Earth observation data plays a critical role in building resilience to climate change as well as reporting on sustainable development goals (SDG’s). There are new opportunities to use open data in earth observation such as Landsat and the Sentinel data. Modern day farming relies on weather information in order to plan ahead of extreme weather conditions such as drought and floods. In addition, there is need to invest in hydromet services to build resilience to climate change and help citizens with accurate weather forecasts. In this webinar, Dr Kenneth Mubea (the Capacity Development Lead) at the Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) shares some of the experiences and projects that RCMRD are involved in various open data initiatives in Agriculture. RCMRD’s mission is to promote sustainable development using earth observation and thus SDG’s. RCMRD is an inter-governmental organization established in 1975 (Nairobi, Kenya) and currently has 20 Contracting Member States in the Eastern and Southern Africa Regions.

1. Dr. Kenneth Mubea
Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD)
GODAN Action webinar:
Sharing open data and capacity development
experiences from RCMRD
29 November 2017, 4 – 5 pm CET

2. Outline
1) RCMRD
2) Collaboration
3) Lessons learnt
4) Way forward

3. RCMRD

4. SERVIR

5. Service Areas

6. Applied Science Team (AST) Projects

7. Partnerships - Weather, Climate, Agriculture
• Kenya Meteorological Department
• NDMA
• Kenya Water Towers
• Northen Rangelends Trust (NRT)

8. Collaboration with University of Maryland
National Early Warning Crop Monitor
• Develop timely, actionable and
easily interpretable products on
crop conditions (feed into
GEOGLAM crop monitor)
• Strengthen State Department of
Agriculture (SDA’s) capacity in
Agriculture Monitoring &
Assessments
• Streamline field Data collection and
reporting
• Customization to include country
specific datasets and reporting
metrics
• Develop food bulletin
• Stakeholders: RCMRD, State
Department of Agriculture, ICPAC
GeoGLAM Africa Synthesis

9. Agricultural Crop Mask Development
• Current crop mask being used is over 10 years old
• Due to climate change, cropping zones have changed
• Need to assess changes in crop production zones for
better decision making
• The developed crop mask will be used as an input to
RHEAS, disseminated to FEWSNET & other
stakeholders such as the State Department of Agriculture
(Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock) and DRSRS.
• RHEAS(Regional Hydrological extremes Assessment
System)
Collaboration with State Department of Agriculture

10. • Kenya is 3rd largest tea producer. Exports: 4% of GDP
• Stakeholders: Kericho County Government; KTRF;
Large-scale tea farmers; Small-scale farmers
• Collaboration with insurance in development of a
weather based tea insurance index.
Frost Monitoring and Forecasting

11. Collaborations - GODAN
AgriGIS Workshop and Think Tank meetings, 27 – 28 October 2016,
RCMRD, Nairobi, Kenya.
Goal: Promote the use of open software, open data and open science in the
agriculture
Participants: experts, senior policy officers, academics, researchers, and
post graduate students. (50 participants).
Link: http://www.godan.info/events/agrigis-workshop-and-thinktank

12. Collaborations – GODAN, CANIS, CTA
Data Centred Student Led
Agricultural Transformation
Open Data Training & Partnership
Workshop: 4 – 5 Oct 2017

13. Collaborations - TAHMO
Goal: leveraging weather data through robust and cost-effective stations for
enhanced water and agricultural productivity that leads to economic growth in
Sub-Saharan Africa.
TAHMO signed MoU with RCMRD in March 2017.
Trans-African Hydro-Meteorological Observatory
https://school2school.net/
Open Data Partnership
Beneficiaries:
• Universities
• schools

14. Collaborations - TAHMO
Installation of Automatic weather stations (AWS) in RCMRD & partners. This
will improve the weather information value chain, bridge resilience to effects of
climate change.
Trans-African Hydro-Meteorological Observatory
https://school2school.net/
AWS – RCMRD
AWS – Ardhi University
Weather Information Value Chain

15. RCMRD Space Challenge 2017
Goal: Equip students with skills in environmental degradation, climate
change and its drivers. Contribute to STEM - Science, Technology, Engineering and Math , SDG’s.
Mode: Obtain reading from automatic weather stations (AWS) installed by TAHMO,
GLOBE. This will be annual in Kenya, Uganda (Akorion).
Partners: GLOBE, TAHMO, 4-H Kenya, KMD, KNATCOM, Esri
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8v5WTv8J79M&t=1s
Nasokol Girls School (first)
St. Scholastica Primary School (second)

16. Collaborations - LandPKS
Data sets: climate,
soils, topography,
wind, crop productivity,
vegetation
Projects: Kenya:
Northern
Rangelands Trust
(NRT) , Vital signs,
Namibia: Rangeland
Health Assessment -,
Bush Encroachment
assessment and
biomass estimation
http://landpotential.org/landpks/app

17. Collaboration with Akorion - Uganda
ICT to efficiently provide agro value chain services to farmers and
those who serve them.
Link: https://youtu.be/T72TFTSbl5A
Open Data Training & Partnership

18. Collaboration with CODATA
CODATA AGRICULTURE TASK GROUP (ATG)
Agriculture Data, Knowledge for Learning and Innovation Group
• Partners: CODATA, KALRO, JKUAT, CABI, RCMRD, KEFRI
• Coordinate efforts on agricultural research data - SDGs and Africa
Union 2063 agenda
• Platform: KAINet - improve agro value chain
• Webinar: 5 Dec 2017 (4 - 5 pm, GMT +3)

19. RCMRD Open Data
RCMRD Open data: http://opendata.rcmrd.org/
Open Data & Partnership

20. Lessons Learnt
 Stakeholder mapping
 Collaboration and learning
 Co-development – capacity building, products, tools
 Data journalism – open data
 Monitoring and evaluation
 Impact – success stories

21. Way forward
 Partnerships – MoU, data sharing
 Public Private Partnerships (PPP)
 Capacity building
 Outreach
 Link to SDG’s
 Space Challenge e.g. RCMRD Space Challenge
 Innovation workshops e.g. hackathons
 Role of ICT 4 Agriculture e.g. apps, updates
 Big data – Data cubes

22. Thanks
Our contacts
The Director General
Regional Centre for Mapping for
Resource Development(RCMRD)
P. O. Box 632-00618
www.rcmrd.org, rcmrd@rcmrd.org,
The presenter
Dr. Kenneth Mubea
mubea@rcmrd.org