As part of the next meeting of the Research Data Alliance (RDA) Interest Group on Agricultural Data (IGAD) that will take place on September 21st-22nd in Paris, the BigDataEurope action is organising a workshop dedicated to “Big data for food, agriculture and forestry: opportunities and challenges”.

The IGAD meeting will be hosted by the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), as a co-located event of the Research Data Alliance (RDA) 6th Plenary. The big data workshop of the IGAD meeting is expected to investigate the characteristics of data sources & repositories that our community has, in order to identify cases that offer a high degree of variety, velocity and volume and therefore good candidates for the application of big data technologies. In addition, an introduction to such technologies is going to be given and a discussion on their relevance and applicability for the wider range of topics related to food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry.

The workshop will be interactive, involving all participants and getting their views and perspectives. It will be facilitated by Nikos Manouselis (Agro-Know), Valeria Pesce (FAO/GFAR), Timea Turdean (Semantic Web Company), and Martin Kaltenböck (Semantic Web Company).  The expected outcomes are a first mapping of stakeholders, initiatives, and services engaging big data sources, repositories and applications; and a call to action for both technology providers (for customised solutions and support) and funding agencies/donors (for allocating enough resources).

Invited lightning speeches and position statements from a handful of carefully selected experts will give a context for the discussions. Confirmed speakers include:

• Pascal Neveu (INRA) “Introduction to INRA’s big data perspective and implementation challenges”
• Tim Verhaart (Wageningen UR, LEI) “Big data opportunities for marketing of horticultural products”
• Elizabeth Arnaud (Bioversity) “Big data analytics in the CGIAR research portfolio and the Bioversity perspective”
• Valeria Pesce (FAO/GFAR) “A global linked and open data infrastructure for agricultural development”
• Rob Lokers (Wageningen UR, Alterra) “Big data challenges and solutions in agricultural and environmental research”
• Sören Auer (Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft) “Intro to current state-of-art in big data technologies” 
  
  We will also have a position statement by Stefano Bertolo (Scientific Project Officer, European Commission DG CONNECT/G3) on the big data research agenda and portfolio of the EC. 
   
  Event Registration: Please send an e-mail expressing your interest to attend to the IGAD meeting organiser Imma Subirats (FAO, Imma.Subirats@fao.org), cc-ing Nikos Manouselis (nikosm@agroknow.gr). The big data workshop will take place at the premises of AEF (137 rue de l’université, Paris).