ISO TC347 Plenary Recap: Connecting to AgGateway

Outreach

ISO TC347 Plenary Recap: Connecting to AgGateway

By Ben Craker, Portfolio Manager

If you're active on LinkedIn, you may have noticed several posts from some of the AgGateway’s most dedicated volunteer members in mid-March. Many of us traveled to Berlin to attend the first in-person plenary session for the newly formed ISO Technical Committee 347, Data-Driven Agrifood Systems. This event was bustling, with about 50 attendees from 14 countries joining in person and a similar number participating online for the opening and closing sessions.

We've previously discussed the importance of this new ISO group, but now that the committee is officially organized and operational, its relevance has become even more evident. For those less familiar with ISO processes and terminology, navigating the acronyms and workflows can be daunting. To help, here's an overview of the discussions held in Berlin and their connection to AgGateway's work.

Understanding ISO TC 347's Structure

The committee currently operates with two primary organizational elements: Advisory Groups (AGs) and Ad Hoc Groups (AHGs). These somewhat parallel AgGateway's structure, offering a familiar point of reference:

  • Advisory Groups (AGs): These are long-term groups providing guidance across all committee work within their focus areas. For instance, ISO TC 347 includes a Communications Advisory Group and a Stakeholder Engagement Advisory Group, somewhat analogous to AgGateway's Communications Committee and Member Advisory Panel.
  • Ad Hoc Groups (AHGs): These short-term groups delve into specific topics to determine which standards are needed, define their scope, and identify existing resources. Through this pre-work, any recommended ISO Working Groups (WG) are ensured of having a clear foundation for the development of an international standard. This also reduces the risk of running out of time during ISO's standard development process, which typically a three-year limit.

During the plenary hosted by the DIN (Deutsches Institut für Normung; German Institute for Standardization), each Advisory Group and Ad Hoc Group provided updates. Below is a summary of the Ad Hoc Groups' work and their potential relevance to AgGateway:

Ad Hoc Group (AHG) Highlights

AHG 1: Strategic Business Plan | This group focuses on creating the strategic plan for the committee and how its work will align with ISO's overarching goals. As a result, this area of work does not have a direct relation to AgGateway projects.

AHG 2: Model and Controlled Vocabulary for Crops | This group is preparing to propose a Working Group on a crop definition model, using the resource that AgGateway’s WG00 Agrisemantics developed for a crop definition model as a starting point.

AHG 3: Greenhouse and Controlled Environment Automation | Addressing operations in greenhouses and controlled environments, this group's efforts will intersect with other TC 347 initiatives and may be relevant for AgGateway's resources in this sector.

AHG 4: Integrated Pest Management | This group emphasizes the need for controlled vocabularies, aligning closely with AgGateway's work in crop definitions and related semantic resources.

AHG 5: Annotating Agrifood Data for AI | This area has had some discussion within AgGateway as a possible area to establish a new Working Group. Watching where this AHG goes should be informative on what needs might be covered by ISO and if there are aspects that would be relevant to AgGateway. There will be a strong dependency on Agrisemantics for things like crop definitions, growth stages, and other controlled vocabularies.

AHG 6: Livestock Activities Management | As AgGateway expands its focus on animal agriculture (e.g., dairy feed data), its work will likely overlap with this group's scope.

AHG 7: Actionable Insights from Field Operations Data | This group has the potential to build on some of the work from the SPADE project to develop standards that enable the efficient use of field operations data. Resources like ANSI/ASABE S611 Collecting, Processing, and Visualizing Geographic Harvest Data will also play a role as starting points for different standards.

AHG 8: Land Use History Reporting | A ballot is pending to create this ad hoc group. But assuming it is approved, its focus will include field boundary work and data lineage topics, resonating with discussions from AgGateway's ADAPT framework and likely may be able to leverage some of the output of the Field Boundary related AgGateway working groups.

A Testament to AgGateway's Global Influence

The enthusiasm and collaboration surrounding ISO TC 347 highlights the global significance of its work, much of which traces back to AgGateway resources and projects. This reflects the organization's invaluable contributions over the past 20 years and underscores the enduring impact of its efforts on the agrifood systems landscape today and into the future.