Near real-time large scale (sensor) data provisioning for PLF

Think big, start small. With that thought in mind, Smart Dairy Farming (SDF) developed a platform to make real-time sensor data from different farms available, for model developers to support dairy farmers in Precision Livestock Farming. The data has been made available via a standard interface on an open platform in real-time at the individual animal level. The platform, known as InfoBroker, must furthermore be suitable for a large-scale roll-out. The concept of this InfoBroker is designed as a breakthrough when it comes to making data stored in diverse places available in an efficient manner. Data is not stored centrally, but remains at the source. The InfoBroker is capable of retrieving individual cow data from an infinite number of sources while at the same time serving a large number of models on-demand. For each farm it is specified which data may be released by the InfoBroker. This means that the farmer continues to be the owner of the data. In SDF 1.0 (2011 - 2014) the InfoBroker is developed and used for supporting 7 farmers by providing them 11 different cow-specific work instructions, generated by 3 expert models. This paper describes the results from SDF 1.0 and also the next steps to be made in SDF 2.0 (2015 - 2017): the use of data-driven analyses of the cow centric data and the use of Linked (open) Data technics as a mean for standardizing the exchange of sensor data for the 60 farmers in SDF 2.0 (with an outlook to the 15.000+ farmers in the Netherlands)