rasdaman newsletter 10/2016

Big Data Help Harvesting More

The German Ministry of Food and Agriculture is funding project "BigPicture - Diagnosis in the field: Big-Data-based determination of causes for satellite-image-derived and site-specific variations" carried out jointly by rasdaman GmbH, Bremen, and Spatial Business Integration GmbH, Darmstadt. Goal is helping farmers to optimize returns and to protect the environment through innovative Big Data technology.

A ceremony marked the official kickoff and underlined importance of this project. "For German agriculture it is important to play in the worldwide ivy league when it comes to hitech services. Projects like BigPicture play an important role due to their outstanding innovation and practical relevance", says Parliament State Secretary of the Federal Ministry for Food and Agriculture, Peter Bleser, while handing out the funding certificate on October 10.

With this handover of the certificates to rasdaman GmbH and Spatial Business Integration (SBI) the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture officially announced its financial support of the BigPicture research project through its innovation grants program. Overall volume of this 2.5 years project is above one million Euro. Technically, BigPicture aims at interpreting satellite captured variations in farm fields through Big Data technologies so that targeted measures, such as fertilizer placement, application of pesticides, or choice of species to grow, can be derived. Manifold information will be combined in such analyses, including satellite imagery, weather data, as well as the farmers' experience. This way, the process chain from satellite-based symptoms capturing in the field overdiagnosis up to therapy recommendation will be automated completely.

By combining the complementary know-how of both partners Big Picture aimsat establishing large-scale automated analysis offering individual insights and support for agricultural production in Germany.

Bremen-based hitech company, rasdaman GmbH, is world leader with its multi-award-winning agile Big Data technology for massive spatio-temporal datacubes. Just this summer US magazine CIOReview has chosen high-speed server rasdaman into their list of top Big Data solutions worldwide. Scaling seamlessly from laptops over clouds to intercontinental federations, rasdaman is in operation at leading data centers. The European Space Agency (ESA) operates a rasdaman database with 145 Terabyte, and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) wants to unleash its world's largest climate data archive encompassing 90 Petabyte. International "Big Datacube" standards used rasdaman as a blueprint, such as ISO Array SQL and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) "CBig Geo Data" suite, WCS.

Spatial Business Integration GmbH (SBI) focuses on providing services on a worldwide scale based on satellite and geospatial data for its customers in the agricultural sector, as well as the agro-chemical and finance industries. "We care about the world, which is why we provide information which can protect food, water and nature", stated General Manager Dr. Born recently at a conference attended by delegates from the agricultural, agro-chemical and space industries. Providing intelligent information products derived from geospatial data assists SIB's clients inrealizing their business strategies, ensuring efficient business processes, saving time and money, and managing limited resources such as arable land, nutrients and water. Spatial Business Integration's success is anchored in more than 20 years of experience and expertise in the fields of satellite remote sensing, geospatial technologies, plant sciences, water and agriculture.

The BigPicture project is supported by funds of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) based on a decision of the Parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany via the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE) under the innovation support programme.

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