High performance computing to support smart land services (Highlander)

Description:

The Highlander project aims at reducing risks associated with climate change on human health, agriculture and livestock production. Through the use of High Performance Computing, the project strives for a smarter management of natural resources and lands.

Thanks to data processing, Highlander will exploit new technologies to generate, manage, host and distribute organized sets of data, integrating with already existing geospatial and non-geospatial datasets. Designing and implementing a continuously updated last generation multi-thematic framework of highly detailed and harmonized data, indicators and tools ranging from remote and in-site monitoring, analytical tools and numerical models to machine learning algorithms.

The data processing activity will ensure new and already existing datasets are accessible to multiple users as well as HPC-based tools and services, and the long-term functionality of the created services thanks to the involvement of real users during the project. Facilitating the mainstreaming of information itself into decisions, strategies and plans on different interacting scales and sectors.

The Highlander project will be able to develop new cutting-edge applications and services for:

1. A smarter management of agriculture – irrigation schedules, fertilizer inputs, water cycle and sustainability of competing uses (hydropower, domestic, agricultural, ecological) – supporting planning and decision-making when considering territorial resources and systems owing to short-term forecasts and medium-term climate projections, including extreme events and related climate risks;
2. Animal welfare, environmental management of nature parks and forest fire predictions and controls, integrating climate data, satellite observations and Internet of Things data in order to support ecosystem assessment and management such as environmental management of natural parks.

Project information

Lead

Cineca Interuniversity Consortium

Partners

ART-ER Attractiveness Research Territory, Italy
DEDAGROUP Public Services S.r.l., Italy
Agenzia Regionale per la Protezione Ambientale del Piemonte, Arpa Piemonte, Italy
Agenzia Regionale per la Prevenzione, l'Ambiente e l'Energia dell'Emilia-Romagna (Arpae Emilia-Romagna) ARPAE SIMC, Italy
Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change Foundation (CMCC), Italy
Department for innovation in biological, agro-food and forest systems (DIBAF), Italy
Fondazione Edmund Mach, Italy
CONFEDERAZIONE ITALIANA AGRICOLTORI PROVINCIA DI TORINO C.I.A, Piemonte, Italy
European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)

Source of funding

Connecting European Facilty Programme of the European Union Grant agreement n° INEA/CEF/ICT/A2018/1815462