AGRARIAN - Open Call # 2 (IMPLEMENT)

Description

AGRARIAN aims to develop an open and dynamic environment by realizing an ecosystem where distributed resources and services will be programmatically aggregated on demand to support IoT / edge data driven application workflows. The objective of AGRARIAN Open Call 2 is to expand the scope and technological impact of the AGRARIAN project by inviting European SMEs, start-ups, universities, research centres, NGOs and foundations to submit proposals that introduce new agricultural use cases and edge or hybrid AI/IoT technologies. Selected proposals should address real challenges in agriculture, particularly in livestock, field crops or other related farming activities, with a focus on AI and IoT driven innovation. The goal is to develop solutions that can be tested and validated using real-world data within the AGRARIAN framework, contributing to more efficient, sustainable and environmentally friendly farming. Proposals should be in line with the Governance Vision and the AGRARIAN research topics. Proposals should determine the degree to which the use of AGRARIAN platform is beneficial for their services/products. In this respect they should include KPIs to measure the technical and economic benefits of the proposed services/solutions/technologies/IoTs in terms of optimization of operations, energy consumption, response time, accuracy, data security etc. Proposals falling into the following research topics (but not limited to) are expected to be funded: Innovative Agricultural Tools Sustainable Farming Solutions Climate Resilience and Adaptation Digital Solutions and Smart Farming The proposals must fit within one of the following testbeds: Testbed 1- Geosynchronous Satellite Communications with EDGE capabilities Testbed 2- Non-Geosynchronous Orbit (NGSO) Satellite Communications with EDGE capabilities Testbed 3- LEO-Based NB-IoT Testbed for Onboard Edge AI Data Processing Proposals should anticipate that processed data generated by the applications must be stored in the AGRARIAN data infrastructure to enable integration with AGRARIAN Agricultural Decision Support System (ADSS). Proposals should anticipate that developed applications within the AGRARIAN Open Call #2 must be delivered in a containerized format (e.g., Docker) and will be stored in a dedicated container registry and will remain accessible to project partners and stakeholders for the duration of the AGRARIAN project.

Beneficiary & submission

The submission will be done through the official online submission platform, which is directly linked to the AGRARIAN website: https://agrarian-project.eu/open-call-2/. Only applications received directly through the online submission platform will be considered eligible. The submission process is supported by the following documents: Open Call relate info : which includes all the information you need to know before applying. Open Call Applicants’ Guide : which includes the project description and its objectives, information about the pilots, the testbeds, the topics to be addressed, eligibility criteria, evaluation process based on Technical Excellence, Impact and Implementation, normalization of results, validation of the legal entity, funding schedule, and other aspects. Open Call Proposal Template: which is a guide for writing the application Technical Annex : which describes in more details technical aspects about the testbeds and the AGRARIAN components SME Declaration : which needs to be filled in in case the applicant has no PIC number The evaluation process consists of four phases: 1. Eligibility check: Organizations that were funded under Open Call 1 or by our sister project "OpenAgri", are not eligible to receive funding under AGRARIAN Open Call 2. Also, there is a list of additional criteria (referred in the Applicants' Guide) that all partners of the proposal must comply with to be eligible. 2. Alignment evaluation: Applicants must ensure their proposals align and are compatible with the selected testbed. 3. Experts’ remote evaluation: Applications will be assessed by expert evaluators with technical or commercial business background. Two evaluators will assess the proposals based on 3 different evaluation criteria (Technical Excellence, Impact and Implementation). 4. Score normalisation: This method ensures a more balanced distribution of scores and reduces the possibility of biases and distortions. Final Selection: All proposals are ranked based on their remote evaluation scores. In the event of a tie, a series of rules will be followed that will make it possible to reach a tiebreaker. For more detailed information, please consult the Applicants’ Guide of the call. For any question about the process there is a general email address available at: support@agrarian-project.eu

Further information

AGRARIAN aims to develop an open and dynamic environment by realizing an ecosystem where distributed resources and services will be programmatically aggregated on demand to support IoT / edge data driven application workflows. AGRARIAN will develop a new programming environment and tools for the automated refactoring of existing applications and data management frameworks so they can operate in edge-based deployments as well as new edge-native programming abstractions and middleware. Based on widely accepted open source technologies and adoption of container-based technologies and orchestrators AGRARIAN will provide Seamless IoT Device-Edge-Cloud layered environment able to support dynamic computing at the continuum and will utilize state-of-the-art Cloud Native Technologies that will support and extend its capabilities towards designated ML-related applications as well as edge proxies, service orchestration and management tools. Such technologies include the use of Kubernetes, tailored to accommodate specific requirements of the constrained environments of CubeSats (e.g., KubeEdge, k3s). AGRARIAN edge AI ecosystem based on the Hybrid Network architecture will rely on an emulated network of CubeSats running portable edge-AI applications and forming a swarm of intelligent decentralized nodes. The objective of AGRARIAN Open Call 2 is to expand the scope and technological impact of the AGRARIAN project by inviting European SMEs, start-ups, universities, research centres, NGOs and foundations to submit proposals that introduce new agricultural use cases and edge or hybrid AI/IoT technologies. Selected proposals should address real challenges in agriculture, particularly in livestock, field crops or other related farming activities, with a focus on AI and IoT driven innovation. The goal is to develop solutions that can be tested and validated using real-world data within the AGRARIAN framework, contributing to more efficient, sustainable and environmentally friendly farming. The proposed Applications/Solutions should: Introduce new use cases aligned with AGRARIAN’s vision and research topics Include innovative methodologies for agricultural data collection and analysis Leverage edge or fog computing to process data locally, closer to where it is generated Be strictly focused on the agricultural domain Be able to be tested and evaluated on one of the provided AGRARIAN testbeds Bring real-field data Store selected processed data to AGRARIAN data storage for data visualization and any further exploitation through the ADSS (see below) Provide a finalized application ready to be stored in AGRARIAN applications repository (see below) Address real-world agricultural problems Have high agricultural and social impact What we offer: § Three testbeds Testbed 1- Geosynchronous Satellite Communications with EDGE capabilities: Satellite emulation testbed with edge capabilities for GEO telecommunication satellites, based on OpenSand platform. Edge may be on board the satellite or at the ground gateway, provided by NCSRD. Testbed 2- Non-Geosynchronous Orbit (NGSO) Satellite Communications with EDGE capabilities: Emulation testbed for small LEO constellation with on board edge computing capabilities supporting IoT scenarios. Edge computing part is based on service modeling, while satellite component reproduces realistic dynamics, provided by DLR. Testbed 3- LEO-Based NB-IoT Testbed for Onboard Edge AI Data Processing: This lab-based testbed simulates the infrastructure for non-terrestrial NB-IoT communications via a LEO satellite constellation. It supports narrowband use cases with low data rates (up to 250 kbps) and enables efficient onboard edge deep learning inference capabilities. The system emulates a dual-mission payload by storing and processing both Earth Observation imagery and IoT sensor data onboard the satellite. The goal of the testbed is to validate applications that leverage IoT data for onboard inference. § Data Storage: Selected processed data generated by the applications will be stored in the AGRARIAN data infrastructure for future visualization, analysis and exploitation. The system uses a PostgreSQL database to manage structured information, including users, sensors metadata, inference results and other relevant information. This storage enables integration with AGRARIAN Agricultural Decision Support System (ADSS) and supports policy-level insights. § Applications Repository: All applications developed within the AGRARIAN Open Call will be stored in a dedicated container registry provided by the project. To ensure compatibility with the AGRARIAN platform, applications must be delivered in a containerized format (e.g., Docker). The container images will remain accessible to project partners and stakeholders for the duration of the AGRARIAN project. Open Call developers will retain full ownership of the intellectual property and copyrights of their submitted applications. However, each application must include an appropriate usage license (e.g., open-source, commercial or custom license) clearly defining how it can be accessed, used and shared within the AGRARIAN framework. Developers are responsible for embedding and maintaining this license in their application code and documentation. § Access to the AGRARIAN testbeds and datasets through VPN connections To be eligible, the proposals on this call can be submitted by a consortium of 1 to 3 partners . Moreover, any partner of the consortium should not have been funded under an open call by AGRARIAN or OpenAgri project. Furthermore, no partner of the consortium should be directly affiliated with an AGRARIAN partner For RTOs and Universities, one application is accepted per research group. No multiparticipation is allowed. The eligible entities by AGRARIAN open call should be legally identified under the following categories of organisations: Start-ups – SMEs: Universities and Research centers: One application is accepted per research group. NGOs and foundations Only applicants legally established/resident in any of the following countries are eligible for funding:  The Member States (MS) of the European Union (EU), including their outermost regions.  Horizon Europe associated countries: according to the updated list published by the EC on the submission date of the proposal.