Hello. I am a computer science student. As a student project (using d3) I am interested in creating a data visualization related to the data that is collected by farmOS. Are there visualizations that you would find interesting or useful?
Thank you to all on the call today for providing ideas! I think there are many potential directions for an interesting visualization!
Hi Stephanie,
that sounds like a very interesting project. I guess the feasibility will depend on available data in farmOS and/or available databases.
One interesting visualization could be some kind of Sankey diagram for nutrient flow.
Data points:
Start with nutrients in soil from soil sample data
+Nutrients added by fertilizer input
-nutrients leaving the field by harvested crop
-nutrient displacement depending on soil type and weather conditions (optional)
-+0 maybe add nutrients fixed in crop residue
= nutrient replacement required
(optional depending on crop that’s planted next, this could be data coming from a database)
This could be done for for different soil layers and show nutrient movement in and out of the system on a x, y, z axis. Maybe this could be done for different stages and dates depending on fertilization date, fertilizer type, harvest date
Another idea could be a visualization of soil erosion by precipitation.
Data points:
Soil structure and type
Slope of field from input or GIS data
Plant cover depending on type of crop and development stage
Precipitation type and rate per hour (rain amount/h)
= translocation visualization area specific in fields
This could lead to awareness of soil translocation in certain areas of the field
Do you measure the nutrient in a harvested crop or just working with reference values?
I like this idea as a heatmap of the landscape where red spots would represent high-impact zones. I used my drone to map my property and generated flow lines on the landscape in QGIS. I imagine intense rainfall events would consistently show red in areas where the landscape is steeper and more ‘flow lines’ exist.
How BIG of a project is this?
Cheers
The project is for a graduate level data visualization course. We only have about 3.5 weeks. 3 of my classmates have joined the project. So we should be able to produce something fairly significant. One idea I had for the project is to produce several prototypes, since there is a wide variety in the data that farmers are collecting and it seems there is not a lot of data visualization treatment in the field.
I think these are all great ideas that we will be investigating further. We appreciate the input! And will share the final results.
Someone on the call suggested a space-time cube using tractor speed. I think this would make an interesting visualization. However I don’t know enough about farming to understand the utility. Would it be for efficiency?
I would suggest to use reference values.
Not sure what the intention of this was. If its during cultivation after harvest one could try to guess the soil compaction of a certain field with uniform soil. But that would only work on a flat field and with a fixed throttle control of the tractor. Since the cultivation after harvest is usually not done in line with the rows the tractor might show variations in speed as it goes from one sprayer track to the other so you cold detect some speed reduction. But the cultivation is usually done at 30-45° to the rows and not 90° so it will be hard to clearly display the compacted soil as a result of machine tracks in the field.
That been said the idea behind this space time cube might have been something totally different.
The space-time cube suggestion came from Johannas but I think his high-tech systems make that data very interesting. I think for most small farmers we just watch the tractor from a fixed point and can see everything ;). It is also pretty high-level data that required precise GPS points. Maybe come back a notch to the data already in the system and prototype some visualizations. I think that would be a great start and there is more than enough interesting data to look through and design from.