Representatives from DEMETER attended a recent technical workshop in Brussels focused on ‘Research and Innovation in Agricultural data – achieving synergies, mapping achievements, knowledge gaps and potentials’. The event was organised jointly by the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development (DG AGRI), the Directorate‑General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT), and the Directorate‑General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD).
The workshop took place in Brussels on 16 and 17 November 2022. The main objectives were to:
1) Take stock of R&I achievements in the field of agricultural data;
2) Map planned R&I activities in the field of agricultural data and achieve synergies between projects, and
3) Identify R&I needs to exploit the potential of data and data technologies for agriculture and policy monitoring.
Project participants from DEMETER presented on the work done on interoperability within the project. DEMETER uses an overarching approach integrating heterogeneous technologies, platforms and systems, while supporting fluid data exchange across the entire agrifood chain as a strategic direction. This is delivered through the Agricultural Interoperability Space (AIS) which focuses on delivering a full set of interoperability mechanisms to develop, validate and then deploy the solution. DEMETER does not define completely new interoperability mechanisms but instead uses (and extends) a wide range of pre-existing mechanisms at sensor, data, and service levels. As data interoperability is of critical importance, DEMETER proposes the use of a semantic data model (DEMETER Agriculture Information Model — AIM) along with the respective data translation/management/inference mechanisms adopting widespread standardised solutions.
