ICT for Decision Making in Farming
Abstract
Crop and grassland systems provide the resources necessary to support all of us with safe and sufficient food. However, the significance and pace of economic and environmental changes and threats (e.g., climate change, water scarcity, soil degradation, trade agreements) demand new approaches to efficiently support decision makers in the agricultural sector (i.e., farmers, advisors, and policy makers). Recent advances in information technologies, sensor-based plant/soil monitoring, and remote sensing have facilitated extensive data collection and processing in agricultural systems. However, the lack of transparent, interactive, and easy-to-understand software for data management and interpretation has widely been identified as a key limiting factor for the adoption of new technologies by stakeholders. It is evident that recent developments are lacking the involvement of farmers and other stakeholders in the setting of research priorities and for the application of research. The Research Studio FARM/IT will address these shortcomings and provide the following contributions: 1. Establish a highly interdisciplinary, long-term research collaboration between TU and BOKU mastering recent and upcoming challenges in farming systems. The consortium aims to establish the first academic think tank related to smart farming in Austria. 2. Designing and developing cost-effective and user-friendly ICT components for improving the management and optimization of conventional and organic farming systems. We aim to make scientific concepts available to decision makers and to allow stakeholders to efficiently use the magnitude of data for strategic and tactical decision-making. FARM/IT will provide a web-based discussion support system that allows decision makers to overlook the multitude of decision parameters and the high degree of uncertainty in the management of farming systems and support them in interactively evaluating the consequences of their actions in economic, environmental and political terms. We believe communication of meaningful, concise information to the stakeholders is the best way to achieve behavioural change. 3. Providing knowledge transfer and sharing between academia and stakeholders, such as farmers, agricultural companies, governmental and non-governmental organizations. The early involvement of major stakeholders from international academia (Hohenheim and Kiel universities (DE), Lincoln University (NZ)), governmental (HBLFA Raumberg-Gumpenstein, Victoria Government (AU)), non-governmental (Landwirtschaftskammer), companies (PAS Peschak), software providers (LincolnAgritech (NZ)), and farmers, will ensure the market relevance of the research provided by FARM/IT.
Publikationen
Project staff
Ahmad M. Manschadi
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ahmad M. Manschadi
manschadi@boku.ac.at
Tel: +43 1 47654-95112
Project Leader
01.09.2017 - 31.08.2021
Gernot Bodner
Priv.-Doz. Dr. Gernot Bodner
gernot.bodner@boku.ac.at
Tel: +43 1 47654-95115
Project Staff
01.09.2017 - 31.08.2021
Josef Eitzinger
Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.nat.techn. Josef Eitzinger
josef.eitzinger@boku.ac.at
Tel: +43 1 47654-81422
Project Staff
01.09.2017 - 31.08.2021
Jürgen Kurt Friedel
Ao.Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Jürgen Kurt Friedel
juergen.friedel@boku.ac.at
Tel: +43 1 47654-93317
Project Staff
01.09.2017 - 31.08.2021
Hans-Peter Kaul
Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.nat.techn. Hans-Peter Kaul
hans-peter.kaul@boku.ac.at
Tel: +43 1 47654-95111
Project Staff
01.09.2017 - 31.08.2021
Andreas Klingler
Dipl.-Ing. Andreas Klingler
klingler@boku.ac.at
Project Staff
01.09.2017 - 28.02.2019
Francesco Vuolo
Dr. Francesco Vuolo
francesco.vuolo@boku.ac.at
Tel: +43 1 47654-85735
Project Staff
01.09.2017 - 31.08.2021
BOKU partners
External partners
HBLFA Raumberg-Gumpenstein
Erich Pötsch
partner