COALA

COALA (COpernicus Applications and services for Low impact agriculture in Australia) is a Research and Innovation project funded by European Commission Horizon 2020 RIA – Topic:DT-SPACE-06-EO-2019)

COALA will develop Copernicus-based information service for irrigation and nutrient management for the Australian agricultural systems, starting from the consolidated past experiences of the proposed European partnership, but based on strong collaboration with Australian Academic institutions and business players in the agricultural sector of Australia.

COALA aims to boost the farm industry business spinneret (service providers, developers of app for farmers and farmers themselves) exploiting the capability of cloud processing to manage and provide value-added data as a service. We will achieve this aim by providing services for LOW IMPACT agriculture, with innovative process chains and business models that overcome current barriers.

COALA will demonstrate that Copernicus data and new DIAS infrastructure can significantly improve the availability of information for management decisions on irrigation and nutrient management at all decision levels, from the Water Authority in charge of monitoring the implementation of the basin exploitation plan to the farm level, passing through the irrigation infrastructure operators, in charge of managing irrigation distribution infrastructures. COALA tools and data will improve the decision making and policy for sustainable use of water and nutrients in multi-functional ecosystems.

COALA will provide API (Application Program Interface) easily integrating into third-party platforms. Users will be able to exploit services in their own platforms. This approach allows the smart integration of Copernicus data with other related technologies at the level of the user. Collaboration of Australian University and Private Partners aim to improve the accuracy of the products for the final users, which will be on three different segments: i) farmers, ii) irrigation infrastructure operators, iii) basin authorities.

COALA is coordinated by European SME, ARIESPACE srl (Italy).

The project has a duration of 36 months and started on January 1, 2020.

ARIESPACE is coordinator of the project and leader of Work Package 2 which aims to develop techniques and algorithms for the estimation of irrigation needs and agronomic inputs with satellite data.