Evaluation and Modelling of a Standard Based Spatial Data Infrastructure for Precision Farming

Geospatial information is becoming available increasingly in digital representations and can be created and consumed with the help of various different devices and services. Due to the increasing application of precision farming techniques the importance of spatial information and their implementation has become a key issue in operation planning and application in agriculture. Within the ICT-agri funded project GeoWebAgri present precision farming workflows for geo-data handling and data exchange have been analysed. User groups in the precision farming domain, consisting of heterogeneous users like farmers and many others, have identified the benefits of the idea of precision agriculture. Nevertheless the current usage of those techniques is still inhibited by nonflexible, restricted and hard to use systems. Identified by a survey, the concept of a Spatial Data Infrastructure for Precision Farming applications (SDI-PF) was developed to particularly overcome the problems of geodata handling, because present Farm Management Information Systems (FMIS) and precision farming tools fulfil the needs only partly. The information-intensive, location-related tasks of precision farming were analysed and decomposed. Following the concept of Model Driven Architecture (MDA) a conceptual model was developed using the Profile for GML application schema of the Unified Modelling Language (UML). The derived physical models can be used to exchange PF data in an infrastructure, based on a server-client communication, driven by web-services and the standards from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and International Standardization Organization (ISO). The approach was tested by modelling an exemplary application of precision weed control and made a positive outlook for the integration of tailored services into existing task controlling, as well as maintaining interoperability with ICT-infrastructures of close-by domains.