Linux Foundation adds code to AgStack Project to drive open source field boundary data initiative
The Linux Foundation announced an addition of a new code base hosted by AgStack Project, which will allow the global community access to field boundary data. The initiative will utilize computer science and artificial intelligence to create and manage international agricultural field boundary data. The foundation believes that this technology will transform agricultural practices, providing the means to follow food traceability, monitor carbon levels and analyze crop yields.
By providing access to global field boundaries data, communities can transform the digital agricultural journey. The stakeholders are confident that this kind of information will be useful for small farmers in their pursuit of modern-day farming as well as better food security through smarter technologies.
“We are delighted to host this groundbreaking research and to work with the University community to create machine learning models and approaches that can enable this powerful global dataset,” said Sumer Johal, executive director of the AgStack Project at the Linux Foundation.
The project is based on the research of Dr. Sherrie Wang, Dr. Francois Waldner, and Professor David Lobell from the Center on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford University. Organizations, including the NASA Harvest Consortium, financed the project.
Dr. Sherrie Wang explained that creating field boundary data required using deep learning and satellite imagery. This helped them to delineate crop fields at a planetary scale and scale this over a large region.
“Creating and maintaining a global, inclusive, neutral and company-agnostic dataset has been challenging for a host of reasons,” said Dr. Wang. “The next steps are to scale the algorithm, release the dataset as a public good, and maintain and improve it over time.”
The source code of this initiative will be available for public use and contribution and the AgStack community within the Linux Foundation will govern it.
“This code contribution will launch an ecosystem-wide invitation to stakeholders in the private and public sectors to ensure the availability of these data as a neutral, trusted, and secure public good. Together we can help remove the blockages around working with field boundary data in a community-driven way,” added Johal.
This past November, the Linux Foundation Europe launched an open-source project to create a production-grade Telco Cloud Stack called Project Sylva. Five European telecom companies and two vendors collaborated to reduce the fragmentation of the cloud infrastructure layer for telco and edge services.
Digital Transformation Week North America 2023
Article Topics
AgStack Project | edge computing | Linux Foundation | open source | sensor | Smart Ag
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