Request for Information: Data Solutions for Accelerating Climate-Smart Agriculture Research and Action

About the Data Solutions for Accelerating Climate-Smart Agriculture Research and Action RFI

FFAR is exploring investments that would increase the use of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) standardized data in agricultural research. The specific focus is to develop capacity to make data FAIR with a focus on data and research relevant to farming and ranching practices that contribute to climate mitigation and adaptation.  With sufficient volume of relevant standardized and interoperable data, agricultural sciences can accelerate research and improve the accuracy and utility of decision support tools available for agricultural producers.  This advance would help meet the urgency of the climate challenge by supporting all stakeholders – researchers, producers, NGOs, governments, etc. – with access to actionable data.

This Request for Information (RFI) is intended to gather further insight from relevant research and data science communities as to the need for the identified strategies, the scope of effort(s) required and the technology solutions appropriate to the purpose. Interested parties who respond to this RFI may be contacted for a follow-up strategic discussion. These opportunities may cover some or all of the following topics:

• Identifying and curating legacy data sets, from identifying priority data through to making it machine actionable and accessible to an open knowledge network, facilitating both use and future updates
• Establishing and promoting the use of specific metadata standards, vocabularies and ontologies for climate relevant agricultural data to enable interoperability
• Promoting the value of FAIR data use among all data actors, including the private sector; developing the conditions and tools necessary to assure data owners they can maintain sovereignty of FAIR data shared with other actors.
• Data use agreement templates and standards, as well technologies to comport with those agreements and standards, to ensure privacy and sovereignty of data while making data findable and accessible to users of open knowledge networks.
• Designing and building and/or adapting a knowledge network or other visual navigation technology capable of identifying and connecting across diverse data sets and supporting queries relevant to climate-smart agriculture.