Charles Sturt University (CSU) and the Australasian Space Innovation Institute (ASII) have announced a partnership aimed at developing shared digital infrastructure intended to make agricultural data, research models, satellite observations and artificial intelligence easier to connect, access and reuse.
The collaboration links CSU’s Australian Agricultural Data Exchange (AADX) with ASII’s National Digital Twin for Agriculture Program. The organisations say the work is focused on developing underlying infrastructure that can support multiple digital twins, research tools and decision-support services, rather than creating a single digital twin of Australian agriculture.
According to the media release, the infrastructure is designed to help researchers, agricultural technology companies, Research and Development Corporations, industry and government develop new applications without recreating core data and modelling components. AADX is expected to provide access to datasets and data services, including information on soils, water, weather and climate.
The announcement also points to potential use cases such as placing trial results in different environmental contexts, running virtual experiments before physical trials, and testing how models perform across locations, seasons and future climate conditions.
The partnership’s first initiative is a $465,000 project involving Meat & Livestock Australia, CSU and ASII. The project is intended to test and validate the platform through two case studies.
The first case study will focus on cattle and pasture management at CSU’s Wagga Wagga campus, combining virtual fencing and automated livestock weight data with weather information and satellite imagery to identify paddocks for cattle movement and pasture management.
The second case study will focus on managing mimosa weed in the Northern Territory, using satellite imagery and historical farm data to predict where the invasive weed is most likely to spread and where control measures can be targeted.
The project is expected to be delivered by researchers from CSU’s Artificial Intelligence and Cyber Futures Centre and specialists from ASII. The organisations said other use cases under consideration include water availability, virtual fencing and farm-scale natural capital assessments.
In the release, CSU Vice-Chancellor Professor Renée Leon said: “Every dollar invested in Australian agricultural research and development returns $8 in the next decade.”
ASII Chief Executive Officer Professor Andy Koronios said: “We are not setting out to build a single digital twin of Australian agriculture. Our ambition is to establish the digital infrastructure that allows researchers, industry and government to connect and reuse data, models and analytical tools to address real-world challenges.”
The release cites a claim that about $3 billion is invested annually in Australian agriculture research and development, but less than five per cent of potentially useful data is analysed to generate new information. The partnership positions the proposed infrastructure as a way to improve the re-use and interoperability of data across the sector.
