The RECAP project aims to develop an improved remote monitoring of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) obligations and to supplement the in-field inspections procedures, reducing the compliance costs both for farmers and public administrations. RECAP integrates satellite remote sensing and user-generated data into added value services, co-designed and co-created by public authorities, farmers and agricultural consultants. Furthermore, RECAP also offers personalised services for better compliance with the CAP environmental standards and stimulates the development of new added value services through add-ons to the main platform.
Spain, Serbia, Greece, Lithuania and the United Kingdom, the first five countries to pilot to the RECAP project, funded by the European Union H2020 programme, are now able to use an open source software platform to ease the burden of compliance monitoring of EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). RECAP has been applied and validated in five operational environments engaging more than 750 farmers and 470 consultants. In total, 455 inspections, both remote and on-site, have been undertaken by authorised public administration personnel using the platform.
The RECAP is a cloud-based Software as Service (SaaS) platform which combines data generated by remote satellite sensing and user generated data, provided by farmers themselves through mobile devices. The solution models the data for enabling the identification of potential breaches of compliance.
According to project coordinator, Ms Machi Symeonidou: “The participating Public Administrations declared that the RECAP platform made compliance monitoring more transparent and efficient. This was achieved by making every step of the monitoring process visible to all involved parties, and also by remotely monitoring farmers’ compliance thereby reducing the number of on-the-spot-checks.”
The open source RECAP platform allows developers to integrate value adding services through ‘add-ons’, as well as access to the open public data. The open source RECAP platform is currently available on Zenodo, under the GNU General Public License. The remote sensing components are also market-ready.
The RECAP platform includes personalised services, accounting for individual needs and characteristics. Features of the platform include: alerts for time-bound CAP obligations and guidance for meeting the required standards. The platform allows to store CAP rules documentation, compliance application documents and records of geo-referenced and time-stamped satellite photos.
“By putting end users and service providers at the heart of platform development and taking account of their feedback, we were able to identify obstacles early and so deliver a platform adapted to the real needs of target users,” says Symeonidou.