News

On the 23rd and 24th of May 2023 the AgRAIN project met in Aachen on site of INTEWA for the final dissemination workshop. The workshop was held in a hybrid format to give participants from West African countries the possibility to attend without traveling. We were happy to welcome ~30 online participants from 7 different countries. Please see the agenda in case you are interested in certain presentation do not hesitate to contact us. We are happy to share our findings.

You can watch the second day where we presented our hands on developments by UBIMET, nowcast and INTEWA online. Please contact us for the credentials (jonas.meier@dlr.de)

From 24th - 28th of April we attended the International Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment in Antalya, Turkey. We presented results of the AgRAIN project about the Rice Mapping and the Suitability Analysis and discussed the possibilites of the developed approaches with international known experts. The AgRAIN contribution with the title Suitability Analysis of Rice Cropping in Burkina Faso: Assessing the Gap between Current and Potential Rice Cropping Area was a cooperation between the AgRAIN partners DLR, WASCAL, Dreyer Foundation and the International Water Management Institution (IWMI)

Copyright ©2022 39th International Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment | All rights reserved.

We are happy to announce that the duration of the AgRAIN project was extended to May 2023. In this time we will finalize the developments and will prepare a finale dissemination workshop to present the developments to a large community.

In May 2022 the DLR presented parts of the results from AgRAIN at the ESA Living Planet Symposium 2022 in Bonn. The contribution was a joint work between the DLR, WASCAL and the Dreyer Foundation.

In January 2022 the University of Augsburg and WASCAL organized a 2-day-hybrid (online/presence) Workshop for 50 West African scientists on climate information data from commercial microwave links (CMLs) with speakers from the University of Augsburg, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and WASCAL. The workshop was held in English with simultaneous translation into French.

In December 2021 DLR was organizing the intermediate workshop with all AgRAIN partners in a joint online conference. Participants were the German partners DLR, INTEWA and the University of Augsburg, UBIMET from Austria as well as the partners from Burkina Faso Gisbert Dreyer from the Dreyer Foundation and representatives of WASCAL and the DLR Project Management Agency (DLR-PT). The project progress was shown in different presentations and overlapping topics were discussed. We all hope that the next workshop will takes place in presence.

AgRAIN was invited for a contribution to the Client2 conference in Berlin. The AgRAIN presentation was part of the project presentation session 3: Adaption to climate change & Water management. Our contribution was met with interest from the audience. After the presentations we had the possibility to exchange with other projects related to Africa to how to deal with problems and how to preserve the outcomes of the project in a sustainable way.

https://client2-konferenz.adelphi.de/programme/27-october

For a brief introduction to the AgRAIN project, watch this video:
https://www.bmbf-client.de/publikationen/video-projektpraesentation-agrain

The remote sensing worshop focusing on Vegetation Mapping Using Google Earth Engine organized by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), in cooperation with WASCAL, was a great success. About 100 participants attended the 2-day workshop, 25 in presence in Ouagadougou at the competence center of WASCAL.

The workshop was open for students, scientists, representatives of public authorities or NGO’s or Start-Up’s working with geospatial data and remote sensing at different levels – from beginners to experts. The workshop was held in English with simultaneous translation into French.

In the next post we provide you the records of the workshop in the original English version and in a simultanious translated version in French. The records are open for users under the
Creative Commons License for non commercial use (CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0).

If this is not working please find the records in Materials.
Please feel free to ask for the password.

The German Aerospace Center (DLR), in cooperation with WASCAL, is offering a remote sensing workshop focusing on Vegetation Mapping Using Google Earth Engine as part of the AgRAIN project. The workshop will be held as a hybrid webinar online and with a limited numbers of participants in the WASCAL Competence Centre in Ouagadougou.
When: 19th – 20th of October 2021
Where: Online/Ouagadougou
Registration: click here
The Workshop is free of charge and addresses students, scientists, representatives of public authorities or NGO’s working with geospatial data and remote sensing at different levels – from beginners to experts. The workshop will be held in English with simultaneous translation into French. You are cordially invited to attend.

The announcement is also published on the WASCAL homepage
We will keep you informed about the program and the technical requirement of the workshop.

Due to the travel restrictions some project goals were adjusted. The water tank and irrigation system is now implemented as a prototype in Germany and will run under different drought conditions to test the performance of the system. If the results are promising, further steps will be taken to enable implementation in Burkina.

Tunnel system for rainwater harvesting.

Soil above the tunnel system.

Prototype planted with vegetables.

The final prototypes. One of them runs under different drought conditions the other one as a reference system.

Prototypes protected by rain.

Measuring instruments in different depths to monitor the water availability for the plants. The system runs without energy and is only driven by the capillary action of the soil.

At the end of November all AgRAIN partners met for a joint online conference. Due to travel restrictions a personal meeting was not possible. Participants were the German partners DLR, INTEWA and the University of Augsburg, UBIMET from Austria as well as the partners from Burkina Faso Gisbert Dreyer from the Dreyer Foundation and representatives of WASCAL. The AgRAIN partners defined overlaps between the project partners that are particularly important for the cooperation in AgRAIN. Furthermore, all partners presented the current status of the project and discussed open questions and problems.

The first annual AgRAIN conference was successfully organized as a web conference. The German project participants (DLR, University of Augsburg, INTEWA) and our colleagues from Austria (UBIMET) presented the current status of the project and discussed the next steps. Despite the restrictions caused by COVID-19, we were able to successfully tackle and implement the planned projects. After the more conceptual and theoretical work, we now focus on the practical implementation and on-site work. We are happy that Ms Petra Kontny from DLR-PT also joined the meeting with warm greetings and valuable information. Mr Gisbert Dreyer from the Dreyer Foundation was able to give us some insights into the current situation in Burkina Faso, also with regard to security issues. Despite the uncertain situation, we hope that we can travel to Burkina Faso before the next rainy season in April 2021 and implement the plan on site.

New challenges demand creative solutions.

Despite travel restrictions and home office, the project is running and other ways are being explored to share ideas, monitor the project progress and plan future actions. Stay healthy!

Even though all preparations were made, venue, hotels and flights were booked, and we were looking forward to meet our African project participants, the planned trip to Burkina Faso for a joint AgRAIN meeting is postponed due to the current threat of the Corona Virus. Together with our colleagues we are working on a solution how to catch up for a meeting as soon as possible. Stay healthy!

On 18th and 19th of November, all German project participants and DLR-Projektträger met for the AgRAIN Kick-Off-Meeting at DLR’s Earth Observation Center (EOC) in Oberpfaffenhofen. Project related issues were discussed and the planning for the first joint trip to Burkina Faso was started. In spring 2020, the German AgRAIN project members will travel to Burkina Faso to meet the African project participants for a first joint AgRAIN meeting in Ouagadougou. Furthermore, a visit of the Dreyer Foundation in Dano – were the prototype rainwater harvesting and irrigation system will be installed in the course of the project – is planned during this trip.