Calculation of the water balance and analysis of agriculture drought data using a business intelligence (BI) system

Abstract

One of the goals of the ongoing project BOBER (acronym for Better Observations for Better Environmental Solutions), founded by SEA (Slovenian Environment Agency) and co-funded by European Union through Cohesion Fund is the consolidation of data, knowledge, experience and tools for monitoring and analysis of data of agriculture drought. One of the challenges is computing of soilcrop water balance and irrigation needs based on meteorological, soil and crop data for different crops and locations. The process of water balance calculation is part of the ETL mechanism (E-Extract, T-Transformation, L-Load), results are stored in the data warehouse and can be visualised and further analysed on the dashboards in the form of numbers, graphs and geographical maps. From a technical point of view this BI solution is based on an Oracle set of tools. This set of tools is specific to a certain degree, because they have an Oracle Spatial database extension used for storing geolocated data in the database and MapViewer for visualising data on the geographical maps.