Agriculture Domain Working Group

Overview

The OGC Agriculture DWG provides a forum for discussion surrounding location information and its uses in landscape and farming. These activities involve sensing, analyzing, and communicating geospatial data streams.

Project Scope

The Agriculture Domain Working Group serves a multifaceted purpose within the geospatial community, primarily focused on enhancing interoperability in the agricultural sector. It acts as a vital platform for discussion and documentation of interoperability requirements tailored to the needs of the agriculture information and user community. This group also engages in dialogue and recommends actions concerning Interoperability Program Reports, playing a key role in shaping the direction of standards development and implementation. A significant part of its mission involves developing Change Request proposals for existing Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Standards, alongside crafting engineering reports aimed at securing approval from the Technical Committee (TC) for these documents to be released as OGC White Papers, Discussion Papers, or Best Practices Papers. Furthermore, the working group is dedicated to fostering the development of concepts related to testbed, pilot, and interoperability experiment activities specifically within the agricultural domain. By hosting informational presentations and discussions, the group ensures the agricultural market is well-informed about the benefits and applications of adopted OGC Standards, thereby promoting their effective use and facilitating broader adoption across the sector.

Background

Few activities are more tied to location, geography, and the geospatial landscape than farming. The farm business, farm supply chain, and public agricultural policies are increasingly tied as well to quantitative data about crops, soils, water, weather, markets, energy, and biotechnology. These activities involve sensing, analyzing, and communicating larger and larger scale geospatial data streams. How does farming become more, not less, sustainable as a business and as a necessity for life in the face of climate change, growing populations, scarcity of water and energy. Matching precision agricultural machinery with precision agricultural knowledge and promoting crop resiliency at large and small scales are increasing global challenges. As food markets grow to a global scale, worldwide sharing of information about food traceability and provenance, as well as agricultural production, is becoming a necessity.

Agriculture now touches many aspects of the work that OGC is doing to promote interoperability of geospatial data and geographic analysis. In the near future, for example, a significant part of the Internet of Things will consist of farm Things that measure weather, soil moisture, plant fungus attacks, irrigation rates, and dozens of other parameters critical to understanding the health and potential of crops. As agriculture becomes another significant and rapidly evolving domain of large-scale geospatial information exchange, it seems timely to create a forum to represent this domain in the form of an OGC Domain Working Group.

Activities

The Agriculture Domain Working Group (DWG) operates with a comprehensive scope, prioritizing a set of key activities aimed at enhancing the integration and application of geospatial technologies within the agricultural sector. One of its primary objectives is to identify and define the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) goals and organizational matters that have a direct impact on agricultural data, technology, and markets, ensuring that the unique needs of this sector are addressed effectively. This involves delineating the business issues and strategies that the OGC should adopt to ensure agricultural considerations are adequately represented within the OpenGIS specification initiatives. The process encompasses the definition of business objectives, requirements, tasks, and schedules to align with the overarching goals of the agricultural community. Additionally, the DWG focuses on formulating strategies to engage with the agricultural community actively, aiming to garner their support and participation. This involves establishing communication and collaboration channels to involve stakeholders in the development and adoption of geospatial standards and practices that cater specifically to agricultural needs, fostering a more inclusive and responsive approach to addressing the challenges faced by the industry.

Partners

The Agriculture Domain Working Group (DWG) partners with a diverse array of organizations to enhance agricultural information exchange and standardization. This collaboration focuses on aligning and harmonizing standards across several key bodies, including UN/CEFACT, ISO TC 23, ISOBus, AgroXML, OGC, W3C, and others, aiming to streamline agricultural data interoperability globally. An essential activity involves developing a reference architecture that leverages OGC encoding and interface standards for common agricultural practices, ensuring seamless data exchange and application integration. The group also prioritizes the renewal of Memorandums of Understanding (MOU), such as with the IUSS WGSIS, to coordinate on crucial standards like SoilML / ISO 28258, further solidifying the framework for soil information sharing.

Moreover, the DWG actively coordinates with agricultural interest groups within the Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) and the Research Data Alliance (RDA), fostering a collaborative environment for addressing agricultural data challenges. This coordination extends to engaging with various initiatives such as the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN), the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), GlobalGAP, and the Open Ag Data Alliance, among others. These partnerships are instrumental in facilitating broad-based exchange and fostering innovation in agricultural geoinformatics. Additionally, the organization of Agricultural Geoinformatics Summits at OGC Technical Committee meetings represents a key effort in bringing together experts, stakeholders, and practitioners to discuss advancements, challenges, and future directions in agricultural geospatial technologies.