The CIARD RING for building integrated information systems

Ajit MaruGFAR Secretariat

Rome

Outline

Increasingly Complex Information Needs for ARD

Change in Existing ARD Information Management Models

CIARD.RING and its role as a global support tool for building integrated information systems

Increasingly Complex Information Needs for ARD

Agriculture is increasingly becoming more knowledge Intensive Agriculture now with complex value addition chains

in globally competitive markets New Challenges

Ensuring Food Quality and Safety More Efficient Use of Natural Resources Reducing environmental degeneration and

enabling recovery from environmental damage Adapting to and mitigating effects of Climate

Change Managing Agricultural Biodiversity

Consumer

FertilizerSeller

Farmer

LocalTransporter

Storage

Packaging

BulkTransporter

Retail Processing

Retail Marketing

Retail Packaging

SeedSupplier

PesticideSupply

Market

Processing

Agricultural Innovation Systemand Possible New Information Flows

Researcher

Farmers

Extension Support

NARO

ResearchManager

Policy Makers Stakeholders

Change in Existing ARD Information Management Models

Scientist/Researcher Extension Agent Farmer

Scientist/Researcher Extension Agent Farmer

Complex Information Networks

Change in Existing ARD Information Management Models

Individual Farmers

Market Intermediaries

Farmer Organizations

Extension Agents

Government

Non-Government Organizations

Consumers and ConsumerOrganizations

Researchers

Input ProvidersIndividual Farmers

Market Intermediaries

Farmer Organizations

Extension Agents

Government

Non-Government Organizations

Consumers and ConsumerOrganizations

Researchers

Input ProvidersPROSUMERS

Change in Existing ARD Information Management Models

•MULTIPLE PLATFORMS

•MULTIPLE CHANNELS FOR INFORMATION

•COMPLEX, MULTIPLE FLOWS OF INFORMATION

•MIXED MEDIA

MODERN ICTS HAVE BROUGHT:

Change in Existing ARD Information Management Models

•SMS•MMS•BLOGS•TWITS•FAQs, Q&A Services •SOCIAL MEDIA (FACEBOOK, YOUTUBE, FLICKR)•PHOTOGRAPHS, AUDIO and VIDEO

MODERN ICTS HAVE BROUGHT:

For Communication:

Beyond the printed word

Change in Existing ARD Information Management Models

GENERATE – MANAGE - USE

(RE)GENERATE – ADD VALUE – (RE)USE

Change in Information Management Models

Internet and World Wide Web

Web 1.0 – HTML and Hypertext Web 2.0 – Interactive, Dynamic Web

pages Web 3.0 – “Semantic” Web Web 4.0 – “Prosumer” Web through

Mixed Media

The CIARD RING

“a Routemap to Information Nodes and Gateways (RING)that share information related to agricultural research and innovation for development (ARD)”

A CIARD Initiative led by GFAR

ARD information now

Agriculture-related information on the Internet is limited, widely scattered and not organized for easy access

Complex information needs for agricultural research, innovation and development cannot be met

Availability is just not enough!

HTML HTMLHTML

Users

HTMLHTMLHTML

We need to know if a certain technology has been used in a specific country and in a dry land area for a specific crop and if there are related projects completed or ongoing, who is funding them and where we can find the project outputs?

TECABest practices

Country profiles CARIS WISARD AGRIS

HTML

Country NARS

HTML

ICARDA

HTML

AiDA

HTML

Crop database

HTML

OPACs

Users have to locate and search several sources that provide partial answers to complex questions

CIARD RING

What information is available and Where?

How can we access and make effective use?

Solution: value added services

Value added information services that enable to

search, collate and integrate information from various sources

acting as gateways to information sources

OPAC

Change in Existing ARD Information Management Models

(RE)GENERATE – ADD VALUE – (RE)USE

CIARD.RING

Contributing through CIARD

to add value to value additionbeing done by information systemsservices for their users

Solution: value added services

CARIS / WISARD

Users

We need to know if a certain technology has been used in a specific country and in a dry land area for a specific crop and if there are related projects currently ongoing and where we can find the project outputs?

TECABest practicesCountry

profiles

AGRIS

Country NARS

ICARDA

AiDA

Crop database

Geo

-on

tolo

gy

Crop ontology

Organizations Directory

Agrovocgateway gateway

gateway

OA

gateway OPAC

Maize

What is missing?

Value added services cannot be built without awareness of what others have done:

• which sources are available?

• how to tap into them?

• how to exploit their semantics?

The RING: supporting value added services

The CIARD RING provides the missing route map to the existing services

an orientating service an infrastructure for

interoperability of agricultural research information services

Services in the RING: examples Services that provide RSS feeds

Services that provide XML exports of information based on agreed metadata sets

Services that share their documents participating in the new AGRIS or in the Open Archive Initiative

Services that offer web services for accessing and re-using their information

etc...

Services in the RING

The CIARD RING covers both information services and information sources

The definition of "service" includes any form of providing information from one server instance (website, mail server, web services, XML archive...) to many clients (browsers, email clients, news readers, harvesters...)

The THAI CIARD RING

Have used services accessed automatically from CIARD.RING to help extension workers and Citrus farmers plan their operations in Citrus production in Thai language through documents available through services exposed by CIARD.RING

Outputs are available digitally

OTHER NATIONAL CIARD RINGS

China – CAAS India - ICAR

The CIARD RING serviceThe CIARD RING is a registry of existing ARD information services

the featured services are categorized and interlinked according to criteria based on: standards used, vocabulary used, technology used, protocols used, level of interoperability etc.

detailed instructions on how to interoperate the featured services are provided

Development

Innovation

Learningin

CommunitiesThrough

ContinuousConversation

Increase in Social Capital

A Generic Framework of ICT use for Agricultural Innovation

InformationPlatform

InformationOrganization

Information “Bus” /Pathways

KnowledgeIntermediary

Extension WorkersInput Suppliers

Market IntermediariesSelf Help Group Leaders, Community Leaders

School Teachers, Postmen, StudentsTelecenter

Radio ChannelsTV Channels

Satellite LinksInternet Services

Cellular Telephony ProvidersRadio StationTelevision StationWebsiteSMS ServerTelephone based Q&A Services

Research Institute, NGO, FO, CooperativePrivate Sector Input Provider, Bank

Supermarket chain

InformationPlatform

InformationOrganization

InformationPlatform

InformationOrganization

InformationPlatform

InformationOrganization

InformationPlatform

InformationOrganization

InformationPlatform

InformationOrganization

Development

Innovation

Learningin

CommunitiesThrough

ContinuousConversation

Increase in Social Capital

A Generic Framework of ICT use for Agricultural Innovation

InformationPlatform

InformationOrganization

Information “Bus” /Pathways

KnowledgeIntermediary

Extension WorkersInput Suppliers

Market IntermediariesSelf Help Group Leaders, Community Leaders

School Teachers, Postmen, StudentsTelecenter

Radio ChannelsTV Channels

Satellite LinksInternet Services

Cellular Telephony Providers Radio StationTelevision StationWebsiteSMS ServerTelephone based Q&A Services

Research Institute, NGO, FO, CooperativePrivate Sector Input Provider, Bank

Supermarket chain

InformationPlatform

InformationOrganization

InformationPlatform

InformationOrganization

InformationPlatform

InformationOrganization

InformationPlatform

InformationOrganization

InformationPlatform

InformationOrganization

CIARD MOVEMENT

Global Public Goods

The CIARD RING and the featured information services will be free and publicly available, thus constituting Global Public Goods that can be leveraged by any organization, person or information service.

Who can benefit from the RING?

users looking for existing services into which they can tap for retrieving information and feeding it into their information systems

users looking for existing services to which they can contribute their contents and through which they can disseminate their information.

users interested in an overview of the current offer of information services in ARD

What you can build out of it

Services that offer a common browsing or searching interface to different sources

Integrated services providing relations between entities (organizations, projects, experts, documents) through semantic-web technologies

Services that interface the different knowledge organization systems (KOS) used by different sources

Services providing advanced services like digests, bibliographies, best practices, surveys etc.

etc...

Submission flow The services featured in the RING are

submitted directly by their managers and technical staff

Anybody can register and submit a service; the organizations responsible for the service will be alerted upon submission

If they are not already CIARD partners, the organizations that own and manage the submitted services will be invited to become CIARD partners

Be part of the RING

The CIARD RING service is available at:

www.ciardring.net

A logo is available on the RING website that can be

used by all featured services to label them and indicate their participation

in the CIARD RING

Invitation

We invite you all to

- make your services known through the CIARD RING

- learn how to exploit other services in the CIARD RING

Thank You