Why map projects?
Digitalisation, big data, internet of things, smart farming, future internet, are expressions used in an increasing recognition of the necessity of ICT and automation for a sustainable agriculture. This has already lead to substantial investments in R&D for ICT and automation in agriculture in European as well as national funding programs.
It seems very likely that EU as well as national and regional investments in projects within ICT and automation for a sustainable agriculture will lead to several projects with similar objectives. It is therefore also very likely that there are potential synergies and mutual benefits to be achieved by collaboration. As for example, wider applicability of smart applications, better compliance to standards, lower development costs, and a larger market for ICT products.
ICT-AGRI is, for a start, collecting data about ongoing projects within ICT and automation for a sustainable agriculture. The results of the analysis of these data will be published at this website as well as presented at workshops and conferences as an introduction to a discussion on how collaboration among projects may be encouraged and supported.
Preparing for Open Access mapping
Mapping of projects is a usual exercise for most EU funded ERA-NETs. Mappings have been performed in various ways, they have always been quite labour consuming and the impacts often questionable. This mapping will be done maually by the ICT-AGRI partners and volunteers, and therefore also laborous.
In the future mapping of projects should be done by automatic harvesting of metadata from the funding agencies' databases. Such schemes are already in operation for mainly research results from anumber of universities and research organisations, who have adopted Open Access standards. The EU operated website OpenAIRE, for example, can be searched for a great number of publications and also for EU funded projects.
This mapping of projects will be done in a way that simulates Open Access harvesting of metadata from funding agencies. ICT-AGRI will, in parallel with the manual collection of project metadata, work on an intelligent analysis of the mapping data as well as tools for harvesting metadata from funding agencies.