Senaps

Transforming stored and real-time raw data into product-ready information for agriculture and land management applications

What is Senaps and how has it helped Digiscape?

Senaps is CSIRO’s Internet of Things (IoT) application enablement and data management cloud-based platform.

It is a framework that ingests real-time sensor and spatial data and allows users to build digital products with complex analytics securely, efficiently and at scale. It also embeds existing predictive models (for example, APSIM, the agricultural production systems simulator) into larger decision support workflows that depend on sensor data.

We created Senaps in 2017 and it has since helped build several Digiscape projects and products faster and easier than they could otherwise have been. It has helped make others possible.

Digiscape products Senaps has enabled include:

• WaterWise – a world-first, cloud-connected, plant-based sensor monitoring platform with advanced data analytics for reducing the water footprint of high value crops
• Graincast™ app – estimated paddock specific soil moisture and crop yield in real time. Now incorporated by Digital Agriculture services (DAS) into their Rural Intelligence Platform™
• Graincast™ forecasts: forecasting grain production at any scale from paddock to region to state to national
• Frost detection – developing a national frost monitoring system
• Vision monitoring – developing a low-cost, smart camera device to monitor the landscape for pest and wildlife management
• AgScore – the first diagnostic tool that tests seasonal climate models for their relevance to agriculture.

Other CSIRO products Senaps has enabled include:

• Ag Data Shop – our one stop destination for exploring and accessing unique CSIRO data products and services
• Net Pasture Production

• Pasture API – Developed for livestock producers, this pasture forecasting system combines local weather, climate forecasts and farm conditions to deliver  pasture production and livestock performance in real-time
• HydraSpectra – an algal bloom early warning sensor system
• Smart Buildings Data Clearing House
• Basin Futures: supporting water resource planning.

Why is this important?

Not only did Senaps enable Digiscape products, but the opposite was also true. Ingesting Digiscape’s real world agricultural-based data and models helped Senaps:

• provide examples, predictive models and other complex analytics use cases to guide the development of model-sensor integration capabilities
• achieve consistency, scalability, credibility and impact as a ‘software as a service’ (SaaS) in agricultural use cases
• improve API design, security and useability, keeping real world users in mind
• be exposed to a whole new range of sensor data leading to opportunities to add new features
• acquire the ability to do business-to-business style delivery of digital impact through APIs, for example.

“By drawing on existing activities in Digiscape and the digital smarts of Senaps, our team was able to build complex scientific workflows to deliver AgScore, the first benchmarking tool to test climate forecasts that are relevant for agricultural applications.” – CSIRO’s Dr Pat Mitchell

Where can I find out more about Senaps?

Senaps is up and running and not only available for Digiscape projects but also agtech businesses.

Find out more about Senaps and some of its agtech customers to date: https://products.csiro.au/senaps/.

Contact the Senaps project leader: