Improving the EU agricultural policy using an agent-based system.

Agrifood+AI

Project AGRICORE: Agent-based support tool for the development of agriculture policies.

The AGRICORE project develops a novel tool for improving the current capacity to model policies dealing with agriculture by taking advantage of latest progresses in modelling approaches and ICT. 

Specifically, the AGRICORE tool is built as an agent-based approach where each farm is modelled as an autonomous decision-making entity which individually assesses its own context and makes decisions based on its current situation and expectations. 

This modelling approach allows to simulate the interaction between farms and their context (which accounts for environment, rural integration, ecosystem services, land use and markets) at various geographic scales – from regional to global. To do so, advances in big data, artificial intelligence algorithms, mathematical solvers and cloud computing services are applied to optimize the extremely-long parameterization and calibration phase required by current agent-based tools, to better mimic the modelling of farmers’ behavior and interactions, to credibly assess the local effects of global events and EU policies, and in general to improve policy design, impact assessments and monitoring. 

The AGRICORE tool is made as a highly modular and customizable suite, and is released as an open-source project so institutions can transparently update and improve the tool as needs arise.


Our main tasks

  • Project coordination
  • Synthetic population generation module
  • Non-linear dynamic model of the farm agents
  • AI-based farmer’s behavioral foundation
  • Model interactions
  • Solver call
  • Links with biophysical models
  • Positive-normative configurations
  • Architecture and interface definition
  • External interface module
  • Agent-based simulation module
  • Integration of all AGRICORE modules
  • AGRICORE testing platform evaluation


Partners

AKDENIZ UNIVERTITY | ARISTOTLE UNIVERSITY OF THESSALONIKI | AXIA | INNOVATION | AYESA | COOPERATIVAS AGROALIMENTARIAS DE ANDALUCÍA | EXELISIS | IDENER.AI | INSTYTUT AGROFIZYKI PAN | POLITECHNIKA BYDGOSKA | STAM | UNIVERSITÀ DI PARMA


Start date – finish date

09 / 2019 - 02 / 2024


This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement Nº 816078