The integrator platform is designed for anyone interested in agricultural lands. The system contains data on 22 rural areas of the Chelyabinsk Region: satellite images, land plot boundaries, arable land, forests, and populated areas. Electronic maps are made "layer by layer": municipal lands, private lands, and federal lands.
"Our system allows you to check the condition of the selected area: whether the land is being cultivated or abandoned," says Valentina Maksimova, Director of the SUSU Geoinformation Systems Research and Education Centre. "Its users can see whether their field borders on a forest in order to carry out fire prevention measures and plough the land. If a fire is detected via satellite, a "thermo spot" is added to the map, by clicking on which you can find out the owner or tenant of the area and quickly contact them. The data is updated twice a day."
The development by the Chelyabinsk scientists shows all changes virtually in real time: how settlements are expanding, what crops are sown in the fields, what plots have been sold or leased. Agricultural producers and district agricultural departments also contribute up-to-date data. Space images are updated every two weeks. The quality is such that you can see, for example, a plowed hayfield, or that limestone or sand has begun to be mined on a plot of land.
The scientists have been working on their integrator platform since 2014, consistently solving various problems. At first, the goal was to inventory lands, generate reports and send them to the Ministry of Agriculture. Then it was necessary to identify economically attractive areas, and the scientists taught the system to calculate options that are interesting for a potential investor.
"The platform takes into account key factors: how free the area is, who it belongs to, whether it is close or far from a road, a body of water, a populated area, a gas station, or a grain storage facility," explains Valentina Maksimova. "Plus, the UralGIS Agro system includes maps of the chemical composition of the soil, and even such a concept as "hilliness", because not all equipment can operate in case of elevation differences, and much more fuel is spent in such areas. Using space spectral images, the system determines the degree of land abandonment, the amount of young tree growth."
An investor can calculate the economics of a field with one click of a button: what crops are best to plant, what fertilizers to apply. The system has practical functionality: you can upload data from sensors with operating equipment and watch online how tractors move in the field, and what agricultural operations they perform.
Over time, the developers turned their product into a semi-automated cadastre. It contains maps and information starting from 1990, when state farms still existed, and the first shareholders only appeared after the collapse of the USSR. The scientists found all these lists in archives, digitized them, systematized them in Excel tables, and compared them with the current situation. UralGIS Agro identifies potentially unclaimed share lands.
The development by the SUSU scientists was highly appreciated by specialized departments. It is used by the authorities of the Chelyabinsk Region, but the UralGIS Agro system can also be scaled up to the whole of Russia. The industry software product is suitable for any region, the most important thing is to systematize, digitize the data, and convert it into cartographic formats.