Creation Date: | 01-06-2013 |
Last Revision Date: | 4/4/2013 (DB) |
Anticipated Start Date: | 03 – 2013 |
Anticipated Completion Date | 12 – 2014 |
Executive Sponsors | Geoff Wickes, R. Andres Ferreyra, Charles Hillyer |
Project Manager | Dan Berne |
Work Group | Water Management |
Chartering Council | Precision Ag |
Technology has come a long way in helping growers irrigate their land in smarter ways. Producers can invest in soil mapping, install various types of pumping plants and flow meters, use soil sensors, put a VRI system on center pivots, and even tie some of these together through a few software applications.
However, none of these tools actually talk effectively or efficiently to each other. The purpose of the PAIL project is to enable this communication by providing a common set of data standards. These standards will represent weather, soil moisture and other relevant data, currently stored in a variety of Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) formats, in an industry-wide format that can be used by irrigation data analysis and prescription programs. Project deliverables will enable more efficient, easier-to-use solutions for growers, and the proposed standards will provide for extensibility for future use cases.
In November 2011, Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA) brought together a number of irrigation vendors, growers, utilities, and others for a program to reduce energy use associated with agricultural irrigation. The goal is to enable economic enhancement through a 20% improvement in agricultural Irrigation energy efficiency by the year 2020.
The target market includes growing operations of 100+ acres using center pivot irrigation systems. The specific objective of the program is to develop a flexible approach using optimal irrigation techniques and soil mapping, soil moisture, evapotranspiration, weather data and risk management in a common data reporting structure in an integrated irrigation decision support tool.
Pursuing the above requires a web-based decision support system (Figure 1) that includes the following:
Figure 1: Overview of Integrated Decision Support System for Ag Irrigation. The focus of the project is on data flowing from the green arrows and to the blue arrows.
The envisioned DSS requires the availability of large quantities of high-quality, easily-accessible data in a standard, well-documented format. This need is consistent with industry customers' demand for increasing ease of access to data and increasingly simple interoperation of systems from different vendors. It is through this confluence of interests that the PAIL project is derived. While the DSS itself is out of scope, standardizing the necessary data formats is. The project participants also believe that the PAIL project will lay the groundwork for new business innovations and opportunities.
Potential participants in this project include irrigation consultants, manufacturers of, and farm system software for, the following equipment:
In addition, agricultural software and agribusiness analysis companies may want to participate, as analyzing the impact of yield, energy, water, and fertilizer savings is an important component of demonstrating value to growers.
The approach to this project is to, whenever feasible, first research and adopt or adapt existing standards, rather than creating new ones.
Data format describing standardized data elements and definitions for:
This project (PAIL 1) will focus on proposing a standard, testing it against the use cases, and supporting precision irrigation demonstrations with available technologies. A subsequent PAIL 2 project will focus on implementation and emerging issues.
Because of the variety of equipment, and in order to accelerate progress, the project will divide into working groups. These will be determined at the first project launch meeting. The list of "in-scope" areas listed above may help guide the formation of sub-teams for the project. Preliminary ideas include, but are not limited to:
Participants are expected to have technical knowledge of how their company currently handles data exchange, as well as to recommend changes that can align with other companies. As such, members should have sufficient knowledge of their company's business model to make recommendations that can be supported by their company.
Time commitments will vary among the participating AgGateway team members. They are expected to vary between 5 and 10 hours a month for a period of 12 months among the various individuals. Time commitments are expected to go down after that period, but specifics will be better estimated at that time.
Since the working groups may meet / operate simultaneously, participating companies are advised to allocate, if possible, more than one person to the project: hopefully at least one person per working group the company is interested in influencing.
Most team meetings will happen via teleconference and team participants will have access to an online collaboration tool (e.g., Confluence). Team members will be expected to travel to the AgGateway Mid-Year Meeting and Fall AgGateway General Member meeting and any other face-to-face meetings that the project board determines are necessary to complete its objectives.
The following communications will be maintained and distributed on a regular schedule:
Communication | Distribution | Vehicle/Timing |
Project Updates/Issues | Sponsors, Water Management Working Group/Precision Ag Council | According to Precision Ag Council Meeting Schedule (typically every 2 months) |
Project Updates | Working Team Members | Collaborative Software/Bi-weekly |
Project Updates | General Membership | AgGateway Website & Newsletter/Semi-annual |
The Project Manager will maintain an "issues and actions" log for the project. It will be accessible via the collaborative worksite to all appropriate project participants for purposes of information, identifying new issues, and adding comments to issues. Anyone involved with the project can raise an issue, but the Project Manager has a regular responsibility to review issues, assign or elevate issues, and facilitate the resolution of issues.
Risk Factors include failure to meet some of the project deliverables in a timely manner and the withdrawal of team members having critical knowledge.
Constraints include available time of leadership and team members and scheduling conflicts, and agreement on what constitutes appropriate standards for the industry.
Assumptions include that the industry as a whole recognizes industry standards are more effective and efficient than multiple proprietary solutions.
Issues include understanding and integrating existing international and association standards, and companies' claims that their proprietary data and practices are de factostandards.
Activity | Occurrence/Duration | Vehicle |
Project Charter review, Budgeting and Use Case Working Meeting | Once / 6 Hours | In Person Meeting |
Working Team Meetings | Weekly / 1 hour | Collaboration worksite |
Offline work by team members | Weekly / 1 hour |
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Documentation and Project Board Meetings | Bi-weekly / 1 hour | Collaboration worksite |
Part 1: The Budget |
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The grid below lists the standard AgGateway budget line items. Specific line items are described using comments on each line item name. Please hover on those cells to read the description. IMPORTANT: Any unspent funding will be returned to the participants. |
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Line Item | 2013 Budget | 2014 Budget | Total Budget | % Budget |
Project Coordination, AGG | $10,000.00 | $2,500.00 | $12,500.00 | 31.25% |
Travel Expenses | $4,000.00 | $2,000.00 | $6,000.00 | 15.00% |
Phone & Admin support | $700.00 | $300.00 | $1,000.00 | 2.50% |
Communications | $700.00 | $300.00 | $1,000.00 | 2.50% |
Legal & Accounting | $1,000.00 | $- | $1,000.00 | 2.50% |
Business Meetings | $4,000.00 | $1,000.00 | $5,000.00 | 12.50% |
Contingency |
| $900.00 | $900.00 | 2.25% |
Project Initiation | $6,000.00 |
| $6,000.00 | 15.00% |
Licenses/Fees | $3,300.00 | $3,300.00 | $6,600.00 | 16.50% |
Total Expenses | $29,700.00 | $10,300.00 | $40,000.00 | 100.00% |
Part 2: Dividing the Budget among the participants |
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| CompanyTier | Number ofCompanies | Contribution | Subtotals | Payment |
2013 | 1-5 | 3 | $5,000 | $15,000 | 2 invoices of $2500 |
| 6-8 | 7 | $2,000 | $14,000 | 2 invoices of $1000 |
| SAC | 3 | $1,000 | $3,000 | 2 invoices of $500 |
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| $32,000 |
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2014 | 1-5 | 3 | $1,250 | $3,750 | 1 invoice |
| 6-8 | 7 | $500 | $3,500 | 1 invoice |
| SAC | 3 | $250 | $750 | 1 invoice |
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| $8,000 |
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Date | Milestone |
January, 2013 | Charter sent out for discussion |
February, 2013 | Project charter discussed in detail. Goals, objectives, scope and deliverables agreed upon. Project budget discussed. Funding alternatives proposed. Project charter submitted to Precision Ag Council for approval. |
March 2013 | Project charter approved. Project Team Launch. Collaborative software in place. Working groups launch. Sub-Teams working; detailed schedules |
April, 2013 | F2f Meeting in Salt Lake City to initiate use case working groups |
June 17-20, 2013(Johnston, IA) | AgGateway Mid-Year meeting. Project will have face-to-face meeting for several hours during the meeting schedule, or immediately following. |
Nov. 12-14, 2013(St. Petersburg, FL) | AgGateway Annual Meeting. Project will have a demonstration / presentation session associated with the Precision Ag Council program. |
April 2014 | PAIL 1 complete. Deliverables communicated. |
More specific milestones will be completed at, or soon after, the launch meeting.
To ensure project completion, the leadership will have a minimum of biweekly teleconferences to review planning and specification documents and other support materials. During the same teleconferences, project leadership will review work progress and agree on release dates and acceptance criteria for the deliverables to the PAC prior to the full demonstration at the Annual AgGateway Conference meeting. Other face-to-face meetings will be scheduled if/when needed. A report will be provided to the AgGateway community at the end of the project and after the demonstration.