Working on the AIOTI deliverable about Agriculture Digital Innovation Hubs

NEUROPUBLIC, the company that I am working for, is a member of the Alliance for Internet Of Things Innovation (AIOTI) and an active member of WG06 - AIOTI is organized around a number of Working Groups that focus on specific domains/topics related to Internet of Things, one of which is WG06 "Smart Farming and Food Security".

Each WG has a plan regarding its activities, including the preparation and publication of a number of deliverables. NEUROPUBLIC (and me, personally) offered to contribute to a number of deliverables and in this sense, I found myself, along with WG06 Chair Luis Perez-Freire from Gradiant (Spain) and Rodrigo de Oliveira from IRTA (Catalonia, Spain) working on the structure and content for a deliverable titled “Digital Innovation Hubs: democratising digital technologies in agriculture”.

The deliverable is about the concept of Agriculture Digital Innovation Hubs (ADIHs) in Europe and aims to provide a number of recommendations about their implementation in the near future. I was glad to ne able to contribute, as Digital Innovation Hubs for agriculture is a concept that I strongly believe in and have some experience, mostly based on my participation in the corresponding EIP-AGRI Seminar in Kilkenny, Ireland back in June 2017 as well as some background reading to help me better understand the concept.

It was a great collaborative work that started in July, right before the summer holidays, with a Table of Contents and some bits and pieces; we allocated responsibilities and started working on our parts, mostly in September. Despite the fact that everyone seemed to be on a fully-packed scheduled, we managed to come up with a 1st draft of the deliverable which we submitted today for internal review by the rest of the WG06 members.

Just by going through the document, I just came up with some ideas for revisions and improvements; I think I still have some time to allocate to the deliverable. :-)

Internet of Things and Agriculture: AIOTI Working Group 06

The Alliance for Internet of Things Innovation (AIOTI) was initiated by the European Commission in 2015, with the aim to strengthen the dialogue and interaction among Internet of Things (IoT) players in Europe, and to contribute to the creation of a dynamic European IoT ecosystem to speed up the take up of IoT. It involves a high number of organizations from the public and private sector that join forces towards a common goal.

AIOTI is organized in 13 Working Groups that cover different areas of IoT applications; NEUROPUBLIC is a member of AIOTI and one of the contributors to its WG 06: Smart Farming and Food Security. We gladly accepted Gradiant's invitation (the organization leading the specific WG) and so I found myself in Brussels on Sunday afternoon, getting ready to represent NEUROPUBLIC in the meeting which was hosted by the Spanish Office of Science and Technology (or Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas in Spanish).

I was excited to be on the same table with people from organizations such as Bayer Crop Science, IBM, Siemens, CEMA (the voice of the EU agricultural machinery producers), COPA-COGECA (the voice of EU farmers and farmers' cooperatives) and Intracom Telecom, to name a few, and have the opportunity to discuss about the current status of implementation of new technologies and the IoT ecosystem in the agricultural context. I was also glad to meet old friend Christopher Brewster from TNO after quite a long time.

AIOTI WG06 activities (#smartfarming #foodsecurity) in 2017 kick off today with a face-to-face meeting in Brussels cc @Gradiant @AIOTI_EU pic.twitter.com/Pzbm8lLAxA

— Marcos Álvarez-Díaz (@madtuirer) January 30, 2017

During the meeting, GAIA Epicheirein was mentioned as one good use case of application of new technologies in agriculture; I was happy to provide some insights on how GAIA Epicheirein was established and the work done in the context of NEUROPUBLIC's smart farming project that takes place all over Greece. Our new H2020 project DataBio was also mentioned quite a few times during the meeting, as one of the projects that may help push things forward in the specific context (see e.g. the smart farming pilots that NEUROPUBLIC will be responsible for).

The Smart AKIS H2020 project was also presented during the meeting by Ivo Hostens from CEMA, as a project that could be of interest to the scope of the group; more specifically, the marketplace that the project aims to build could be adapted by the WG.

.@Gaia_Epixeirein presented as a use case of #SmartFarming during @AIOTI_EU WG06 meeting #IoT #InternetOfThings @Gaia_Brussels pic.twitter.com/JCppqyI398

— NEUROPUBLIC (@Neuropublic) January 30, 2017

The next steps of the Working Group were discussed during the meeting and there are still points to be addressed but this first face to face meeting of the Working Group gave a boost into the right direction (and also allowed the participants / members of the WG to get to know each other). I have the feeling that NEUROPUBLIC will be one of the important members of the group, due to its unique combination of technology/infrastructure, access to farmers (through GAIA Epicheirein) and application of its smart farming services under real conditions. :-)