Sander Janssen

A Generic Bio-Economic Farm Model for Environmental and Economic Assessment of Agricultural Systems

Bio-economic farm models are tools to evaluate ex-post or to assess ex-ante the impact of policy and technology change on agriculture, economics and environment. Recently, various BEFMs have been developed, often for one purpose or location, but hardly any of these models are re-used later for other purposes or locations. The Farm System Simulator (FSSIM) provides a generic framework enabling the application of BEFMs under various situations and for different purposes (generating supply response functions and detailed regional or farm type assessments). FSSIM is set up as a component-based framework with components representing farmer objectives, risk, calibration, policies, current activities, alternative activities and different types of activities (e.g., annual and perennial cropping and livestock). The generic nature of FSSIM is evaluated using five criteria by examining its applications. FSSIM has been applied for different climate zones and soil types (criterion 1) and to a range of different farm types (criterion 2) with different specializations, intensities and sizes. In most applications FSSIM has been used to assess the effects of policy changes and in two applications to assess the impact of technological innovations (criterion 3). In the various applications, different data sources, level of detail (e.g., criterion 4) and model configurations have been used. FSSIM has been linked to an economic and several biophysical models (criterion 5). The model is available for applications to other conditions and research issues, and it is open to be further tested and to be extended with new components, indicators or linkages to other models.

Defining assessment projects and scenarios for policy support: Use of ontology in Integrated Assessment and Modelling

Integrated Assessment and Modelling (IAM) provides an interdisciplinary approach to support ex-ante decision-making by combining quantitative models representing different systems and scales into a framework for integrated assessment. Scenarios in IAM are developed in the interaction between scientists and stakeholders to explore possible pathways of future development. As IAM typically combines models from different disciplines, there is a clear need for a consistent definition and implementation of scenarios across models, policy problems and scales. This paper presents such a unified conceptualization for scenario and assessment projects. We demonstrate the use of common ontologies in building this unified conceptualization, e.g. a common ontology on assessment projects and scenarios. The common ontology and the process of ontology engineering are used in a case study, which refers to the development of SEAMLESS-IF, an integrated modelling framework to assess agricultural and environmental policy options as to their contribution to sustainable development. The presented common ontology on assessment projects and scenarios can be reused by IAM consortia and if required, adapted by using the process of ontology engineering as proposed in this paper.

Brief history of agricultural systems modeling

Agricultural systems science generates knowledge that allows researchers to consider complex problems or take informed agricultural decisions. The rich history of this science exemplifies the diversity of systems and scales over which they operate and have been studied. Modeling, an essential tool in agricultural systems science, has been accomplished by scientists from a wide range of disciplines, who have contributed concepts and tools over more than six decades. As agricultural scientists now consider the “next generation” models, data, and knowledge products needed to meet the increasingly complex systems problems faced by society, it is important to take stock of this history and its lessons to ensure that we avoid re-invention and strive to consider all dimensions of associated challenges. To this end, we summarize here the history of agricultural systems modeling and identify lessons learned that can help guide the design and development of next generation of agricultural system tools and methods. A number of past events combined with overall technological progress in other fields have strongly contributed to the evolution of agricultural system modeling, including development of process-based bio-physical models of crops and livestock, statistical models based on historical observations, and economic optimization and simulation models at household and regional to global scales. Characteristics of agricultural systems models have varied widely depending on the systems involved, their scales, and the wide range of purposes that motivated their development and use by researchers in different disciplines. Recent trends in broader collaboration across institutions, across disciplines, and between the public and private sectors suggest that the stage is set for the major advances in agricultural systems science that are needed for the next generation of models, databases, knowledge products and decision support systems. The lessons from history should be considered to help avoid roadblocks and pitfalls as the community develops this next generation of agricultural systems models.

Toward a New Generation of Agricultural System Data, Models, and Knowledge Products: State of Agricultural Systems Science

We review the current state of agricultural systems science, focusing in particular on the capabilities and limitations of agricultural systems models. We discuss the state of models relative to five different Use Cases spanning field, farm, landscape, regional, and global spatial scales and engaging questions in past, current, and future time periods. Contributions from multiple disciplines have made major advances relevant to a wide range of agricultural system model applications at various spatial and temporal scales. Although current agricultural systems models have features that are needed for the Use Cases, we found that all of them have limitations and need to be improved. We identified common limitations across all Use Cases, namely 1) a scarcity of data for developing, evaluating, and applying agricultural system models and 2) inadequate knowledge systems that effectively communicate model results to society. We argue that these limitations are greater obstacles to progress than gaps in conceptual theory or available methods for using system models. New initiatives on open data show promise for addressing the data problem, but there also needs to be a cultural change among agricultural researchers to ensure that data for addressing the range of Use Cases are available for future model improvements and applications. We conclude that multiple platforms and multiple models are needed for model applications for different purposes. The Use Cases provide a useful framework for considering capabilities and limitations of existing models and data.

Ontology for Seamless Integration of Agricultural Data and Models

This paper presents a set of ontologies developed in order to facilitate the integration of a variety of combinatorial, simulation and optimization models related to agriculture. The developed ontologies have been exploited in the software lifecycle, by using them to specify data communication across the models, and with a relational database. The Seamless ontologies provide with definitions for crops and crop products, agricultural feasibility filters, agricultural management, and economic valuation of crop products, and agricultural and environmental policy, which are in principle the main types of data exchanged by the models. Issues related to translating data structures between model programming languages have been successfully tackled by employing annotations in the ontology.

Towards a new generation of agricultural system data, models and knowledge products: Information and communication technology

Agricultural modeling has long suffered from fragmentation in model implementation. Many models are developed, there is much redundancy, models are often poorly coupled, model component re-use is rare, and it is frequently difficult to apply models to generate real solutions for the agricultural sector. To improve this situation, we argue that an open, self-sustained, and committed community is required to co-develop agricultural models and associated data and tools as a common resource. Such a community can benefit from recent developments in information and communications technology (ICT). We examine how such developments can be leveraged to design and implement the next generation of data, models, and decision support tools for agricultural production systems. Our objective is to assess relevant technologies for their maturity, expected development, and potential to benefit the agricultural modeling community. The technologies considered encompass methods for collaborative development and for involving stakeholders and users in development in a transdisciplinary manner. Our qualitative evaluation suggests that as an overall research challenge, the interoperability of data sources, modular granular open models, reference data sets for applications and specific user requirements analysis methodologies need to be addressed to allow agricultural modeling to enter in the big data era. This will enable much higher analytical capacities and the integrated use of new data sources. Overall agricultural systems modeling needs to rapidly adopt and absorb state-of-the-art data and ICT technologies with a focus on the needs of beneficiaries and on facilitating those who develop applications of their models. This adoption requires the widespread uptake of a set of best practices as standard operating procedures.

Analysis of Big Data technologies for use in agro-environmental science

Recent developments like the movements of open access and open data and the unprecedented growth of data, which has come forward as Big Data, have shifted focus to methods to effectively handle such data for use in agro-environmental research. Big Data technologies, together with the increased use of cloud based and high performance computing, create new opportunities for data intensive science in the multi-disciplinary agro-environmental domain. A theoretical framework is presented to structure and analyse data-intensive cases and is applied to three case studies, together covering a broad range of technologies and aspects related to Big Data usage. The case studies indicate that most persistent issues in the area of data-intensive research evolve around capturing the huge heterogeneity of interdisciplinary data and around creating trust between data providers and data users. It is therefore recommended that efforts from the agro-environmental domain concentrate on the issues of variety and veracity. A theoretical framework is presented to frame and analyse Big Data use cases.Three case studies related to agro-environmental modelling, covering the range of Big Data characteristics are analysed.Most persistent issues in agro-environmental science concern variety and veracity.Approaches to deal with variety and veracity issues are presented.

Harmonization and translation of crop modeling data to ensure interoperability

The Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) seeks to improve the capability of ecophysiological and economic models to describe the potential impacts of climate change on agricultural systems. AgMIP protocols emphasize the use of multiple models; consequently, data harmonization is essential. This interoperability was achieved by establishing a data exchange mechanism with variables defined in accordance with international standards; implementing a flexibly structured data schema to store experimental data; and designing a method to fill gaps in model-required input data. Researchers and modelers are able to use these tools to run an ensemble of?models on a single, harmonized dataset. This allows them to compare models directly, leading ultimately to model improvements. An important outcome is the development of a platform that facilitates researcher collaboration from many organizations, across many countries. This would have been very difficult to achieve without the AgMIP data interoperability standards described in this paper. Heterogeneous data can be harmonized and translated to multiple model formats.The ICASA data standards provide an extensible data structure and ontology.JSON structures provide a flexible, efficient means of handling heterogeneous data.DOME functions enable a consistent means of providing missing or inadequate data.Data provenance is maintained from data sources through simulated model outputs.

A Generic Farming System Simulator

The aim of this chapter is to present a bio-economic modelling framework established to provide insight into the complex nature of agricultural systems and to assess the impacts of agricultural and environmental policies and technological innovations. This framework consists of a Farm System Simulator (FSSIM) using mathematical programming that can be linked to a cropping system model to estimate at field level the engineering production and environmental functions. FSSIM includes a module for agricultural management (FSSIM-AM) and a mathematical programming model (FSSIM-MP). FSSIM-AM aims to define current and alternative activities and to quantify their input output coefficients (both yields and environmental effects) using a cropping system model, such as APES (Agricultural Production and Externalities Simulator) and other sources (expert knowledge, surveys, etc.). FSSIM-MP seeks to describe the behaviour of the farmer given a set of biophysical, socio-economic and policy constraints and to predict its reactions under new technologies, policy and market changes. The communication between these different tools and models is based on explicit definitions of spatial scales and software for model integration.

Improving Access to Big Data in Agriculture and Forestry Using Semantic Technologies

To better understand and manage the interactions of agriculture and natural resources, for example under current increasing societal demands and climate changes, agro-environmental research must bring together an ever growing amount of data and information from multiple science domains. Data that is inherently large, multi-dimensional and heterogeneous, and requires computational intensive processing. Thus, agro-environmental researchers must deal with specific Big Data challenges in efficiently acquiring the data fit to their job while limiting the amount of computational, network and storage resources needed to practical levels. Automated procedures for collection, selection, annotation and indexing of data and metadata are indispensable in order to be able to effectively exploit the global network of available scientific information. This paper describes work performed in the EU FP7 Trees4Future and SemaGrow projects that contributes to development and evaluation of an infrastructure that allows efficient discovery and unified querying of agricultural and forestry resources using Linked Data and semantic technologies.