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Open Data from Space to Solve Drought in California

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Steven Adler .
Open Data from Space to Solve Drought in California

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Last Week, California announced water rationing to fight the drought that has plagued the state for five years. The rationing expects consumers to cut back on water usage by 25%, but consumers only account for 10% of California's water consumption. Agriculture accounts for 80% and there is a huge opportunity to use Open Data to improve how California Agriculture uses scarce water resources.

In 2013, the governments of the U.S. and the United Kingdom launched the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition initiative (GODAN), with the focus on building high-level policy, and public and private institutional support for open agriculture and nutrition data - to improve how agricultural resources are utilized with Open Data. In this webinar we will explore the GODAN program with USDA Under Secretary Dr. Catherine Woteki, review NASA Satellite Open Data on California Agriculture and water consumption patterns with Jeanne Holm, and discuss together how Precision Agriculture can dramatically improve water conservation and provide the State and the Nation with a new era of growth and innovation.

We want to explore how Open Data can benefit businesses, engage citizens, and shape public policy and Open Governance.

This will be the first of many webinars exploring Open Data and Open Governance topics from many perspectives.

Dr. Catherine Woteki is Under Secretary for United States Department of Agriculture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Agriculture)'s (USDA) Research, Education, and Economics (REE) mission area, as well as the Department's Chief Scientist. Her responsibilities include oversight of the four agencies that comprise REE, the Agricultural Research Service (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_Research_Service) (ARS), National Institute of Food and Agriculture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institute_of_Food_and_Agriculture) (NIFA), Economic Research Service (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Research_Service) (ERS), and National Agricultural Statistics Service (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Agricultural_Statistics_Service) (NASS.) The National Agriculture Library (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Agriculture_Library) and National Arboretum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Arboretum) also fall under this mission area.

Jeanne Holm is the Chief Knowledge Architect at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, driving innovation and data-driven decisions through enhanced data architectures for space missions, engineering, and science. As the Evangelist for Data.Gov (an open government flagship project for the White House), Jeanne led collaboration and builds communities with the public, educators, developers, and international and state governments in using open government data.

GODAN – Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition – focuses on building high-level policy, and public and private institutional support for open data. The initiative encourages collaboration and cooperation among existing agriculture and open data activities, without duplication, and brings together stakeholders to solve long-standing global problems like food and nutritional security.

Agenda:

  1. Introduction - Steve Adler, IBM

  2. The Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition Program - USDA Under Secretary Dr. Catherine Woteki

  3. NASA Open Data on Agriculture and Weather -
    Jeanne Holm, Chief Knowledge Architect at NASA JPL

  4. Data Science Roundtable Discussion

The call will be recorded and the replay will be published as Open Data.

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