A digital dashboard that gives growers real-time information about their vineyard – including ‘what if’ scenarios and vital numbers – is a step closer to becoming a reality.
The VitiVisor dashboard – an open-source information, prediction and advisory platform to support on-farm decision making – was showcased to growers in the Riverland just a couple of weeks ago.
“The VitiVisor dashboard allows you to organise your data into one place, provides tools to explore ‘what if’ scenarios,” said VitiVisor project manager, Brad Nott.
Ultimately, Vitivisor helps you to know your numbers and thus aims to lower your cost of production.
Nearly three years in the making, VitiVisor is a collaboration between the University of Adelaide, Riverland Wine and Wine Australia, with support from UniSA and Primary Industries and Regions SA. While the project has been developed in partnership with Riverland growers, the end-product will be open to and usable by all growers.
VitiVisor brings together researchers in viticulture, engineering, remote sensing, farm economics, water accounting, artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics, with grapegrowers possessing deep knowledge of vineyard production and processes from the Riverland wine region.
Brad said while the platform is founded on the digitisation, organisation and visualisation of an unprecedented range of data related to all aspects of vineyard function, it has a key focus on water use and efficiency.
So how does it work?
VitiVisor collects information direct from the vineyard via cameras and sensors and analyses the data to assess vineyard performance. Using the data, it can then offer coordinated advice on management– initially focussing on water and canopy management, with future potential to support fertiliser and agrochemical use.
VitiVisor features three key data-to-decision layers:
Data and communication
- A ‘one-stop shop’ for your datasets that can be used to support your on-farm decisions. Data in this layer is collected from third-party sensors or other information sources in the vineyard.
Situational awareness and prediction
- Describes past, present and future (to end-of-season) status of the vineyard. This layer focuses on the canopy, water and financial status of the vineyard. It comprises a set of algorithms that combines various biophysical data sources into a single ‘point of truth’, and uses a combination of biophysics-based, finance-based and/or machine learning algorithms to explore future projections, conditional on historical and current state, as well as a set of user-identified management actions.
Scenario planning and advisory
- Provides grower tools to help explore ‘what-if’ scenarios and trade-offs to help support growers’ bottom line. This layer comprises visualisations and interfaces co-designed with growers, and models/algorithms that combine the data streams that are decision-critical. The tools provided in this layer include ‘benchmarking’, ‘scenario planning’ and ‘operational advice’.
Brad said some of the components planned for VitiVisor included ground-based vision systems, IoT network, third party API integration, vine status and prediction, water status and prediction, financial status and conditional prediction, irrigation infrastructure health, benchmarking, scenario planning an operational advice.
Brad said VitiVisor was set to be a major tool to enable growers to collect their vineyard’s data and maintain their data’s sovereignty.
“Control your data, control your destiny. It’s as simple as that,” said Brad.