Information system on agricultural statistics

The MARS project of the Institute for Remote-Sensing Applications of the Joint Research Centre, Ispra, runs an information system on agricultural statistics on behalf of the European Commission. In the framework of its research activities, the MARS project has published a call...

The MARS project of the Institute for Remote-Sensing Applications of the Joint Research Centre, Ispra, runs an information system on agricultural statistics on behalf of the European Commission. In the framework of its research activities, the MARS project has published a call for tender for the completion of the following studies:

- Establishment of a crop knowledge base:
. Design and implementation of an information system for crop parameters;
. Development of the knowledge base, including entry of already available data;
- Establishment of a land-use database: Feasibility study for the design, implementation and updating of a database on areas of agricultural land use and forest at the level of:
. Small administrative units (i.e. NUTS 4) over the European Union and EFTA countries;
. An administrative unit to be determined for Central, Eastern European and Maghreb countries;
- Availability of digital land-cover data study on the availability of existing digital land-cover data for the area of European Union, EFTA, PHARE and Maghreb countries;
- Upgrade of the Crop Growth Monitoring System (CGMS) software (implemented in Oracle and Arc/Info);
- Software for regional inventories (ground survey only) to compute estimates from area frame survey, including both field and farm surveys;
- Algorithm to quantitatively estimate discrepancy between two sets of vectors to provide an algorithm estimating the discrepancy between sets of vectors generated from the same object by different photo-interpreters or automatic segmentation procedures;
- Quality control of remote-sensing checks for arable land feasibility study to set up an operational processing chain for the quality control of remote-sensing checks of arable land;
- Reference maps related to the common agricultural policy. In order to provide European coverage, the coordinator will have to compile maps on yield regions and irrigation established by Member States for the application of a CAP;
- Monitoring the effect of the common agricultural policy: Methodological study on the type of data and samples to be provided by Member States in order to monitor the effect of CAP;
- Validation of CGMS and SPACE systems packages. The agro-pedo-meteorological modelling package (CGMS) and the AVHRR pre-processing chain (SPACE) developed for processing data over Europe will have to be validated on various geographic areas, at various scales;
- Development of a forage production model for regional monitoring and forecasting of forage and pasture production at the European scale;
- Development of an extrapolation method to estimate the total acreage and yield of main crops and their precision from a sample of ground survey and remote-sensing sites across Europe;
- Integrated use of MARS data innovative studies making combined use of remote-sensing data (including ERS1), agrometeorological models output and auxiliary data of the MARS archive.
Completed tenders should be submitted to:

European Commission
Joint Research Centre
Mr R. G. Crandon
TP 441
I-21020 Ispra
Tel. [phone]; Fax [phone]