Location: Natural Resources and Sustainable Agricultural Systems
Project Number: 0202-11000-001-078-I
Project Type: Interagency Reimbursable Agreement
Start Date: Oct 1, 2020
End Date: Sep 30, 2024
Objective:
The purpose of this cooperative agreement work plan is to continue the development of data management tools and solutions for the CRaFT program in Florida and to leverage these tools and solutions in creating customized citrus data management tools and solutions for future work in California and Texas. The PDI team has developed a strong and productive relationship with CRaFT and through this agreement the PDI team will forge new relationships with the citrus industries in CA and TX to directly support Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), Plant Protection and Quarantine (PPQ) in the citrus projects that they fund in FY21 and FY22. The specific objectives include:
1) Design, develop, and deploy digital data input apps that can be used on a smartphone, tablet or computer for potential growers to enter their program application information. These apps will be customized for the FY21 and FY22 APHIS PPQ citrus funded projects.
2) Design, develop and deploy digital solutions to aid reviewers in selecting growers for the proposed citrus programs based on grower submitted application data. These apps will be customized for the FY21 and FY22 APHIS PPQ citrus funded projects.
3) Design, develop, and deploy digital data input apps that can be used on a smartphone, tablet or computer for satellite to soil data collected by growers, investigators, and APHIS for the selected grower applicants. These apps are customized for individual growers and other end-user groups.
4) Design, develop, and deploy digital solutions for growers, APHIS, and investigators to view, visualize, and analyze grower data collected as part of FY21 and FY22 APHIS PPQ citrus funded projects.
5) Maintain and expand PDI cloud platform that directly supports the APHIS citrus work. This is funded through a separate APHIS PPQ agreement. This system will be managed by USDA ARS.
Approach:
This agreement relies on and is directly linked to the Expansion of the PDI data management tools suites and systems to directly support APHIS PPQ funding citrus programs: CSU agreement. These agreements were established as a package to address the same overarching goals and deliverables. The CSU agreement was developed to address the human resources needs to successfully complete the project. The USDA ARS agreement was developed to address the software and infrastructure costs related to successfully complete the project.
The PDI team led by the USDA ARS National Program Leader for Engineering and National Lead for PDI, and CSU will work with the funding agencies, investigators, data collection teams, and producers in the development of digital apps that are smartphone, tablet, and computer friendly for data input, viewing digitally captured data, and completing basic data analysis.
Grower, funding agency, and investigator data access will include real-time map-based data layers (through ESRI ArcGIS) and dashboards of the collected citrus production data that will allow visualization of trends, graphs, and tables from the databases. Further, researcher access will include real-time and downloadable access to raw data files, and integrated layers. All these visualizations will be tailored to needs of each user group (funding agency, investigators, producers, etc.). Access will be coordinated through the ARS AgCROS. The individual APHIS funded project managers or APHIS will be required to provide ARS written requests as to who will have the rights to view individual datasets.
The PDI team will work directly with the investigators and producers to fulfill additional data management related needs as they arise, assuming enough resources are available. The PDI team will ensure that the databases are functional, have appropriate curation (metadata standards, interoperability), and are accessible to all participating CRaFT growers, citrus researchers under non-disclosure agreements, and the public were deemed appropriate. The PDI team will aid and support in developing a customized and efficient set of data collection tools for the FY21 and FY22 citrus projects funded through APHIS PPQ. Throughout this process, CSU’s and ARS’s role will be to ensure that the data are collected according to scientific standards, managed properly for long-term benefits, and are appropriately accessible to maximize usefulness to American farmers.
