The AgriHub INSPIRE Hackathon is the 20th INSPIRE Hackathon organized by Plan4All, this year within the AgriHub CZ&SK project funded by the SmartAgriHubs H2020 project. It is based on the traditional INSPIRE Hackathon model, which means that it is not a single event, but a process aimed at effectively using the results of previous hackathons focused on the development of new innovations. In this hackathon, we will therefore not only build on the Agrihub INSPIRE Hackathon 2021, which defined a total of 8 challenges aimed at supporting digital innovation centres in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, but we will also focus, for example, on the further development of Open Land Use for Africa or an application enabling the creation of application maps. 

For participants, the main benefit of the INSPIRE hackathon is the opportunity to join and become a member of the international knowledge community. Participants of the INSPIRE Hackathon will receive a diploma documenting and confirming their active participation. The top three teams, selected by a jury based on a set of predefined criteria, are offered the opportunity to contribute to peer-reviewed articles and citable publications documenting the outputs and results of the events. It is hoped that this lasting legacy will project their career growth paths.

During the months of April and May, when the hackathon will take place, we offer a unique opportunity to experience our new technologies and infrastructure, which will be open to all developers. At the same time, the technologies will be available to apply and integrate into individual challenges at your own discretion and experience. The INSPIRE Hackathon opens up opportunities to collaborate in the development of different solutions with participants from all over the world, while offering everyone the chance to enrich their own experience. 

PARTICIPATION & REGISTRATION

For each INSPIRE hackathon, several challenges are defined in advance. Participants of the hackathon seek solutions to these challenges under the guidance of one or more mentors. The role of the mentors is to coordinate the teamwork within the challenge, ensure communication within the team and ensure that the team’s results are presented at the final virtual event that concludes the hackathon.  All results will then be published and integrated on www.agrihub.cz and www.agrihub.sk.

A total of 16 published challenges can be participated in succession. You can choose one, several or all of them. It’s up to you! 

The registration for challenges is open! Register for the hackathon HERE.

This hackathon has two virtual phases. In the first phase of the INSPIRE Hackathon, we are hacking and brainstorming innovative ideas under the guidance of an experienced mentor. Communication within each team will be provided by virtual meetings, webinars and other means of communication such as Google Drive or Whatsapp. The mentor of each challenge will be responsible for communicating with the team members who join the challenge.

The second virtual phase, which is a virtual workshop, concludes the hackathon. In this workshop you will meet the members of the international jury and the top 5 hackathon results. The date is still to be determined. All teams participating in the hackathon will be invited to make a 10-minute video presenting the results of the challenge. These videos will not only be viewed by the jury, but will also be published online and will facilitate the general public to select the 3 winning solutions. 

TIMELINE

• Opening of registration – 28 March 2022 
• Virtual Hackathon – 1 April 2022 – 20 May 2022
• Preparation of video presentations of results and final reports – by 20 May 2022
• Final workshop and results announcement – TBD

LIST OF CHALLENGES

1. Further development and testing of the application for creating application maps – this is the development of SmartAgriculture applications in agriculture and their massive testing directly by farmers
2. Analytical tools for WhiteBoard – MapWhiteBoard is a completely new solution for map work, a kind of Google document for maps that allows collaborative work
3. Food transport monitoring – this is about promoting local food and implementing quality monitoring during transport
4. Climate analysis in the field – analysis of local sensor data in vegetation, it’s about understanding local climatic influences
5. Analysis and visualization of sensor measurements – integration of AI technology and new interactive data visualization methods
6. IoT and EO data integration – improving agricultural production prediction. This is a development of a solution that was selected last year in the WSIS competition as one of 90 global innovative solutions
7. OLU4Africa – leveraging existing data for Africa and creating a single Land Use and Land Cover map for the whole Africa
8. How to use and improve OLU 2.0 – OLU 2.0 is a new data model that not only incorporates Land Cover and Land Use, but allows for easy integration of local and regional data to create unique databases for landscape and regional process modelling. It can be used for modelling environmental processes, in agriculture but also for economic models
9. A new social space for geographic information sharing and education – this is a new kind of portal primarily for geographic data that allows easy participation of citizens, students and others and supports easy content creation. In doing so, it builds on the principles of INSPIRE and GEO.
10. Integrating QFild with the Innovation Hub – developing field data collection tools based on existing Open Source Software
11. Automating the calculation of management zones based on yield potential – this is a method that will make it easier to prepare basemaps for farmers based on analysis of historical imagery
12. Building a social space for Africa – similar to Experiment 9 with a focus on Africa
13. Agro Environmental Services – Uptake of Copernicus and INSPIRE to support agri – food and environmental opportunities
14. Irrigation management – Irrigation management will provide recommendation for integration of existing climatic, IoT and Copernicus data.
15. Drones utilization for crop protection – Utilisation of drones for crop monitoring and application of pesticides/herbicides
16. Analysis, processing and standardisation of data from agriculture machinery for easier utilization by farmers – Machinery monitoring challenge will provide the analysis, processing and standardization of data from the agricultural machinery and thus its easier utilization by farmers.

The Government of Ireland is proud to host the 13th OECD Rural Development Conference 2022 on the theme of Building Sustainable, Resilient and Thriving Rural Places. As OECD Member States contend with multiple policy challenges, including emerging from COVID-19, Ireland welcomes the in-person participation of Ministers, senior policy makers and civil society for a wide ranging discussion on the future of rural places in September 2022.

IAMO FORUM 2022

Enhancing resilience in a post-pandemic era: challenges and opportunities for rural development

IAMO Forum 2022 | 22 – 24 June 2022 | Halle (Saale)

The Corona pandemic has affected rural areas in various ways all over the world. Its impacts stretched to agricultural trade, international mobility, livelihoods in rural areas and many other development aspects. Although agricultural production and food consumption remained on a rather stable path from a macroeconomic point of view, many effects at the level of rural households are still unknown and especially poorer countries may be faced with setbacks in their (rural) development efforts. How, for instance, will the drop in aggregate remittance flows spark off as a driver of poverty at the individual and community level? Are there long-lasting effects of personal illness on agricultural production or government’s containment measures at food supply chains to be expected? Which farms and rural areas are more resilient than others? Recent conceptualisations of resilience stress the adaptability of farms and households which will determine their resistance to future shocks. Often attention from policy and research dissipates quickly after acute events passed. However, when looking at the effects of this pandemic we should consider what are the long-term lessons from earlier crises such as the 2008 financial crisis, e.g., for remittance dependent households? Did at least some of them adapt and developed new livelihood strategies? How did agricultural trade flows adjust to shocks and do food import dependent countries with a more diversified trade structure enjoy a better food and nutrition security?

The IAMO Forum 2022 invites contributions shedding light on these or related questions which will help extending our knowledge of the complex nexus between crises, resilience and agricultural and rural development. Perspectives from different social sciences, including agricultural and development economics, political sciences, sociology, anthropology and history, are welcome. In particular, we encourage submissions of papers and proposals for organized sessions addressing the following issues with a regional focus on Europe, Central Asia and China:

• Effects of the pandemic and earlier crises on agricultural and rural development as well as food and nutrition security
• Evaluation of public containment and stimulating policies from an agricultural and rural development perspective
• Crises and institutional change
• Risk mitigation strategies of rural households
• Gender-differentiated effects of crises
• Crisis perceptions and responses from a behavioural economics point of view
• Resilient livelihood strategies: the role of remittances, non-farm diversification and new forms of cooperation
• Evaluation methods to assess the effects of the pandemic across different rural development indicators

IAMO Forum 2022 will take place in Halle (Saale). The hygiene concept will be in line with official requirements which implies that access might be restricted to vaccinated or recovered participants. Additionally, negative tests might be required. A final confirmation of the format and possible access requirements will be communicated together with the notification of acceptance. In case of travel restrictions to Germany, virtual presentation will be possible. The conference language will be English.

The conference will be organised by the Department Agricultural Policy on behalf of IAMO and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), USA.

Registration will open soon!

The Rural Pact conference will bring together EU, national, and regional politicians along with local authorities, social and economic stakeholders in a participatory event that reflects the rural vision’s ambition and bottom-up character.

It will engage participants in designing the governance of the Rural Pact and gather commitments for the achievement of the long-term vision for the EU’s rural areas. To do so, the conference will:

1. Engage all levels of governance and rural stakeholders in endorsing the goals of the vision and debating on how to reach them. It will put the spotlight on the key role rural areas can play in Europe’s future. The presence of high-level political and grassroots representatives will commit all levels of governance to taking the interests of rural areas into account. Frontrunners will present inspirational examples showing how they are already working towards the vision goals.
2. Involve participants in implementing the vision through breakout sessions where participants will indicate how they can contribute to achieving the goals of the vision. These sessions will identify common interests and areas on which the local, regional and national level could act individually and in cooperation with others. Since the European Commission has already presented and committed itself to an Action Plan, the actions participants propose will be collected and presented during the conference’s closing session and will be the basis for the Rural Pact’s work programme.
3. Increase the visibility of rural areas by involving high-level political guests from the European institutions and Member States in implementing the first comprehensive EU-wide rural strategy. This will be key to strengthen the positive potential of rural areas and strategic role for the future of Europe, and to generate buy-in from all levels of governance, to increase the impact of policy in rural areas.

Plenary and breakout sessions will alternate to ensure maximum interaction at this event.

EU Green Week is an annual opportunity to debate European environmental policy with policymakers, leading environmentalists and stakeholders from Europe and beyond. This year’s edition focuses on the European Green Deal – the EU’s sustainable and transformative growth strategy for a resource-efficient and climate-neutral Europe by 2050.

EU Green Week 2022 will take place from 30 May to 5 June 2022.  The main hybrid event on 31 May puts three important aspects of the transformation in the spotlight – circular economy, zero pollution, and biodiversity. Throughout the week, partner events will be taking place across Europe and beyond.

The registration is now open. If you wish to attend the EU Green Week 2022 conference, please complete the registration form available here