Open source geoprocessing tools and meteorological satellite data for crop risk zones monitoring in Sub-Saharan Africa
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Databases, Emerging Technologies, Scientific Computing and Simulation, Spatial and Geographic Information Systems, World Wide Web and Web Science
- Keywords
- crop model, risk zones, PL/pgSQL, Web Services, satellite imagery, food security, open data, Sub-Saharan Africa
- Copyright
- © 2016 De Filippis et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2016. Open source geoprocessing tools and meteorological satellite data for crop risk zones monitoring in Sub-Saharan Africa. PeerJ Preprints 4:e2265v2 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2265v2
Abstract
In Sub-Saharan Africa analysis tools and models based on meteorological satellites data have been developed within different national and international cooperation initiatives, with the aim of allowing a better monitoring of the cropping season. In most cases, the software was a stand-alone application and the upgrading, in terms of analysis functions, database and hardware maintenance, was difficult for the National Meteorological Services (NMSs) in charge of agro-hydro-meteorological monitoring. The web-based solution proposed in this work intends to improve and ensure the sustainability of applications to support national Early Warning Systems (EWSs) for food security. The Crop Risk Zones (CRZ) model for Niger and Mali, integrated in a web-based open source framework, has been implemented using PL/pgSQL & PostGIS functions to process different meteorological data sets: a) the rainfall precipitation forecast images from Global Forecast System (GFS) b) the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) Rainfall Estimation (RFE) for Africa c) Multi-Sensor Precipitation Estimate (MPE) images from EUMETSAT Earth Observation Portal d) the MOD16 Global Terrestrial Evapotranspiration Data Set. Restful Web Services upload raster images into the PostgreSQL/PostGIS database. PL/pgSQL functions are used to run the CRZ model to identify installation and phenological phases of the main crops in the Region and to create crop risk zones images. This model is focused on the early identification of risks and the production of information for food security within the time prescribed for decision-making. The challenge and the objective of this work is to set up an open access monitoring system, based on meteorological open data providers, targeting NMSs and any other local decision makers for drought risk reduction and resilience improvement.
Author Comment
This second version has been revised taking in mind the reviewer’ comments. The following changes have been done:
- Revision of manuscript by English mother tongue;
- Integration of the diagram of processes with PostGIS functions utilized;
- Rewording of sentences that cited the references on model validation (including weather stations data) of previous desktop version of CRZ model;
- Integration of the example of operational use of model outputs in the last severe food crisis in Niger;
- Specified the spatial resolution of input data, advantages and challenges.
Up to now we haven’t feedback on the use of the 4Crop web system because the transfer and training are in progress and the whole crop season evaluation will start at the end of September of the current year.
Moreover, in our vision, the great advantage in using PostGIS and PL/pgSQL is to dispose of a unique environment for managing raster data instead of the use of external GIS raster software for preprocessing satellite images for the model runs.
However, as we added new content and references, the word limit set by OGRS is exceeded, being more than 1500 words.
This version of the paper was formatted according to the guidelines provided by OGRS committee.