Integration and Sharing of Spatial Data for Agricultural Development.

Spatially-referenced data and location-specific analyses play increasingly important roles in all aspects of agricultural development – from policy analysis and strategic planning through to technology evaluation and market logistics. From a needs perspective, this evolution reflects the growing recognition that improving the targeting and effectiveness of agricultural development demands greater insights into the location-specific context of agriculture. From a supply perspective, there has been an explosion in the accessibility and power of the tools of “neogeography” – hand-held GPS devices, low-cost satellite navigation systems, and web-based, user-friendly high resolution maps and satellite imagery, such as Google Earth. These trends present significant opportunities and challenges to both the providers and consumers of spatial data and knowledge products. Ironically, the spatial data revolution has had little practical impact on the reliability of key agricultural data layers; climate, soil properties, agricultural land use, and crop performance, particularly in developing countries. This presentation will describe in detail some key challenges and opportunities in spatial data harmonization, management, and application to better serve agricultural development and highlight examples from groundwater monitoring, pest & disease prediction, agricultural production statistics, input use profitability mapping, and crowd-sourcing road network data.