Guidelines for Best Practice and Quality Checking of Ortho Imagery

For almost 10 years JRC's ¿Guidelines for Best Practice and Quality Control of Ortho Imagery¿ has served as a reference document for the production of orthoimagery not only for the purposes of CAP but also for many medium-to-large scale photogrammetric applications. The aim is to provide the European Commission and the remote sensing user community with a general framework of the best approaches for quality checking of orthorectified remotely sensed imagery, and the expected best practice, required to achieve good results. Since the last major revision (2003) the document was regularly updated in order to include state-of-the-art technologies. The major revision of the document was initiated last year in order to consolidate the information that was introduced to the document in the last five years. Following the internal discussion and the outcomes of the meeting with an expert panel it was decided to adopt as possible a process-based structure instead of a more sensor-based used before and also to keep the document as much generic as possible by focusing on the core aspects of the photogrammetric process. Additionally to any structural changes in the document new information was introduced mainly concerned with image resolution and radiometry, digital airborne sensors, data fusion, mosaicking and data compression. The Guidelines of best practice is used as the base for our work on the definition of technical specifications for the orthoimagery. The scope is to establish a core set of measures to ensure sufficient image quality for the purposes of CAP and particularly for the Land Parcel Identification System (PLIS), and also to define the set of metadata necessary for data documentation and overall job tracking.JRC.G.3-Agricultur

LPIS Workshop: 'LPIS applications and quality', Sofia (Bulgaria), 17-18 September, 2008

This report contains overview of annual workshop on Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS) which took place in Sofia (Bulgaria), 17-18th of September, 2008. The workshop is targeted the technological responsible persons from the member state administrations. This year workshop ¿LPIS applications and quality¿ aimed to identify and discuss the key technological issues and examples of solutions that are relevant for operating a LPIS in the environment of administration and control system for direct payments to the European farmers in the framework of the CAP. The topics covered during the workshop included: geomatics aspects of the LPIS; data quality issues with a focus on quality management and quality policy; interaction of LPIS applications with control process and monitoring of the rural development measures; country status reports, in particular focusing on ¿lessons learnt¿ during completion of LPIS in Bulgaria and Romania as well as pilot project of LPIS creation in Croatia.JRC.G.3-Agricultur

Technical guidelines on IACS spatial data sharing. Part 1 - Data discovery

The demand for sharing spatial information residing in the IACS systems of the Member States has increased in many policy domains. An indispensable condition of data sharing is the discoverability of data. This guideline explains the technical background of data discovery within the INSPIRE infrastructure, including system architecture, spatial data discovery services, dataset and service metadata and the role of the INSPIRE geoportal. In order to improve the discoverability of the Land Parcel Identification and the Geospatial Aid Aplication datasets at European level, harmonized keywords have been introduced. The implementation of the data sharing process by the agricultural Paying Agencies is supported by technical requirements, recommendations and examples.JRC.D.5-Food Securit

Discussion document on the introduction of monitoring to substitute OTSC - Supporting non-paper DS/CDP/2017/03 revising R2017/809

This discussion document builds upon the non-paper DS/CDP/2017/03 to introduce the possibility for substituting the OTSC by a system of monitoring for checking the fulfilment of land use/ land cover related CAP requirements. It describes the main concepts and components that need to be considered and developed for substituting the sampled on the spot checks of aid applications with a monitoring system on all of the applications. The goal is simplification and reduction of the burden of controls and especially for what concerns number of field visits. Such substitution requires a shift in thinking, procedures as well as technology and these are topics elaborated in some detail. An annex provides illustrations, examples, field cases and elaborations of the key topics. This document constitutes the Commission’s interpretation of common standards.JRC.D.5-Food Securit

Technical guidance on the decision to go for substitution of OTSC by monitoring

This document describes the main pre-requisites and conditions that have to be met by a given EU Member States in order to implement on operational basis the CAP monitoring as a substitute of the OTS Controls. It further provides guidance on how the MS Administrations could check the fulfilment of these pre-conditions and how to interpret the outcomes of these checks. The two main pre-conditions for implementing monitoring are: (1) the conformity of specific elements of the Integrated Administrative and Control System (LPIS, GSAA, cross-checks) to ensure the correctness of the “area component” of the farmer declarations; and (2) suitability of the agricultural landscape of the region subject to monitoring, in terms of land management structure and cropping/agronomic practices First component is largely verified through the annual LPIS Quality Assessment, while the second relies on analysis of the crop/land use recognition using machine learning and EO data provided by Copernicus Sentinels This document constitutes the Commission’s (draft) proposal of common practices and includes comments from: DG AGRI D3, DG AGRI H3, DK, BE-FL, MT, ES.JRC.D.5-Food Securit

Data Model for the Collaboration between Land Administration Systems and Agricultural Land Parcel Identification Systems

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union (EU) has dramatically changed after 1992, and from then on forward the CAP focussed on the management of direct income subsidies instead of production-based subsidies. For this purpose, Member States (MS) are expected to establish Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS), including a Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS) as the spatial part of IACS. Different MS have chosen different solutions for their LPIS. Currently, some MS based their IACS/LPIS on data from their Land Administration Systems (LAS), and many others use purpose built special systems for their IACS/LPIS. The issue with different IACS/LPIS is that they do not have standardized structures; rather, each represents a unique design in each MS, both in the case of LAS or special systems. In this study, we aim at designing a core data model for those IACS/LPIS based on LAS. For this purpose, we make use of the ongoing standardization initiatives for LAS (Land Administration Domain Model: LADM) and IACS/LPIS (LPIS Core Model: LCM). The data model we propose in this study implies the collaboration between LADM and LCM and includes some extensions. Some basic issues with the collaboration model are discussed within this study: registration of farmers, land use rights and farming limitations, geometry/topology, temporal data management etc. For further explanation of the model structure, sample instance level diagrams illustrating some typical situations are included. Key words: CAP, Rural Land Administration, IACS/LPIS, LADM, LCM, Standardization.JRC.H.4-Monitoring Agricultural Resource

Cropland and grassland management data needs from existing IACS sources

This report analyses the use of IACS and other datasets for reporting and accounting Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and removals in the land use sector. The land use sector comprises land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) as well as agriculture, jointly referred to as agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU). Decision 529/2013/EU of the European Council and the Parliament of 21 May 2013 brings the LULUCF sector in the EU emission accounting obligations. These new accounting obligations for EU member states are phased in over a period extending to 2022. This Report, as part of work performed by the JRC for DG Climate Action under an Administrative Arrangement (AA), aims at exploring the usefulness for cropland management (CM) and grazing land management (GM) accounting of the vast amount of data already regularly collected on the EU level in the context of environmental and agricultural policies. One of the most promising datasets to meet LULUCF reporting obligations is the “Integrated Administration and Control System” (IACS) that has been set up by all member states to manage the implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy, and its GIS, “the Land Parcel Identification System” (LPIS). The data the LPIS holds are geo-referenced polygons of land parcels (units of management or production), and information on the type of land cover, as a minimum in terms of broad categories such as arable land, grassland, permanent crops, and broad families of crops, with their area (eligible hectares). The LPIS is a pan-EU database that provides very detailed and accurate information on the status of agricultural land cover at any given time since 2005. The potential of the LPIS to efficiently track land use changes is derived from its pan-European semantic definition of agricultural land cover types, and the mandatory adequate update cycle of the dataset. This study assessed other potential datasets, including Eurostat “Land Use/Cover Area Frame Survey” (LUCAS); the Farm Structure Surveys (FSS); the Farm Accountancy Data Network; CORINE Land Cover.JRC.D.5-Food Securit

Orthorectification Tests Continued... Formosat-2 Orthorectification Of Formosat-2 Data for use in The Common Agricultural Policy Control with Remote Sensing Programme

FORMOSAT-2 (NSPO, Taiwan) was launched on 21st of May, 2004. FORMOSAT-2 was programmed as Very High Resolution backup sensor in the CwRS campaign for the first time in 2006 [Ref 1]. Acquisition success rate has been high since it was introduced due to its high (daily) revisit capacity, but difficulties were initially encountered to reach the required location accuracy in production of orthorectified imagery. This resulted in a 1st study (2006) where FORMOSAT-2 imagery over Sofia (BG) was assessed; 4 software suites were tested on this image with low off-nadir viewing angle [Ref 2]. Results were promising, demonstrating that it is possible to perform good orthorectification using standard software packages reaching results inside the CwRS requirements for such imagery (location accuracy preliminary set to 3.5m RMSE1D). In this 2nd study (2007) the aim has been to assess the effect of large off-nadir angles on the accuracy of the orthorectification, and to define the optimal number of GCPs to be used when orthorectifying FORMOSAT-2 images on a routine basis. Results of orthocorrection of 4 images of different off-nadir angles (along/across angles), over 2 sites in France and Bulgaria, using 4 different sw suites (PCI, ERDAS Imagine, PRODIGEO, and Keystone SIPOrtho,) and with varying number of GCPs are discussed. The results are consistent with theoretical expectations; x error increases when across angle (roll) increases, the y error increases when along angle (pitch) increases. Basically the accuracy of 5m RMSE1D is reached with all tested softwares, the 3.5m RMSE1D accuracy may be reached if limits are placed on the acquisition angles. Concerning the GCP requirement a total of minimum 10 GCPs should be used: four GCPs spread in the corners of the scenes, the others evenly distributed, and clearly visible.JRC.G.3-Agricultur

Web services for spatial data exchange, schema transformation and validation as a prototypical implementation for the LPIS Quality Assurance

This article presents an SDI-based approach to implement selected web services within the Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS) Quality Assurance framework, according to the Commission Regulation 1122/2009. The Test Bed uses OGC conforming web services allowing for: (1) agricultural data transformation from national data schemas to the common LPIS Core Model, (2) transferring, validating and storing spatial and non-spatial observations of the quality inspections. The OGC Web Processing Service (WPS) interface specification is used as a basis to allow for interoperable accessing the schema transformation and content validation functionalities of the realised services. The implemented solutions demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed concepts and fit in with current INSPIRE activities