Data Cube and Copernicus Data for Food Security and European Independence

Type
fundamental research project
Start Date
2024
End Date
2028
URI
Acronym
Nostradamus
Description
The Nostradamus Project, aims to enhance food security and reduce reliance on agrochemical inputs across the EU. Aligning with key EU strategies such as the Farm to Fork Strategy (F2F), the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), and the European Strategy for Data, the project focuses on developing a scalable digital platform for near-real-time data collection and analysis. By integrating multi-source datasets, including Copernicus Earth Observation (EO) data, IoT technologies, and open-access databases, it provides actionable insights that support sustainable agricultural practices while strengthening the sector’s sustainability, competitiveness, and resilience.
The University of St. Gallen (HSG) contributes to the project by leading the analysis of agricultural market trends and socio-economic factors. This involves developing models to improve decision-making tools for policy creation. Additionally, HSG supports the design of an e-learning platform, and the delivery of digital training aimed at building stakeholders' knowledge and skills in sustainable agricultural practices. These efforts ensure effective adoption of data-driven approaches within the sector.
Leader contributor(s)
Member contributor(s)
Funder

EU - Horizon Europe

Notes
This work has received funding from the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI).
Principal
Eratosthenes Center of Excellence (ECoE), Cyprus
Division(s)

SHSS - School of Huma...

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    Item type:Publication,
    Nostradamus: Harnessing Data Cubes and Multiple Sources of Data for Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security
    (2025-03-18)
    Varvaris, Ioannis
    ;
    Hadjimitsis, Diofantos
    ;
    Koumoulidis, Dimitrios
    ;
    Polydorou, Thomaida
    ;
    Mettas, Christodoulos
    Nostradamus focuses on addressing the critical challenges of food security, sustainability, and agricultural resilience in the European Union (EU) by leveraging digital solutions for resilient agriculture and independence from agrochemical inputs. This Horizon Europe project aligns with the EU Green Deal, Common Agricultural Policy, forthcoming Soil Monitoring Law, and EU Data Strategy, among others, promoting open-source data ecosystems and tools to enhance agricultural resilience and sustainability. Central to the project is developing a Data Ecosystem comprising five national Data Cubes spanning Cyprus, Germany, Serbia, Slovenia, and Switzerland and a Catalog for geospatial and non-geospatial datasets. Interconnectedly, the Data Ecosystem serves as a one-stop-shop for data aggregation by integrating Earth Observation, IoT, socio-economic, and other relevant datasets, establishing robust pipelines for collecting, processing, and analysing data from multiple sources. By providing farmers, policymakers, researchers, and industry with comprehensive, accessible, and interoperable digital solutions, the Nostradamus project will empower informed decision-making and policy-shaping to enhance the agricultural sector's competitiveness and productivity while minimizing environmental impact. The project’s overarching objectives are: (1) to serve as a data-driven backbone for the EU’s food security and independence, and (2) to enable the development of scalable, open-source digital applications through Open Calls tailored to address the complexities of modern agriculture. These applications will tackle pressing challenges such as drought monitoring, crop yield prediction, soil fertility management, and sustainable pest control. By employing machine learning, these tools support stakeholders in optimizing farming practices and resource allocation, reducing dependency on agrochemical inputs, and ensuring resilience against disruptions. Nostradamus adopts a gender-sensitive multi-actor approach, fostering collaboration among diverse stakeholders. This inclusive strategy ensures solutions are co-created and validated across various biogeographical and socio-economic contexts. The project’s five demonstration sites, located in the distinct biogeoclimatic regions, act as hubs for testing and showcasing innovations, enabling the transfer of knowledge and best practices across the EU. Recognizing the challenges posed by digital inequity, particularly in regions with limited connectivity, Nostradamus integrates cloud, edge, and mixed solutions to ensure accessibility and scalability. Additionally, the project provides a suite of ready-to-use templates that facilitate the seamless development and integration of modular digital applications for solving specific challenges while benefiting from standardized, interoperable foundations. Through tailored capacity-building, the project empowers end-users to utilize digital tools and fully adopt data-driven decision-making practices. The project also emphasizes the importance of data interoperability, switchability, and transparency, laying the foundation for the future evolution of agriculture in the EU. Beyond its technical contributions and support for EU policy frameworks and engaged actors, including AKIS platforms, Nostradamus actively supports upscaling the impact of ongoing EU projects by addressing critical gaps in data requirements and consolidation. By bridging technological innovation with stakeholder-driven development, Nostradamus represents a paradigm shift in the EU's agricultural digital transformation. Its outputs ensure that the sector remains resilient, competitive, and aligned with long-term sustainability goals. The project exemplifies how data-driven solutions can create a more secure, sustainable, and equitable future for the EU agricultural sector, setting a benchmark for global initiatives in agricultural innovation.
    Type:conference paper
    URI:https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/122684
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    Agri-Food Modelling: Socio-Economic Data and Data-Gaps
    (2025-03-18)
    Daria Loginova  orcid-logo
    ;
    Sabine Hoidn  orcid-logo
    Socioeconomic models in the agricultural sector are used to support policy-makers, farms, and researchers in analysing and improving agricultural markets and the socio-economic conditions of farmers and rural communities. This paper identifies gaps in data for a selection of agricultural models and gives a first impulse for developing the Nostradamus module enhancing analysis capabilities for both policy and farm decision-making. Using a snowball literature review for collecting a sample of 108 economic models related to agriculture, we analyse their data coverage, data consumption, and limitations. As a result, we discover three types of data, that are demanded for model processing: data noticed in limitation sections of most of the models, data collected in surveys, and minimum data requirements for the most difficult and data-consuming models. This overview provides a valuable inside into data consumption of modern modelling tools and informs the developers of future databanks about the data demands from policy-makers, farms, and researchers worldwide.
    Type:conference paper
    URI:https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/122583
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    Item type:Publication,
    The List of Open Data Sources for Agricultural, Food, Land, and Socio-Economic Research
    (University of St. Gallen, 2025-04-14)
    Loginova, Daria  orcid-logo
    ;
    Varvaris, Ioannis
    The List of Open Data Sources for Agricultural, Food, Land, and Socio-Economic Research
    Type:forthcoming
    DOI:10.1007/978-3-031-74507-2
    URI:https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/122369
    Scopus© Citations 2