Service design for climate-smart agriculture

Holistic information systems for climate-smart agriculture demands the seamless integration of various categories of climate,meteorological and weather data.Any actor in the agricultural value chain may harness weather forecasts at the short and medium-range,local weather history,and prevailing climatic conditions,to inform decision-making.Weather is fundamental to many day-to-day operations,especially at farm-level,influencing decision-making at various spatial and temporal scales.Many operational decisions ideally require hyper-localized service provision.In practice,integrating weather information into decision-support services demands a comprehensive understanding of various categories of weather-related data,their genesis,as well as the specific standards and data formats used by the meteorological community.This paper considers the weather as a crucial context for the delivery of farm-level operational services in smart agriculture,highlighting critical issues for reflection by system designers during the service design and implementation phases.