Periodic Reporting for period 3 - COALA (COpernicus Applications and services for Low impact agriculture in Australia)
Reporting period: 2022-01-01 to 2023-06-30
COALA aims to advance the Consortium’s European experiences in developing Copernicus-based services to support more sustainable use of water and nutrients in the advanced irrigated agricultural systems of Australia.
In Australia, the sustainable use of irrigation water is a priority for agriculture. The 2016 State of the Environment Report identified risks to Australian inland water environments from water abstraction and interception due to demands of a growing population, and the requirements to extract more water from an increasingly water-scarce environment to meet consumption and production needs. T
Why is it important for society?
Management of water resources in Australia is of paramount importance, and there is considerable awareness in the general public about this issue. In this context, COALA aims to provide Australian farmers and Irrigation Infrastructure Operators with products and services (derived from the processing of data collected by Sentinel2 satellites) to manage their agriculture better, to save water resources and nutrients.
Main Achievements at the end of the project:
1 Application Programming Interface and Cloud Computing for real-time calculation of advanced EO products. COALA has successfully implemented Earth Observation products and services useful for agriculture management. Application program interface (APIs) and Geospatial Web Services OGC compliant have been successfully deployed.
The APIs have been integrated in different platform (e.g. YieldProphet software, Qgis via qgis plugin, other custom software). Tha APIs are easily plugable in other End User Software.
2. Assessment of the nutritional status of crops and yield from Sentinel-2. A methodological framework based on Sentinel-2 data has been developed for assessing the nutritional status of crops, for mapping soil productivity and fertility for a given crop under standard weather and management condition to lead variable rate application of nutrients.
3. Physically based model for crop evapotranspiration based on full spectrum of Sentinel-2. An innovative approach for estimating crop evapotranspiration has been developed and validated based on the full exploitation of the Sentinel-2 sensor in terms of geometrical, temporal and radiometric resolutions. The calculation model incorporates shortwave infrared data for assessing the water status of the surface and modulating the resistance terms in the combination equation for calculating ET.
4. New business opportunities. Besides, COALA will develop a business model to facilitate new commercial opportunities in Australia for the European industry of Earth Observation services.
In Australia, the sustainable use of irrigation water is a priority for agriculture. The 2016 State of the Environment Report identified risks to Australian inland water environments from water abstraction and interception due to demands of a growing population, and the requirements to extract more water from an increasingly water-scarce environment to meet consumption and production needs. T
Why is it important for society?
Management of water resources in Australia is of paramount importance, and there is considerable awareness in the general public about this issue. In this context, COALA aims to provide Australian farmers and Irrigation Infrastructure Operators with products and services (derived from the processing of data collected by Sentinel2 satellites) to manage their agriculture better, to save water resources and nutrients.
Main Achievements at the end of the project:
1 Application Programming Interface and Cloud Computing for real-time calculation of advanced EO products. COALA has successfully implemented Earth Observation products and services useful for agriculture management. Application program interface (APIs) and Geospatial Web Services OGC compliant have been successfully deployed.
The APIs have been integrated in different platform (e.g. YieldProphet software, Qgis via qgis plugin, other custom software). Tha APIs are easily plugable in other End User Software.
2. Assessment of the nutritional status of crops and yield from Sentinel-2. A methodological framework based on Sentinel-2 data has been developed for assessing the nutritional status of crops, for mapping soil productivity and fertility for a given crop under standard weather and management condition to lead variable rate application of nutrients.
3. Physically based model for crop evapotranspiration based on full spectrum of Sentinel-2. An innovative approach for estimating crop evapotranspiration has been developed and validated based on the full exploitation of the Sentinel-2 sensor in terms of geometrical, temporal and radiometric resolutions. The calculation model incorporates shortwave infrared data for assessing the water status of the surface and modulating the resistance terms in the combination equation for calculating ET.
4. New business opportunities. Besides, COALA will develop a business model to facilitate new commercial opportunities in Australia for the European industry of Earth Observation services.
The project is proceeding along the chrono-program. The first year has been affected by COVID-19 pandemic, which caused the postponement of two deliverable, but they remained within the first year (D1.1 from M6 to M10 and D1.2 from M9 to M12). All the other Deliverables and Milestones have been fulfilled, and small deviations have been mitigated to enable the project to overcome some criticalities. This is the case of change of strategy for interviewing stakeholders and potential users: the survey questions have been conducted entirely online.
WP1 has been successfully completed at M12: users’ and stakeholders’ requirements were identified and analysed; alpha users have been signed up.
Products and services to provide through the DIAS have been identified and, for what concerning the process chain, 11 scripts for EO data pre-processing, 8 scripts for added-value EO services have been deployed (further refinement to adapt to the Australian context are still ongoing).
All the DIAS components, including controlling and management systems, have been organised in packages that can be exported and deployed on any Copernicus DIAS infrastructure (changing only the interface to the raw data). The first prototype is available on the EODC infrastructure (which is federated with the WEkEO DIAS). First integration of COALA services as API in Yield Prophet® (platform belonging to BCG and provided to its farmer members) e is functional with further developments ongoing.
Great effort has been spent on the definitions of n. 4 pilot areas and “Alpha-users” in each of them, defined as follows:
1) Pilot 1: Demonstration at farm scale rainfed crops– BCG member farmers
2) Pilot 2: Demonstration at farm scale irrigated crops in Goulburn-Murray and Coleambally (high-level infrastructure)
3) Pilot 3: Demonstration at district scale – Coleambally Irrigation District (high-level infrastructure)
4) Pilot 4: Demonstration at farm scale (irrigated crop, low-level infrastructure) – Northern Murray Darling Basin farms
Dissemination and communication activities have been focused on spreading the COALA project's opportunities to the stakeholders. Although workshops and face-to-face meetings were not possible due to the restrictions caused by COVID, a great deal of simplification and communication of the message was done on social networks and the blog. All partners contributed to writing articles and posts. The flagship is the school legacy: videos and tutorials have been produced in a format suitable for students, to engage the new generation in raising awareness of the issue.
For the business area, the market analysis and the business modelling exercise have been completed. They led to the selection of the preferred business model for COALA. In parallel, the innovation and IPR management strategy was elaborated; information about background and foreground knowledge, exploitable results, IP ownership and protection was collected.
WP1 has been successfully completed at M12: users’ and stakeholders’ requirements were identified and analysed; alpha users have been signed up.
Products and services to provide through the DIAS have been identified and, for what concerning the process chain, 11 scripts for EO data pre-processing, 8 scripts for added-value EO services have been deployed (further refinement to adapt to the Australian context are still ongoing).
All the DIAS components, including controlling and management systems, have been organised in packages that can be exported and deployed on any Copernicus DIAS infrastructure (changing only the interface to the raw data). The first prototype is available on the EODC infrastructure (which is federated with the WEkEO DIAS). First integration of COALA services as API in Yield Prophet® (platform belonging to BCG and provided to its farmer members) e is functional with further developments ongoing.
Great effort has been spent on the definitions of n. 4 pilot areas and “Alpha-users” in each of them, defined as follows:
1) Pilot 1: Demonstration at farm scale rainfed crops– BCG member farmers
2) Pilot 2: Demonstration at farm scale irrigated crops in Goulburn-Murray and Coleambally (high-level infrastructure)
3) Pilot 3: Demonstration at district scale – Coleambally Irrigation District (high-level infrastructure)
4) Pilot 4: Demonstration at farm scale (irrigated crop, low-level infrastructure) – Northern Murray Darling Basin farms
Dissemination and communication activities have been focused on spreading the COALA project's opportunities to the stakeholders. Although workshops and face-to-face meetings were not possible due to the restrictions caused by COVID, a great deal of simplification and communication of the message was done on social networks and the blog. All partners contributed to writing articles and posts. The flagship is the school legacy: videos and tutorials have been produced in a format suitable for students, to engage the new generation in raising awareness of the issue.
For the business area, the market analysis and the business modelling exercise have been completed. They led to the selection of the preferred business model for COALA. In parallel, the innovation and IPR management strategy was elaborated; information about background and foreground knowledge, exploitable results, IP ownership and protection was collected.
PROGRESS BEYOND THE STATE OF ART
COALA project addresses the following progress beyond state of the art:
Progress beyond the state of art in Water management at River Basin and District scale by developing spatially-distributed physically-based products to estimate water fluxes We aim at developing a multi-scale information product shared by the different levels of users.
Progress beyond the state of art in Earth Observation products for water management, by exploiting the new capabilities of the short wave infrared bands of Sentinel 2.
Progress beyond the state of art in Cloud Computing Systems for E.O. data. by using a new approach based on the use of a DIAS, providing data, services and tools for different market actors using a dedicated Application Programming Interface (API).
EXPECTED RESULT UNTIL THE END OF THE PROJECT
• An engaged user community
• new methodology and supply chain for innovative EO-services and integration with other non-space data and its assessment.
• Deploy on DIAS environment of operational services that provide a continuous flow of EO-assisted information in pilot use cases.
• Pre-operational services established that provide a continuous flow of EO-assisted services
• Exploitation Roadmap to address crucial business planning aspects
• Creating the new product identity, build the brand, design the strategy and develop the marketing and policy activities
IMPACT
The expected results will produce the following impact:
• Establish sustainable supply chains for innovative EO value-added products
• Complete integration, based on international standards, into the customer’s existing business processes
• Enhance the European industry’s potential to take advantage of market opportunities
• Lead to new or improved products, processes or services on the market
COALA project addresses the following progress beyond state of the art:
Progress beyond the state of art in Water management at River Basin and District scale by developing spatially-distributed physically-based products to estimate water fluxes We aim at developing a multi-scale information product shared by the different levels of users.
Progress beyond the state of art in Earth Observation products for water management, by exploiting the new capabilities of the short wave infrared bands of Sentinel 2.
Progress beyond the state of art in Cloud Computing Systems for E.O. data. by using a new approach based on the use of a DIAS, providing data, services and tools for different market actors using a dedicated Application Programming Interface (API).
EXPECTED RESULT UNTIL THE END OF THE PROJECT
• An engaged user community
• new methodology and supply chain for innovative EO-services and integration with other non-space data and its assessment.
• Deploy on DIAS environment of operational services that provide a continuous flow of EO-assisted information in pilot use cases.
• Pre-operational services established that provide a continuous flow of EO-assisted services
• Exploitation Roadmap to address crucial business planning aspects
• Creating the new product identity, build the brand, design the strategy and develop the marketing and policy activities
IMPACT
The expected results will produce the following impact:
• Establish sustainable supply chains for innovative EO value-added products
• Complete integration, based on international standards, into the customer’s existing business processes
• Enhance the European industry’s potential to take advantage of market opportunities
• Lead to new or improved products, processes or services on the market