Work on facilitating access to and use of the INVEKOS data has so far been carried out mainly by Department II/1 of the BML. The current scope of the data offered is documented in the form of a description of the tables available in the respective year and their contents. Regular evaluations from the data pool are used, among other things, to prepare the BML's Green Report, to evaluate the Austrian Rural Development Program, to prepare the national agricultural accounts and to support research projects. A new query and evaluation system was developed and presented to the BML for the retrieval of anonymized individual farm accounting data. It is used to provide data for research purposes.
Objective
Numerous surveys and data analyses are carried out by or on behalf of the BML, which regularly (annually, monthly, weekly) provide certain data sets. These include the agricultural structure surveys, surveys of acreage, stocks, producer prices, the agricultural accounts and foreign trade statistics of Statistics Austria, IN-VEKOS and subsidy data of the AMA, accounting data of the LBG, GIS data of Department II/4 of the BML or farm and land registers of the LFRZ. In addition, the BML has extensive databases on groundwater quality, biodiversity and forestry. There are links and connections between individual data sources that make it possible to carry out specific analyses for a combination of data from several sources.
The aim of this project is to compile an overview of the various surveys and data sources and their content, to recognise discrepancies between the data stock and the data requirements and to establish compatibility between the available data stocks.
All data available to the Federal Institute of Agriculture and Mountain Farming (BAB) and the department are to be summarised and made quickly and easily accessible via interfaces, while fully safeguarding data protection and data security.
In addition, monthly and annual data on the development of issues and markets relevant to agriculture are to be made available in an up-to-date form on the homepage of the Federal Office of Agriculture and Mining.
Work 2024
- Ongoing maintenance work and improvements in the INVEKOS data pool
- Municipal database maintained and presented to the specialist public
- Conversion of the database for calculating machine costs for IDB from Access to PostgreS carried out
- Development of a new interface with improved visualisation (maps)
- Expansion of the database to include the Wels exchange prices and improvement of the interfaces for the price portal preise.agrarforschung.at, creation of security groups for the maintenance of the databases
- Integration of forecast data into the BAB-ALFIS
- The BAB-ALFIS, which was taken over by the LFRZ, continues to be maintained by Section II/1 of the BML and the BAB. In the process, activities were evaluated in co-operation and made more efficient.
- Reprogramming of the existing ALFIS scripts for the new BAB-ALFIS and extension of the code for the creation of forecast data for IDB and test runs
- Development and migration of existing data pipelines to Apache Airflow
- Analyses and automatic data transfer of auction data from the Central Working Group of Austrian Cattle Breeders (ZAR) to the ALFIS database. The territorial classifications created annually by the BAB (agricultural production areas, agricultural locations, mountain pasture regions) and the analyses based on them are adapted to the new territorial status and the geodata are made publicly available in accordance with the INSPIRE Directive, including compliance with the additional requirements of the High Value Dataset Regulation. Various regional analyses and map representations are to be produced.
- Programming of a new tool for querying foreign trade data (completion 2025)
Work 2025
- Conversion and programming of the previous online tables of agricultural and economic data on the BAB homepage and the Green Report into the new web area ‘Tables online’
- Programming of a separate website for the ‘Tables online’
- Ongoing maintenance and further development of the price portal preise.agrarforschung.at.
The following work is being examined for feasibility and will also be partially realised in 2025:
- Expansion to include additional products (auction prices, market prices of fruit and vegetables, ...)
- Improvement of the price portal's web interface (e.g. optimisation for smartphones, individual compilation of data)
- Expansion of automated data transfer (web scraping, transfer of data via fee-based services)
- Integration of quality checks during data transfer
- Ongoing improvements and error corrections in the newly programmed BAB-ALFIS
- Integration, conversion and updating of additional and existing data in BAB-ALFIS
- The description blocks (meta information) of the ALFIS characteristics are revised and adapted to requirements
- Programming of a new tool for querying foreign trade data
- Extension of predefined evaluation options and reports of data from the foreign trade database. This is useful as it allows users to carry out periodic analyses quickly.
- Updating and further development of the municipal database (GeDaBa) and integration of new features
- Integration of the data pool into the conceptual creation of an evaluation data pool for the implementation evaluation of the current CAP Strategic Plan (2023-27) as well as for the upcoming ex-post evaluation of the CAP
- Conceptualisation of an expansion of the use of PostGIS databases
- Conceptualisation of further possible uses of aerial images from the aerial image cooperation between the federal and state governments
- Intersection of agricultural data with GIS data Networking in the geodata sector with related institutions as part of the BML's GIS Jour Fixe
- Programming of a new address database, which will then be kept evident by Dept. II/1
- Node-based concept, load-balanced queries
- GPU acceleration, machine learning and deep learning integration using TensorFlow and PyTorch
- Create and further develop OLAP data cubes
- Implementing web-based data visualisation and reporting
- Development and migration of existing data pipelines to Apache Airflow
- In 2025, the special evaluations for the area of compensatory allowance for disadvantaged areas (AZ) will also be continued and the results analysed.
- The geodata of the territorial classifications (agricultural production areas, agricultural locations, mountain pasture regions) created annually by the BAB were adapted to the new territorial status. Since 2023, the geodata itself has been harmonised in accordance with the INSPIRE Directive, hosted as data and view services (previously commissioned to the Federal Environment Agency) and made available via the national and European INSPIRE portal.
- Preparation of various regional analyses and map representations
- Collaboration in the REST-GDI-Agrar project of the Federal Environment Agency on behalf of the BML. The aim of the project is to create a geodata infrastructure (GDI) concept and its prototypical implementation for the digitalisation of agriculture and the strengthening of rural areas. Specifically, BAB is working on the technical implementation of a use case scenario application in this GDI prototype.
- Expansion and updating of the BAB's internal geodata collection for analyses
Further work 2025
- At the request of Dept. II/6, a brief evaluation (only relating to the livestock and meat sector) is prepared monthly in addition to the online service.
- In 2025, the strategic orientation and further development of the data pool, which is subject to great dynamism in terms of its design and implementation due to ongoing technical innovations, will be further advanced and implemented.
- Continuation of the restructuring and consolidation of all data available in both the BAB and the BML.
