An introduction to Federation University Australia Digital Agriculture research and digital technology;

1. Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation
A/Prof Peter Dahlhaus
A/Prof Helen Thompson
May 2017

2. Federation University Australia
Origins: 1870 Ballarat School of Mines
Campuses: Ballarat, Gippsland, Wimmera, Berwick,
Brisbane, Malaysia
Faculties & Schools:
(dual sector)
• Business
• Education & Arts
• Health
• Science & Technology
• Industry Skills
• Federation College

3. Federation University Australia
University of New England
University of Southern Queensland
Southern Cross University
Central Queensland University
University of the Sunshine Coast
Precision Agriculture Flagship
Water Landscapes Future
Collaboration: research, PhD students, facilities

4. Centre for eResearch and
Digital Innovation
CeRDI - www.cerdi.edu.au
~ 30 staff: multidisciplinary mix of researchers,
technical, support and administration
Unaligned to Faculties - report to DVCR

5. x =
CeRDI capability: eResearch
National &
FedUni
research
priorities
CeRDI
Government,
industry and
community
needs
Research
expertise
Technological
expertise
Real world
applications

6. A variety of applications:
agriculture, biodiversity, catchment management, citizen science, climate change,
endangered species, emergency management, fire, groundwater, history, municipal
information, natural resource management, regional planning, sports participation, etc.
Allows integration of cross-disciplinary data sets
spatial.federation.edu.au
CeRDI capability:
spatial data portals

8. Depth to watertable
www.vvg.org.au
Federates around 80 groundwater data
sets from 8 custodians. Some data are
real-time, some are scheduled
updates, some are linked data

9. Bore parameters
Information on over 400,000
bores accessed from the source
databases

10. Predicted depth to watertable and
groundwater quality

11. 3d model of aquifers

12. 204,146 Sessions
83,135 Users
488,852 Pageviews
60% Returning visitors
Primary impact
Site usage has grown:
• 43% industry users,
• 20% government,
• 11% community,
• 11% water authority,
• 10% research.
Analytics

13. Practice impact: reduced time finding data, preparing data, responding to enquiries.
Sector impact: changed data custodian’s thoughts on how to provision data.
http://jh.iwaponline.com/content/18/2/238Journal of Hydroinformatics (open access)
“VVG technology provides an opportunity to add extra
data sets without having to rebuild.”

14. International data interoperability standards
Groundwater Interoperability Experiment 2 (GW2IE)
Soil Data Interoperability Experiment (Soil IE)
Collaborators include: CSIRO, European Commission, US Department Agriculture,
World Soil Information (ISRIC), Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Landcare
Research NZ, Geological Surveys of US, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand,
Poland, UK, etc.

15. data.cerdi.edu.au/soil_demo.php
Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) 2015
soil data interoperability experiment.
Designing, implementing and testing a
soil data exchange standard.

16. The Research and Innovation Network for
Precision Agriculture Systems

17. Co-operative Research Centres
High Performance Soils (2017 - 2027)
$136.8M Total value (cash + in-kind)
$39.5M Government cash
$27.1M Partner cash
1. Investing in high performance soils
2. Soil performance metrics
3. New products to increase fertility & function
4. Integrated and precision soil management
Unis: Newcastle, Murdoch, FedUni, UTas, CSU, Kansas State (US), SCU, USQ
SAGIT, WANTFA, Primary Industries and Regions SA, Landcare Research (New Zealand),
BCG, WCMA, Hart Field Site Groups, NCCMA, Central West Farming System, SPAA, EPARF,
Mallee Sustainable Farming, The Gillamii Center, Mackillop Farm Management Group Inc.,
Herbert Cane Productivity Services Ltd, Burdekin Productivity Services, Riverine Plains Inc.,
West Midlands Group, Facey Group, Liebe Group, Holbrook Landcare Network, Arris,
HLM Asia Group Limited, DEDJTR (Ag. Vic.), EcoCatalysts Pty Ltd, SE Water Corporation,
Australian Organics Recycling Association Limited, Landmark Operations Limited,
Corrigin Farm Improvement Group, Farmlink Research Limited, Soils for Life Trust, SFS,
Department of Industry Skills and Regional Development, Wheatbelt NRM Inc.
Food Agility (2017 – 2027)
$212.0M Total value (cash + in-kind)
$50.0M Government cash
$35.7M Partner cash
1. Digital Agrifood Technologies
2. Agrifood Informatics
3. Sustainable food systems
Unis: UTS, QUT, Curtin, FedUni, JCU, RMIT, CSU
DAWR, NSW DPI, QDAF/DISTI, SARDI, DEDJTR (Ag. Vic.)
AFI, FIAL, NFF
AMPC, AWRI, Dairy Aust, GRDC, RDA, RIRDC
NAB, Lend Lease, IAG, KPMG, Gilbert & Tobin, Pollenizer, Pracsys Economics
AACo, Agribusiness Gippsland, AgriFibre, City of Dandenong, CommBeef, Elders, Halls,
Houston’s Farm, Mulgowie Farming Co., Southern Forest Food Council, Sydney Fish
Market
Precision Agronomics Aust, SST Software, Mahindra (India), NGIS, Agrigenesis, AMA,
Meshed, Bosch, Duo-Technologies, Ovass, Indicina (Swan Systems), Industrie IT,
HiveXchange, Bondi Labs, The Yield

18. www.farmtrials.com.au
Federating farm trial data for all Australia

19. www.croppro.com.au
Crop disease diagnostics and information

20. agprice.grainandgraze3.com.au
Historical commodity price metrics

21. www.swclimatechange.com.au
Climate change predictions
(spatial), impacts and
adaptation information.

22. www.ozdsm.com.au
Digital soil mapping
(PhD project completed 2016)

23. probetrax.sfs.org.au
Soil moisture and temperature probes (telemetered data)
Includes SMS/email alert services

25. www.ccmaknowledgebase.vic.gov.au/soilhealth
Spatial mapping portal
(maps, tests, profiles,
etc.)
Soil eLibrary
(grey documents,
webpages,
videos, etc.)

26. Community contributed soil test data
Farm (paddock)
soil tests
Land health
program
monitoring sites
Administrator login view

27. Time series paddock test data (animated)
Farmer login view

28. Soil properties over time
compared to targets
Farmer login view

29. Public view
Average values
for nearest soil
tests (paddock
& monitoring
sites) for any
place in the
landscape

30. In areas with sparse
data, use federated
soil data from
CSIRO (SLGA) &
Agriculture Victoria
Public view

31. Antle, J.M., Basso, B., Conant, R.T., Godfray, H.C.J., Jones, J.W., Herrero, M., Howitt, R.E., Keating, B.A., Munoz-Carpena, R.,
Rosenzweig, C., Tittonell, P. and Wheeler, T.R. (2017 in press-a). Towards a new generation of agricultural system data, models
and knowledge products: Design and improvement. Agricultural Systems. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2016.10.002.

32. Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation www.cerdi.edu.au 32
CeRDI capability in eResearch
Collaborate with our research, industry and community partners:
To take advantage of the eResearch tools to:
 Interoperably integrate data (open data, research data, big data, sensor
data, legacy data, crowdsourced data… any data)
 Answer the frequently asked data/information questions
 Dynamically generate conceptual and predictive models
 Make new discoveries and avoid repeating past research
 Measure the impacts on decision making and facilitate practice change