AGRARIAN - Open Call # 1 - (DEVELOP)

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. Open Call #1 – DEVELOP aims to attract applicants who can develop innovative agricultural applications and services related to the pilots of the project, exploiting the cloud, edge and mixed technologies, testbeds and datasets provided by the project. 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. The following types of Applications/Solutions (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 testbed/datasets: Testbed 1- Geosynchronous Satellite Communications with EDGE capabilities Testbed 2- Non-Geosynchronous Orbit (NGSO) Satellite Communications with EDGE capabilities Testbed 3- Satellite Edge AI Compute Emulation Testbed: Testbed to evaluate AI models on emulated satellite compute hardware Testbed 4- SEED-5G: SpaceEdge AI-Enabled Delay-Tolerant NB-IoT Platform Agricultural Datasets

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-calls/. 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 and the datasets, 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 datasets 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: A filter will consider 8 criteria that all applicants must comply with to be eligible. 2. Alignment evaluation: Applicants must ensure their proposals align and are compatible with the selected testbed or datasets. 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. Prior to contracting the top ranked applicants, the consortium will seek the approval of the European Commission, and the list of selected projects will be submitted to EC for final screening. 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. AGRARIAN 1st Open Call aims to attract and engage SMEs/Universities/Research Centers/NGOs with expertise in developing innovative applications and services related to agriculture, which will be tested and validated within AGRARIAN framework. Proposals are expected to address innovative solutions/services, AI based applications and new IoTs, related to one of the three pilots (Livestock, Field Crops, and Viticulture). The proposed Applications/Solutions should: be in line with AGRARIAN research topics and fall into one of the three Pilots (Livestock, Field Crops and Viticulture pilots). be able to be tested and evaluated on one of the provided AGRARIAN testbeds (see below) or exploit the agricultural dataset provided by AGRARIAN be edge based deployments, i.e. run at the edge nodes of the AGRARIAN testbeds infrastructure ·address real-world agricultural problems have high agricultural and social impact What we offer: Four 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- Satellite Edge AI Compute Emulation Testbed: Testbed to evaluate AI models on emulated satellite compute hardware. It provides the capability to run AI models on an edge compute hardware, which is fully representative of an edge compute board for use on CubeSats. It enables the evaluation of the performance, accuracy, and readiness of new applications and how these vary when deployed on a space edge AI platform, provided by UBO. Testbed 4- SEED-5G: SpaceEdge AI-Enabled Delay-Tolerant NB-IoT Platform: Non-Terrestrial Network NB-IoT end-to-end testbed, supporting edge/AI applications running on a Linux-based computer which emulates the satellite, provided by SATEL. Agricultural Datasets: Thermal & Multispectral EO Dataset (LANDSAT) & associated historical weather and land elevation data (e.g. weather stations, sensors, aerial camera etc.) to test and evaluate the proposed Application/Solutions (including 26000 Hectares of vineyards, 3 TB of sensors, weather, map data etc, >70 TB of soil moisture content dataset. Access to the AGRARIAN testbeds and datasets through VPN connections To be eligible, the proposals on this call can be submitted only by one partner (consortia are not allowed). Moreover, an applicant (SME, start-up, NGOs and foundations) can apply only once. 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.