Solutions Archive - 52°North Spatial Information Research GmbH

Web-based Agricultural Information System (WebAIS) for Bangladesh

Web-based agricultural water management information system

Improving water management in Bangladesh in times of climate change impacts

Agriculture is vital to Bangladesh’s economy, with irrigation playing a crucial role in food production. Despite a significant increase in irrigation coverage from 3.4 million hectares in 2000 to 5.4 million hectares in 2013, unregulated groundwater extraction has led to declining groundwater levels, crippled irrigation systems and increasing water scarcity. These challenges, coupled with climate change, underscore the need for sustainable water management. Web-AIS aims to integrate hydrological, crop, and climate models to provide real-time, data-driven solutions. Linked to the Bangladesh Agro-meteorological Information System (BAMIS), it will guide irrigation decisions, promote efficient use of surface water, and help address salinity issues. The overall goal of the project is to ensure food security by improving decision-making and supporting sustainable development while mitigating disaster risks.

Web-based Agricultural Information System (WebAIS) for Bangladesh — Web-AIS within the overall context

52°North’s main task is to implement a web-based information system that acts as a decision support system for all stakeholders. This system is the central link and interface of the Web-AIS project to the local stakeholders and will include the products and results of all project partners. The system provides access to relevant information on the current situation regarding irrigation management techniques, information on available water balance, crop water demand, irrigation schedule and also early warning in case of drought or other extreme events that may affect the irrigation activities. The spatial data infrastructure (SDI) block forms the core of the architecture. This comprises various OGC API web services, such as OGC API – Features, OGC API – Records or OGC API – Processes. Our team will use open-source implementations of the various OGC API standards to realize the architecture. The concept of OGC API – Building Blocks allows the different forms of OGC APIs to be combined into one comprehensive, standardized API. This approach is intended to create a gateway that serves as an access point for client applications. We will develop a web-based front-end application using Open Pioneer Trails as the centerpiece of the web information system.

Web-based Agricultural Information System for Bangladesh — Web-AIS data platform architecture

Partners

TH Köln: Institute for Technology and Resources Management in the Tropics and Subtropics, Germany

TU Darmstadt: Institute of Applied Geoscience, Germany

University of Bonn: Institute of Crop science and Resource Conservation, Germany

Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology: Environmental Research and Innovation (ERIN), Luxembourg

Bangladesh Agricultural University, Bangladesh

Institute of Water and Flood Management, Bangladesh

Dhaka University: Department of Geology, Bangladesh

Institute of Water Modeling, Bangladesh

Sreejon Investment and Consultant Ltd., Bangladesh

NRT Data for the Insurance Sector

Near Real-Time Data to Better Prepare for Flood and Disaster Events

Ensuring the continuous provision of open satellite and weather data from flood warning and monitoring systems, as well as precipitation radar data

After the devastating flash floods in the Ahr valley in July 2021, the insurance industry identified the need to have access to near real-time data in order to better prepare for such events. They have therefore commissioned a platform that can process any Earth Observation data for the short-term integration of real-time data from current flood and disaster events. The goal is to ensure the continuous provision of open data satellite and weather data from flood warning systems (i.e, GloFAS) and flood monitoring systems (GFM, EMSR), as well as precipitation radar data from the German Weather Service (RADOLAN). The resulting information product contains the classified data sources as well as the raw data used and is made available in near real-time (NRT) in WebGIS for further analyses.

Throughout the first phase of development in 2024, 52°North calculated statistics on the aforementioned raster time series products and estimated pixel-by-pixel extreme value distributions. Based on the distributions, we derived thresholds according to a given return period per data source. We also jointly developed the architecture and workflow concept based on Argo. The platform pattern implements data stream enrichment with extensive processing on a maximally scalable Kubernetes platform. With the help of automated Argo workflows, an information product is generated daily from forecasts, floods and suspicious areas and made available for further processing via an API. The data is delivered as decision-ready information that has been co-created with the end users of the product.

Near Real Time Data — Panoply screenshot of 20-year return period runoff on a log scale based on a statistical annual maxima reanalysis of runoff as modeled and provided by GloFAS

Customer

con terra GmbH, Germany

adesso SE, Germany

insurance industry, Germany

Tabular Data in GeoNode

Support for Non-Spatial Data

Integration of tabular data resources in GeoNode

GeoNode as a content management system for (geo)spatial data offers a discovery platform and simple GIS tools to find and access data in an interoperable way. Non-spatial data can also made available as document entities. However, the upload of structured, non-spatial data has not been supported.

In the past Thünen software development project, 52°North prototyped an extension for the GeoNode importer module to upload so called tabular data resources. Tabular data resources can be provided as a data package, a simple container format for describing a coherent collection of data in a single package. A data package consists of metadata that describes the structure and contents of the package as well as resources, such as data files, that form the contents of the package. The implementation has shown that the data package format is a flexible and easily consumable format for GeoNode. Since then, the datapackage extension has been made available through the German GeoNode user group.

ZALF Data Package — Detailed view of tabular data

As part of the German GeoNode user group, the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) defined further requirements for the module and formulated special topics and features such as (non-exhaustive list)

Tabular resources should be filterable subtypes of regular datasets
Cleanup of information relevant only to spatial data
Futher integratino of tabular data into existing tools, such as dataset downloads
Aggregate multiple tables into a tabular collection

52°North implemented all of the features defined above. In addition, our team resolved open issues and limitations regarding the integration of the new resource subtype and dataset handling. These improvements will in turn be incorporated into the development of the Thünen Atlas, which is currently under development. As part of the process, 52°North based the development on the GeoNode Blueprint, resulting in a recommended procedure template for developing other GeoNode contrib modules across multiple repositories.

Customer

Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Germany

Metadata Upload for BonaRes

Wizard-Supported Upload of Scientific Data

Migrating the metadata upload page to a metadata upload wizard

The BonaRes project advances the scientific understanding of soil ecosystems and improves soil productivity and other soil functions. It develops new strategies for the sustainable use and management of soils. The BonaRes Portal provides information on BonaRes projects, access to data, knowledge and models as well as decision support tools for sustainable soil management.

con terra GmbH supports the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) with interoperable solutions for the provision of soil-related data, integrated tools for modeling and the evaluation of sustainable land use options. The web-based BonaRes Repository offers the possibility to upload scientific data and make it available through an interoperable catalog (GeoNode). However, before the data is made available in GeoNode, the metadata must be checked to ensure that it contains a minimum amount of meaningful information.

ZALF BonaRes — BonaRes Upload Tool for soil data

52°North contributed to the BonaRes Repository by supporting con terra GmbH in redesigning the upload process and replacing the previous upload page with a wizard-supported upload process. Based on the given UI mockups, we discussed and derived new information entities and relationships. The resulting metadata required a reorganization and extension of the existing data model.

The new Upload Tool allows the user to work on a draft of the data submission, which can be saved so that the submission can be resumed and completed later. To support a user-friendly process, all required information is verified later in a final step. Most of the tool’s pages were implemented by 08/2024. The development of another page is currently underway.

Partner

con terra GmbH, Germany

Customer

Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Germany