Location: Sustainable Water Management Research
Project Number: 6066-13000-006-034-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 1, 2024
End Date: Aug 31, 2027
Objective:
1. Development of irrigation research apps for collecting routine research and monitoring data.
2. Development of irrigation visualization tools (e.g., dashboards, online maps).
3. Development of cyber-secure data pipelines for field deployed sensors and sensor systems.
4. Development of stakeholder apps that could be used in collecting voluntary producer data.
5. Development of global ontologies of irrigation and water management data.
Approach:
The Cooperator will employ undergraduate student workers, graduate research assistants, and a GIS analyst to work directly with the ARS Engineers and Texas A&M faculty. ARS Engineers will collaborate with graduate students whose research focus is on the development of systems to streamline data collection, analysis, and interpretation in agriculture. The Cooperator faculty members and a data coordinator will ensure that the team is actively and effectively communicating to achieve the project goals. Further, the Cooperator faculty and ARS Engineers will work together to guide graduate students in the development of applications and visualization tools that are accurate, meet the needs of the research, and have real-world usability. The objectives of the project are inter-related. Global ontologies for irrigation and water management are needed to ensure consistency across data sources and applications. As field deployed sensors and other systems provide more data during agricultural production cyber-security must be addressed. ARS Engineers will provide guidance to the Cooperator graduate students on the types and sources of data which need to be collected to understand irrigation activities and efficiency as well as the types of data which are useful for rapid visualization and dissemination to understand irrigation and agricultural production status. All data collection, storage, and visualization will be designed to comply with ARS data policies. It is expected that the Cooperator students will visit ARS facilities, agricultural research farms, and commercial farms to collect data, test systems, and solicit feed back. Routine meetings, both virtual and in-person between the ARS Engineers and Cooperators will ensure that project objectives and milestones are being met and to build up a strong team environment which will also introduce the potential of future work with ARS to the Cooperator students.
