{"id":17,"date":"2015-10-07T18:20:21","date_gmt":"2015-10-07T18:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.w3.org\/community\/bde-food\/?p=17"},"modified":"2015-10-07T18:20:21","modified_gmt":"2015-10-07T18:20:21","slug":"first-summary-of-the-bigdataeurope-workshop-on-big-data-for-food-agriculture-and-forestry-opportunities-and-challenges-held-in-paris-on-22-september-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.w3.org\/community\/bde-food\/2015\/10\/07\/first-summary-of-the-bigdataeurope-workshop-on-big-data-for-food-agriculture-and-forestry-opportunities-and-challenges-held-in-paris-on-22-september-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"First summary of the BigDataEurope workshop on \u201cBig data for food, agriculture and forestry: opportunities and challenges\u201d held in Paris on 22 September 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

The BigDataEurope workshop on \u201cBig data for food, agriculture and forestry: opportunities and challenges<\/em>\u201d<\/strong> was held in Paris on 22 September 2015. It was organized by Agro-Know<\/a>,\u00a0FAO<\/a>, GFAR<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Big Data Europe<\/a> project and hosted by the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Following an intense pre-meeting of the Research Data Alliance Agricultural Data Interest Group<\/a>, the organizers gathered more than 40 experts from around the world to discuss needs and requirements in terms of big data in the food and agriculture sector.<\/p>\n

Overall, what came out of the discussions was that\u00a0the special thing about big data in agriculture is\u00a0its extreme variety<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This is what you get, if you contrast the four (as IBM suggests<\/a>) V\u2019s of big data to the data types and sources that are typically used in agricultural, food and environmental research. We are not talking about an extremely large Volume; other domains have much more voluminous data. It is not that they come with a high Velocity, especially compared to other domains. In many cases, their Veracity is quite high. But in agriculture,\u00a0data Variety matters<\/em>: you need to combine multiple, heterogeneous data types and formats from several sources, trying to solve the information problems and support decision making of the relevant stakeholders.<\/p>\n\"Pascal<\/a> Pascal Neveu’s presentation. From the BDE Flickr channel\n

This was the main message that came out of the fully packed workshop, with over 40 participants that use a large variety of data sources, types and applications \u2013 ranging from germplasm passport descriptors to animal disease outbreaks.<\/p>\n

Our speakers were representing some world-class research institutions.<\/p>\n

The workshop opened with\u00a0Pascal Neuveu<\/strong>, senior research engineer at the\u00a0French National Agronomic Institute (INRA)<\/a>\u00a0and director of the\u00a0MISTEA Laboratory<\/a>. Pascal gave us the big data perspective and implementation challenges that such a large and distributed agronomic research organisation has \u2013 did you know that INRA has 18 different centers spread across over 40 geographical locations, and more than 10,000 people from which about 4,000 are researchers? Pascal also presented a specific case study, the one of\u00a0high throughput phenotyping<\/a> at 5 large, open-air experimental fields, 2 greenhouses with controlled environments, and 2 fully equipped laboratories for carrying different types of\u00a0omics<\/em>\u00a0<\/a>analyses. Lots and lots of data generated and managed, but the main challenge that he identified is the\u00a0extreme variety of this data.
\nSee Pascal Neveu’s presentation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Dutch were also there, with two of the most prestigious\u00a0Wageningen UR<\/a>\u00a0institutes presenting their views and needs in terms of big data:<\/p>\n