Building agricultural information system using open source WebGIS technology
The Department of Science and Technology of Long An province has just held an acceptance test of a scientific Research project on building agricultural information systems using open source WebGIS technology. This is a scientific research and technology development project signed between the provincial Department of Science and Technology and the Vietnam National Space Center, and accepted by the Acceptance Council.
(1).jpg "Building agricultural information system using open source WebGIS technology")
The Department of Science and Technology holds the acceptance test for the scientific project "Research and build agricultural information system using open source WebGIS technology"
Building an agricultural information system
The scientific project has a total cost of 890.5 million VND, provided by the state budget. The implementation period is 16 months, from December 2021 to March 2023 and extended for another 3 months. The project leader is Dr. Tran Thai Binh - Deputy Director of Ho Chi Minh City Center for Space Technology Application, under Vietnam National Space Center. The overall goal of the project is to build an information system to serve the management of agricultural production; relevant information such as soil, weather, hydrology, diseases, output, etc as well as a database on crops, livestock and related data on agriculture in the province.
In addition, the system is built on the basis of open source to help update the database easily and quickly via mobile applications (Android and iOS), ensuring a fast and accurate source of information to restructure the province's agriculture to adapt to climate change and develop sustainably. The agricultural information system applies WebGIS technology with the ability to search in the semantic direction, improve the accuracy and extract relevant information, to effectively exploit the relevant database.
The Mekong Delta region is assessed to have the largest agricultural production area in the country, in which, Long An has high potential for agricultural production. However, in the context of climate change, increasingly extreme weather conditions are a big challenge for the Agriculture, farmers and rural sectors. This stresses the importance of collecting, tracking, storing, managing and sharing relevant data for sustainable agricultural production in the province.
According to Decision No. 38, dated December 30, 2020 of the Prime Minister promulgating the list of high technologies prioritized for development investment and the list of high-tech products encouraged for development, including geoinformatics (remote sensing and Gis) for agriculture. The development of remote sensing technology and geographic information systems (Gis), especially open source WebGIS technology, allows building an application capable of collecting, storing, managing and exploiting data online and flexible.
In particular, time-interactive map technology is a new direction in representing information. By taking advantage of the ability to represent spatial data combined with time statistical data, agricultural information such as area, output, production value of crops, etc is displayed through maps and charts corresponding to specific timelines. When the user interacts with any element of a chart, map, or timeline, the other elements change accordingly. Multi-time interactive map technology will replace the traditional way of displaying statistics in the form of tables on information pages of provincial departments.
Based on the open source WebGIS platform and interactive multi-time map technology, the application not only provides information on agricultural activities but also provides relevant information on meteorology, hydrology, and soil. In particular, information on the situation of pests and diseases that damage crops is collected in timely through GIS-integrated devices.
The agricultural sector is the unit that exploits and uses the WebGIS system
The strength of the WebGIS system is to create maps and charts that combine a lot of information to suit the needs of each user. The application will be a necessary tool to help managers have an overview of the agricultural production situation and the relationship between the components, thereby serving effectively in monitoring the situation of agricultural production, grasping development trends in order to make appropriate plans in management as well as planning for agricultural development.
Besides, with high flexibility, the application has the ability to integrate with the local agricultural portal, showing interactive maps and charts according to user needs and providing information about legal documents, announcements, weather forecast bulletins, sharing production experience.
After the project was accepted, the Vietnam National Space Center will continue to perfect, transfer and install the system to the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development. The Center will provide training on how to exploit and use the agricultural information WebGIS system and use software to collect agricultural information.
Director of the Department of Science and Technology, Chairman of the Council of Science and Technology Projects Acceptance - Nguyen Minh Hai said: “With the goal of serving the development of the Agriculture industry, this scientific project will contribute to promoting the transformation of crops in the direction of sustainable development, thereby creating a driving force for stable socio-economic development associated with environmental protection and climate change adaptation. When information on agricultural production activities is published, farmers will have a suitable crop production plan as well as a timely response plan in unfavorable weather and disease conditions, bringing high efficiency in production, contributing to improving people's income and quality of life./.
By Mai Huong - Translated by Q. Thien
