented previously in this document, key to this process are several needed enablers. These fall within two categories: mandatory core enablers and optional advanced enablers.

The core enablers provide key functionality that is needed in every DEMETER app and therefore must be included in every app. These include, first, enablers for functional and semantic interoperability, which work on top of the existing resources, e.g., platforms, devices, services or applications, and provide data wrappers that allow the resource to interoperate with other enablers. Second, another core enabler is the Access Control enabler used, e.g., to prevent access to unauthorized entities. Finally, the last type of core enabler is a Client for the DEMETER Enabler Hub, for any information that needs to be communicated with the DEH’s runtime facilities, e.g., to get computing resources usage by other enablers which would be important when running DEMETER enabled apps.

The other type of enablers offered, the Advanced Enablers are optional and give additional functionality, as needed for each type of application. They are discoverable and accessible through the DEMETER Enabler Hub. The ones developed for the DEMETER pilots fall under several distinct categories. First, the Data & Knowledge Enablers are responsible for Collecting and Curating data from the various sources that the DEMETER developers and stakeholders have been registered for. The Data Preparation and Integration enablers curate, prepare, integrate and link the data obtained, while the Knowledge Extraction enablers handle matters related to data quality assessment, fusion of data collected from heterogeneous sources, targeted data analytics applicable to specific pilots and machine learning. Furthermore, several other enablers have been developed for Decision Support, Performance Monitoring and Benchmarking, as well as visualisation enablers that convey the information and actions taken automatically (or needed) to the final users of the DEMETER applications, such as the farmer.

More information is available in the Technical information (Annex 3)

Eligibility and Application

DEMETER invites consortia of 2-3 partners representing at least a tech provider/ integrator and an end-user, led by a for-profit SME.

Types of Beneficiaries

The DEMETER Open Call #2 – DEPLOY will fund consortia composed by two or three:
• micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs),
• secondary and higher education establishments, research institutes and other not-for profit research entities.

More specific information regarding beneficiaries is available in the Open Call Handbook.

Eligible countries

Only applicants legally established in any of the following countries (hereafter collectively identified as the “Eligible Countries”) are eligible:
• The Member States (MS) of the European Union (EU), including their outermost regions;
• The Overseas Countries and Territories (OCT) linked to the Member States; ¹
• H2020 associated countries (those which signed an agreement with the Union as identified in Article 7 of the Horizon 2020 Regulation): according to the updated list published by the EC; ²
The UK applicants are eligible under the conditions set by the EC for H2020 participation at the time of the deadline of the call.

Language

English is the official language for DEMETER Open Call #2 – DEPLOY. Submissions done in any other language will not be evaluated. English is also the only official language during the whole execution of the DEMETER programme. This means any requested submission of deliverables will be done in English in order to be eligible.

Multiple Submission

Only one proposal will be accepted for funding per applicant.
In the case of a multiple submission, only the last one received (timestamp of the system) will enter into the evaluation process, the rest being declared as non-eligible. If the last submitted proposal is declared then non-eligible or fails to reach the thresholds of the evaluation, the other proposals submitted earlier will not be considered for evaluation in any case.

Documentation format

Any document requested in any of the phases must be submitted electronically in PDF format without restrictions for printing

How to apply?

DEMETER Open Call submissions are managed using the F6S platform.

Applications can be made here:

Footnote

[1] Entities from Overseas Countries and Territories (OCT) are eligible for funding under the same conditions as entities from the Member States to which the OCT in question is linked.

[2] https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/grants_manual/hi/3cpart/h2020-hi-list-ac_en.pdf

DEMETER hosted a webinar on 11^th January 2022 to discuss the Open Call, DEPLOY.
Presentations from the webinar are available at https://www.slideshare.net/H2020DEMETER/demeter-open-call-webinar-january-2022

For any questions, please contact opencalls@h2020-demeter.eu