Space4Agri and ERMES projects

Regional and European user perspectives,

a point of view from NEREUS

Massimo Antoninetti

IREA – CNR

Milano, Italy

General Aim

The general aim of Space4Agri and ERMES projects is to address the demand of consistent and up to date information from the agricultural sector at Regional and European level to meet the challenge of Aerospace Earth Observation (EO) for the developmentof downstream services that bring added economic value to business and benefits for public administrations and citizens.

As example, this sector in Lombardia region faced unexpectedcritical situation in 2012 causing the decrease in maize production (- 20% with respect to 2011) with significant impacts on the entireagro-livestock chain of the Po Valley.

HOWSPACE:

• Development of methodologies for the creation of early season crop maps;

• Production of indicators of crop status and development, and the estimation of

phenological stages at regional scale;

• Evaluation of indicators of crop water stress.

AERO (technological improvement):

• Development of digital augmented reality environments;

• Definition of protocols to integrate information stemming from different virtual

environment instrumented systems;

• Testing of prototypes for re-planning in real time the UAV mission.

IN SITU:

• Design and demonstration of a data infrastructure for managing and sharing

instrumented sensors measurements (Sensor Enablement) and agronomic existing

database;

• Development of smart technologies for the acquisition of in situ observations by

operators of the agricultural sector;

• Development of smart technologies to feed back information to regional and local

agriculture specialists/ users.

Space4Agri - “Innovative Methodologies of Earth Observation supporting

the Agricultural sector in Lombardy”

ERMES - “an Earth obseRvation Model based ricE information Service”

The projects aim to develop a prototype of downstream service dedicated to agriculture sector (ERMES for rice) based on assimilation of EO and in situ data within crop yield modelling.

The objective of these services, targeted to European and regional needs, is to:

contribute to the regional authorities in the implementation of agro-environmental policies;

provide independent reliable information to the agro-business sector.

support farming activities for sustainable management practices;

The ERMES long term goal is to extend and adapt the service for rice to Asian and African markets, in order to boost European competitiveness and contribute to a sustainable development.

Innovative Approach

Provide (receive) customized (ground) information to (from) different END-USERS, and disseminate it by SMART technologies (web 2.0) Geoportal and SmartApp

Synergic use of SAR and Optical data, from existing EO satellites and forthcoming ESA Sentinel missions, to derive specific products

Develop value added Agro-information by assimilating i) satellite observations, ii) in situ measurements and iii) Copernicus core services in

crop models

WARMmodel

Raw EO (field) data OR Copernicus core

products

EO processing chain

Data input ERMES Products (EP)

Added values geo-information to be used in crop modelling and crop

monitoring

ERMES Information (EI)

modelling solution

Information required by Users to be used in their

work flow

Reflectance images ORCopernicus LAI product

@ 1 km resolution

LAI maps @ high resolution

Biomass development and Yield estimation for

a single field

Co

nce

pt

Exam

ple

From Data to Information

Services Concepts

Services

Example of Project Services

A system to monitor spatial variability of rice production at regional (district) and local scale

Regional Rice Service (RRS) @ Regional scale

Local Rice Service (LRS) @ Farm scale

Provide to authorities (institution with monitoring mandate) customized agro-monitoring system devoted to regional yield estimates and risk alarming.

provide to the private sector (farmers, cooperative, agro-consulting, etc) high level information on yield variability, risk alert andcrop damage assessment at farm scale

Example of Use of Satellite Products

In office In field

Conclusions

The agricultural sector in Europe is facing the challenge to maintain and improve its

competitiveness by reducing production costs and minimizing environmental impact of

agricultural practices. EO will contribute to achieve the objective of sustainable

agriculture needs by developing operational methods able to monitor crop status during

the season and to capture within field spatial variability of the production.

Remote sensing techniques are a powerful way to acquire information on the surface

conditions

The most suitable platform/sensor is a function of the application and expected product

Remote sensing is one of the sources of data for environmental monitoring

EO data/observations can be integrated with mathematical models

Importance of field data collection

ERIAFF Conference 2016 Badajoz, 27-29 April 2016 - valerio.tramutoli@unibas.it

• Risk Management/System for insurance purposes

• Precision Agriculture and Precision Livestock

• Natural Hazards Protection• Soil Degradation/Soil Quality• Drought monitoring.• Irrigation management• Landscape Protection and Land

development• Biodiversity Protection• Rural Development• Support to Local Administrations in

charge of controls on eligibility of farmers for EU aids in Agriculture

The study: How can Space Make a Difference for Agriculture Sector

NEREUS is preparing an informative study that illustrates concrete examples and

effective solutions based on space technologies that are already in place across

European Regions in the domain of Agriculture and Rural Development.

ERIAFF Conference 2016 Badajoz, 27-29 April 2016 - valerio.tramutoli@unibas.it

•April 2016: Document published ONLINE on NEREUS website as a LIVING DOCUMENT at: http://www.nereus-regions.eu/sites/all/documents/WG/Space4Agri.pdf

The study: How can Space Make a Difference for Agriculture Sector

Further contributes are Welcome

Thank you!

Massimo Antoninetti

IREA – CNR

Milano, Italy

antoninetti.m@irea.cnr.it

http://www.ermes-fp7space.eu/http://space4agri.irea.cnr.it/it