ELPEN planning report April 2001 - August 2001 of Alterra/W!SL/YGOV
April - June (before the End users meeting):
Co-ordination.
- We will finish the SOTO report with Bob Bunce (deadline: IALE conference in
Estonia beginning of July 2001)
- We will examine the data CD of GISCO and the reports we got from GISCO
(done) and visit GISCO to get better informed about the other projects and COGI
and talk about co-operation and data exchange (if possible together with a visit to
EUROSTAT of Frans and Jerry, before/after end users meeting??). And Janneke
is going to contact Claude Vidal of Unit F1 about the project of FSS-Corine
disaggregation project.
- Janneke will look into the legal issues of the software engineering group now it is
a daughter enterprise of Alterra (W!SL) and how to book the costs in relation to
the contract and will contact Ian about it (has been done).
- We will decide on the national representative of the Netherlands to attend the end
users meeting.
- We will contribute to the article about ELPEN for La Canada, after receiving the
first draft of Jerry and Eric (has been done)
- We will contribute to the discussion on the structure of model farms (draft of
Jerry's) via the internal web site (discussion board should be working by then!)
- We will prepare the presentation for the end users meeting June 2001.
Data analysis (including configurations for ELPEN system)
- We will try to improve the maps that are in the system (nr. of holdings of
specialised dairy, ha of farm land of dairy, sheep and goat holdings, nr. of dairy
cows of all holdings, nr. of sheep+goat of all holdings), on the basis of:
- Maps of Greece (and maybe Portugal) on community level,
- Dutch farm data and land cover and soil data
- Answers from the Locating dairy systems document starting with Denmark
(including data in excel sheet) and maybe later the UK (enclosure problems).
- We will add the classification of Erling (and if possible of Peter/ Petra), including
the FADN aggregated data, into the system and configure them into the system, so
that we can make maps and overlay these with our locational maps on 5x5km, for
1990 and most recent, so that we can show the trends. We will try to do this
before the end users meeting, on the condition that the data and final
classifications will be available on time (Frans will also do some statistical checks
on these classifications to see whether the threshold values are adequate)
- We will add land use data on Finland
- We will try to add the altitude map and the soil map
- We will try to add a map indicating 'vulnerability for pollution' on basis of the
European soil map and climate map into the system, to show together with the
environmental classification of more-> less polluting.
Software engineering
- Assistance with the configuration of knowledge rules for the allocation of
livestock systems per member state (and if possible per HARM2 region)
- Assistance with the configuration for mapping the environmental classification.
- Configure the queries on the data base (preferably in the ELPEN system) in such a
way that we get readable output in the table-viewer
The next subjects will need more time to develop, but we will try to make some of it
working before the end users meeting:
- Develop a graph viewer to show histograms of single and multi data items
- Develop a more flexible map-viewer with an automatic classification (depending
on the value range of the data), which the user may alter interactively, e.g. for
visualisation of statistical data in maps.
June - August
Co-ordination
- Bob Bunce and Sander Mucher will contribute together with Erling Andersen and
Eric Bignal to a poster/paper about the environmental and landscape ecological
aspects of ELPEN in the IALE meeting in Estonia in July 2001. The leaflet should
be ready by then!
- We will co-ordinate the way we are going to answer the second year questions.
Data analysis (including configurations for ELPEN system)
- We will email the answers to the questions for Holland posed in the document
'locating dairy systems', after we have implemented them into the system
- We will analyse data required for answering the second year questions.
- We will try to add Jerry's draft classification of model dairy farms (possibly
integrated with Erling's and Petra's classification) into the system and locate them
(and have this ready before the probable meeting with the IFCN on July 4-5. This
on the condition that Jerry's model farms structure will be suitable by that time to
put into the system.)
- We will try to make and/or improve the maps of the environmental, economic and
social classes.
- We will find knowledge rules for the location of sheep, goat and beef in relation to
dairy by comparing statistical data, expert knowledge and physical data.
- With those rules we will continue to improve the maps with the location of
livestock systems and we will look for more biophysical data and check them on
their usefulness for ELPEN.
- We will attend the workshops organised by the other partners (e.g. on socials
aspects planned in Athens in Sept.2001) to gather knowledge to input into the
system and to ask the experts comments on our maps.
Software engineering
- Help to configure answers to the questions of year 2
- Add extra functionality to answer the questions of year 2 (e.g. Automatic
generation of aggregation / desaggregation rules)
- Add tools to support the computation and configuration of qualitative indicators
- Stabilise the software and improve the documentation and compatibility
 Monitor the calculation process, tracing the calculation of individual values &
statistics across the chain of calculation steps for validation.
- Develop a model composer to support users to configure cases