As announced at the GODAN Summit, the GODAN Action project has published a global map of standards relevant to the exchange of agriculture and nutrition data. The GODAN Action partners are now calling on their network of experts to contribute to this new global map.

We are building on two existing portals: the AIMS VEST Registry of FAO and the AgroPortal of University of Montpellier / Stanford University, so we aren’t starting from scratch or duplicating efforts. We are looking for the community to drive improvements to the platform. We want this map to be maintained beyond the end of the project, as a common asset of the community working with agricultural and nutrition data.

Now we ask for your help in completing and improving this map of standards.

We need your help if:

• You are the owner / manager of a standard / vocabulary relevant for food and agriculture-related data;
• You know of any standard / vocabulary relevant for food and agriculture-related data that is not currently in the map;
• You are an expert in open data standards.

Check the current map:
http://vest.agrisemantics.org
 

And if you can, help us in any of the following ways:

• Add new standards that are not in the map yet.
  Click on Contribute: you can register/login (it’s just an access account, we don’t ask for additional information) and once logged in click on “Add vocabulary” under Contribute.
   
• “Claim” a standard that is already there and improve its description.
  Once logged in you can click on “Claim” on the standard page and explain what your responsibility is for that standard. We will grant you access to edit the description of that standard.
   
• Complete the short survey highlighted on the website.
  This will help us improve the way the map is organized and offer better functionalities.
   

All those who add or improve the description of a standard, as well as those who complete the survey, will be acknowledged on the website.

In the next phase, we will call on you again for a better analysis of gaps in the availability and usability of standards: our final objective is to make these standards easier to use and therefore more used in data exchange.

Many thanks to all those who will contribute to this endeavor.

GODAN Action is a 3.5 year project funded by the UK’s Department for International Development and led by international partners with strong agriculture, nutrition and data expertise including Wageningen UR – Alterra, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR), the Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Cooperation (CTA), the Land Portal, AgroKnow, the Open Data Institute (ODI), AidData, the Institute of Development Studies (IDS).