Agromapas, geospatial platform for rural affairs in Colombia

Agronet is the most important information technology program of the Colombian Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development - MADR and has been awarded by the Colombian e-government program in 2012 (ExcelGEL2012 Award) for the improvement on data accessibility reached with its multiple communication ways like the internet portal, SMS messages and web maps. Agronet is held by the MADR and was conceived in 2005 as a network that allows different organizations to report and query the most relevant agricultural and livestock information as an UN-FAO initiative oriented to researchers, managers, planners and policy makers. Agronet grew in organizational arrangements and technology platform improving the amount and quality of information available. In the last three years this improvement has been supported also by geoinformatics represented in a module called “Agromapas” that offers more than ten different data sources of spatial data. Agromapas is used most of the time as a web map application that let users to query and analyze spatial patterns of agricultural indicators like coverage and clustering, those maps complements other tools available on the portal like reports tables and graphs, and bring users alternatives to simplify the dynamics comprehension of the last thirty years of agriculture and livestock in Colombia with an user oriented interface. All this functionality is supported by different technologies like PostGIS, Geoserver, OpenLayers and google maps, integrated via Java RESTful Web Services, Javascript and GeoExt interfaces. This tools arrangement let users to explore and analyze the dynamics of crop area, production, livestock inventory, climate and rural policy impact in the past 30 years, supporting the Agronet initiative of serving thirty five data sources of agriculture and livestock together and going beyond on building a node of geospatial information. Agronet and the MADR in 2014 are designing and implementing the Colombian spat- al data infrastructure - ICDE agricultural node, as an arrangement of policies, standards, hardware and software that will improve the Agromapas Initiative and the adoption of geospatial technology in related organizations, first step on this strategy is the adjustment and certification of data and discovery services via WCS, WMS, WFS with temporal support. Being part of ICDE and leading those activities Agromapas tries to build an ecosystem of agricultural and livestock information complemented with social, economic and environmental data to support national decision making processes and policy formulation. Colombia nowadays looks back to rural affairs and realizes that rural population need and important change on their production activities and some policies demand information analysis from multiple sources. Besides this activities, Agronet Experience has been shared to advise some other dependencies, especially on collecting spatial data, building spatial indicators, publishing maps on Agromapas and bringing users additional analysis tools. Nowadays when lack of IT appropriation across MADR and related organizations is evident and when stakeholders, policy formulators and citizens needs include spatial analysis the tools offered by Agromapas became more essential than important.