TUgis Conference 2019

Netherlands Space Office (NSO) initiated a project called Intelligent Decision Support Systems (IDSS) for Farmers under its global initiative called Geodata for Agriculture and Water (G4AW). Under this project a small team of Advanced Chemical Industries (ACI), in Dhaka is working to democratize spatial information to paddy farmers of Bangladesh. For the first-time farmers can now see the disease and pest vulnerabilities of their lands through smartphone. For the first time, producers, retailers and policy makers are sharing a common space where everyone is spatially connected.

In ACI, a group of analysts started this journey in 2016 with a hope to identify different stages of rice with Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image called Sentinel-1, starting from its transplanting stage to harvest stage. While different pest and diseases spread with different temperature and weather condition, the idea is to develop a model to map this pattern and the places where they are probable to outbreak. With the right weather forecast, the model creates a vulnerability map for each crop stage. The crop lands of Bangladesh are fragmented, heterogeneous and sometime patternless, making the whole task even more challenging. The lands here are geographically diverse, demographically intense and economically apprehensive. Fortunately, the techniques of remote sensing kept evolving.

The ArcGIS Enterprise is currently under development to systematically manage these data and develop interactive services considering multiple end-points where users can collaborate. The database collected from the satellite image analysis will be further processed and monitored with the help of Web Feature-Services and REST API endpoints to use with smartphone app called 'Fosholi'. The dashboards created using Web AppBuilder software will help to develop a decision support toolbox for academicians, students, entrepreneurs and policy-makers.