CeRDI Newsletter Summer 2021

In this issue:

Message from the Director
Data Federations in Agriculture
Visualising Australia’s Soils
Decision Wizard
Livestock hazard map
LitterWatch
PhD submission
CeRDI news snippets
CeRDI postgraduate news
About CeRDI
Contact CeRDI

Message from the Director


Associate Professor Helen Thompson

Data federation for public access is gaining interest and momentum across academia, government and industry as the possibility and potential for data sharing and data access are realised. Robust discussions are occurring about the foundational principles under which data federation can be established and operationalised as part of ‘business as usual’ practice.

The Visualising Australasia’s Soils (VAS) project provides a test case for developing guidelines and protocols around data sharing for soils research. As phase one of this project draws to a close, the milestones for data sharing have become essential for guiding and enabling future practice. Associated documentation has become an important and enduring output – one of many – associated with the VAS project.

CeRDI has commissioned a new documentary video to conceptualise and highlight the scope and value of data federation. VAS is featured in the short film to support discussion associated with data federation. I invite you to watch this short film, and to view the other films that have been commissioned by CeRDI, about concepts associated with data federation and data democracy: https://www.cerdi.edu.au/videos#featured

Data Federations in Agriculture


CeRDI’s Associate Professor Peter Dahlhaus

CeRDI recently launched a new documentary video: Data Federations in Agriculture . This is the latest in a series of short films commissioned by CeRDI, exploring big data and data federation. This documentary examines the application of technology for federating research data through the lens of agriculture, an industry of focus for data technology advances by CeRDI.

Data Federations in Agriculture outlines the opportunities available to Australia’s agriculture industry by sharing research data and unlocking new production opportunities through data discoveries. CeRDI’s Associate Professor Peter Dahlhaus, together with Mr Paul Box, Social Architect at CSIRO Land and Water are featured in the documentary, which was directed and produced by Wind & Sky Productions. Peter provides the core commentary, outlining the concept behind data federation and the immense opportunities and challenges for the industry in sharing data. Visualising Austrasia’s Soils (VAS), provides the backdrop and project exemplar for exploring and discussing the concept of data federation within the film.

Visualising Australia’s Soils


Visualising Australasia’s Soils (VAS) data portal with spatial mapping

CeRDI, under the leadership of Associate Professor Peter Dahlhaus, is finalising the key milestones associated with Visualising Australasia’s Soils (VAS) Stage 1. The project, which involved the development of a cloud based research data federation, commenced in late 2018 following the awarding of funding from the Co-operative Research Centre for High Performance Soils (Soil CRC). Project investment of $1.1M was awarded.

Assoc Prof Peter Dahlhaus and the CeRDI team have conducted extensive foundational work with the 16 industry partners around data governance, to both understand, and demonstrate, the value of data sharing and data access and usage. Subsequently, stakeholder insights have been used to inform the development of the VAS web portal, which provides access to shared public and private soils research data. Developed by the technical team at CeRDI, the portal comprises broad functionality and contains a sophisticated spatial mapping feature.


	Visualising Australasia's Soils: Social Engagement & Collaboration Learnings

A significant output of the VAS project has been a web portal in which custodians retain data ownership and control of how and what data is shared; they are active participants in contributing data to the portal. The development of a governance and stewardship model for data custodians, which build upon earlier work linked to the Agricultural Research Federation (AgReFed ), establishes the guidelines under which data can be shared and accessed.

The deliverables for this project highlight the range and breadth of work accomplished with many important milestones having been successfully achieved. As the first phase of the project moves to completion, substantial outputs for the project have been reported and documented, including:

Data Governance and Stewardship Guidelines. These have been reported as a discussion paper and are available to VAS project members of the project and the Soil CRC website.
VAS data portal with spatial mapping: data.soilcrc.com.au
The completion of a social engagement report. Prepared by Dr Amie Sexton, the document is publicly available on the Soil CRC website: soilcrc.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/VAS-Social-Engagement-Report-2020_FINAL.pdf
A systems architecture report for VAS, containing the technology vocabularies.
A soils data inventory and summary. This comprises methods and scripts and assessment of VAS within the context of the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) principles for data.
Data Federations in Agriculture , a short documentary film about interoperable data federation using VAS as a case study.
Impact research examining the impact and perceptions of the VAS and associated technology on users (ongoing; in progress).

A final report on the project will be completed in late March 2021. After which time, preparations will be made for sharing the insights from the project to industry and academic audiences with journal manuscripts currently in planning and under progression.

An application for funding to expand VAS into a second phase, has been submitted to the Soil CRC. Stage 2 will enable the potential for VAS and data sharing to be fully realised. Funding outcomes to extend the project are expected soon.

For further information about the VAS project, visit:
Soil CRC Project: Visualising Australasia's Soils explainer - YouTube

Decision Wizard


Food Agility Cooperative Research Centre

The Decision Wizard is a new Food Agility Cooperative Research Centre project that will culminate in the development of a pilot web application to guide farmers to make informed decisions about their farm business operations.

The project is a collaborative partnership between CeRDI, Nicon Rural, Marcus Oldham College and Southern Farming Systems and is the first project associated with Food Agility’s Better Data for Better Decisions research constellation program which is being led by Federation University.

Over the next six months, the Decision Wizard project will become the vehicle that will inform, develop, and launch a desktop-based tool to support farmers’ decision making. The decision-making component of the tool will initially comprise a set of five real-life decision scenarios, applicable to farmers in Victoria.

Livestock hazard map


The animal welfare hazards map portal, Pheobus

CeRDI’s Chris Bahlo recently launched the animal welfare hazards map portal, Pheobus . This online spatial mapping portal was conceptualised and informed during Chris’s PhD and is based on a case study which was designed to explore the potential for public datasets to inform decision support for livestock welfare in Australia. The current portal is a demonstration version focused on cattle.

Welfare elements for the case study were extracted from Australian animal welfare standards. These were used to inform the dataset search of several public data catalogues, which was conducted using software scripts developed during the PhD project. The availability of suitable public data enabled the development of a geospatial animal welfare portal that identifies environmental hazards to livestock across Australia.

LitterWatch


The LitterWatch mapping portal is a publicly accessible system

LitterWater Victoria , an initiative of the Victorian Government’s Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning in collaboration with CeRDI, was recently featured in Map it Out , a newsletter outlining spatial news from across the Victorian public sector.

The LitterWatch portal is a publicly accessible system to manage and view litter monitoring datasets contributed by community group and agencies. The mapping page provides simple analytical tools to compare litter data from different locations and time periods, based on repeat surveys conducted by groups and agencies in different parts of Port Phillip. The mapping portal is intended to guide reporting, planning, policy making and engagement in relation to litter pollution and control.

PhD submission

Congratulations to Chris Bahlo on the submission of her thesis for examination. Chris’ thesis is titled Open data and interoperability standards: Opportunities for animal welfare in extensive livestock systems. Principal Supervisor for this PhD was Associate Professor Peter Dahlhaus with Associate Professor Helen Thompson as associate supervisor.

Continue reading...

An overview of Chris’s research is as follows:

Chris Bahlo

Extensive livestock farming constitutes a sizeable portion of agriculture and contributes to feeding a growing human population. The livestock industry is adopting technologies under the banner of Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) to help meet higher production and efficiency targets as well as help to manage the multiple challenges impacting the industry, such as climate change, environmental concerns, globalisation of markets, increasing rules of governance and societal scrutiny especially in relation to animal welfare. PLF is particularly dependent on the acquisition and management of data and metadata and on the interoperability standards that allow data discovery and federation. A review of interoperability standards and PLF adoption in extensive livestock farming systems identified a lack of domain specific standards and raised questions related to the amount and quality of public data which has potential to inform livestock farming. A systematic review of public datasets, which included an assessment based on the FAIR principles (data must be findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) was developed. Custom software scripts were used to conduct a dataset search to determine the quantity and quality of domain specific datasets yielded 419 unique datasets directly related to extensive livestock farming. A FAIR assessment of these datasets using a set of general metrics showed a moderate level of compliance and suggest that domain specific FAIR metrics may need to be developed. A case study was designed to explore the potential of public datasets in informing decision support in relation to livestock welfare, using the scripts previously developed. Welfare elements were extracted from Australian welfare standards to guide a dataset search. It was found that with few exceptions, these elements could be supported with public data. The development of a geospatial animal welfare portal including these datasets explored and confirmed the potential for using public data to enhance livestock welfare.

Chris’ thesis is highly relevant in the CeRDI context in which the approach developed and applied in the systemic review of public datasets having already been re-applied in the context of Visualising Australasia’s Soils. Chris has had one journal paper published from her PhD research and is currently preparing to publish the final study outcomes.

CeRDI news snippets

Recent publications:

Muir, A., Heyes, S., Morgan, J., Hoebee, S., Enright, N., Whelan, R., Geschke, A., Bennett, A., Walsh, S., Weatherly, W., & Milne, R. (2021). Conservation challenges for Victorian Banksias: Workshop May 2020. Ecological Management & Restoration. doi.org/10.1111/emr.12448

Staff farewells
In December, Dr Angela Murphy retired from CeRDI having made a significant research contribution to the Centre since 2012, and the University more broadly.

Dr Judi Walters has stepped down from CeRDI work and her role as a research coordinator with the Online Farm Trials team.

Dan Ferguson has left CeRDI to pursue a new role in the financial technology area.

We extend our thanks to Angela, Judi and Dan and wish them all the very best in the future.

CeRDI postgraduate news

Recent Publications:

Attanayake, R. R., Weller, S. L., & Singarayer, F. K. (2020) Seed germination response of a potential rangeland weed Psilocaulon granulicaule to selected environmental conditions. Australian Journal of Botany, 68, 363-368. www.publish.csiro.au/bt/BT20060

Public Repository of source codes:
Some of the software scripts for querying data catalogues and running the FAIR assessments have been published in association with Chris Bahlo’s PhD research. The public repository containing the source code for the scripts is available at doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4057868

About CeRDI

The Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation (CeRDI) is a research centre at Federation University Australia focused on:

the application of information and communications technology (ICT) and the development of innovative, world class knowledge management systems;
significantly advancing the digital literacy and knowledge management capabilities of partner organisations;
fostering partnerships for the development and implementation of eResearch with industry, government and academia; and
measuring the impact of eResearch and digital innovation through longitudinal research.

Contact CeRDI

For further details about CeRDI’s diverse portfolio of research please visit our website: www.cerdi.edu.au, or contact Director, Associate Professor Helen Thompson: h.thompson@federation.edu.au

Mailing Address

Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation
Federation University Australia
PO Box 691
Ballarat Vic 3353

Office Location

Suite 15, Greenhill Enterprise Centre
Ballarat Technology Park
University Drive
Mount Helen Vic 3350

Phone: +61 3 5327 9314
Email: support@cerdi.edu.au

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