Thursday, August 31, 2023, 01:04
The Murcian Institute for Agrarian and Environmental Research and Development (Imida), a body dependent on the Ministry of Water, Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, has developed a data integration platform that allows optimizing the use and frequency of irrigation, determining the amount of nutrients that plants need or anticipate weather risks. The ‘ClimAlert’ project, Early Warning Service for Climate Risks related to water, in which various European partners from Spain, France and Portugal participate and which Imida develops in collaboration with the Region’s Civil Protection Service, consists of a platform open to citizens that integrates all the information transmitted by soil moisture sensors or water level in wells, new communication technologies, agrometeorological stations or information from satellites.
The director of Imida, Andrés Martínez, stressed that “this platform allows the fight against drought and climate change, as it facilitates decision-making, both for public and private agents, for efficient water management and soil erosion” . Martínez explained that, “with all this information the farmer can anticipate the weather conditions and calculate the water needs of the crops continuously, which provides tools and information to improve decision-making in the use of water in a more efficient way from an environmental and economic point of view.
utilities
Both technicians and farmers can access the two versions of the platform (a more advanced one aimed at emergency services and Regional Agricultural Offices, among others, and another more simplified version) to find out the information provided by satellites, the probes or agrometeorological stations to make decisions. The web address of the platform is https://climalert.imida.es, and to access it you need to register.
Farmers can receive notifications on their mobiles that inform them of the different agrometeorological situations that can affect their crops (wind, rain and drought, among others) in the geographical area that they have previously configured in the application.
The project, in which France and Portugal participate, integrates all the information into a data infrastructure
Another of the applications that ‘ClimAlert’ has is to anticipate meteorological risks such as a DANA. The technicians, as well as Civil Protection or 112 can implement prevention measures in advance to avoid risks to the population in the case of torrential rains. The Imida gave training courses in the regional agricultural and Civil Protection offices with the aim that the technicians know their applications, as well as the management of the ‘software’ and the tools that it integrates.
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