THE PILOT
Pilot 7 will take place in the areas of Pilots 1, 2, and 3 in Europe and Pilot 2 in China. These areas were selected to implement and validate the methodology of the Land Suitability Analysis (LSA) tool developed in the project along with the implementation of the spatial Decision Support System (DSS). Considering the changing climate conditions, it is essential to adopt new Smart Farming technologies, to optimize the use of water, fertilizers, and energy for tillage, and identify suitable crop allocation patterns. To address the required holistic approach the DS tool to be developed under this project combines the available relevant information (crop productivity, soil erosion, water availability, etc.) and incorporates socioeconomic indicators to support decision making at a regional and farm level. The tool’s methodology will adopt new trends related to socio‐economic conditions and provide scenarios for adapting agricultural management to environmental restrictions, and the changing climatic conditions.
THE LEADER
The Aristotle University of Thessaloniki is the largest university in Greece with 86,000 undergraduate and 9,000 postgraduate students. Participating labs are AUTH-AEL (Agricultural Engineering Lab), is active in field robotics, RFID and zigbee for robot localization and food traceability applications, robot task and motion planning, intelligent tracking and coordination for robotic systems. Other areas of research include intelligent control, intelligent techniques development (machine learning, neural networks, and self-organizing systems), data fusion and intelligent sensors. AUTH-RSGIS (Lab of Remote Sensing and GIS) is a leading research and education Laboratory on Earth observation (EO) and geo-informatics for agronomic applications, including the broader sphere of agricultural activities and their impacts on the environment. AUTH-ASE (The Laboratory of Agricultural Structures & Equipment) conducts basic and applied research in the fields of energy systems and technology in agricultural structures, manure management, methane and bio hydrogen production from different feedstock with a long record of research activities, both at national and international level. Research work on methane and biohydrogen production focuses on process monitoring and optimization as well as on control and design of anaerobic reactors.
