Space Apps Challenge 2017

Background

If everyone on Earth lived like the average Australian, we would need 9.3 Earths to support the ecological demands of humanity. Therefore, it is important that we utilise our available land to as efficiently as possible to maximise the amount of resources we can extract from it.

There are large areas of Australia, particularly in the central regions, with few human inhabitants. These regions tend to be quite far from the larger cities that lie along the coastline and generally have a far more barren and hot climate. Terra Farmers aims to investigate how this vast unoccupied land could be utilised to grow crops to keep up with the ever-increasing demand for food.

Terra Farmer is an innovative tool designed to inform policy makers, investors and thought leaders regarding the benefits and pitfalls of geoengineering the unproductive regions of the expansive Australian landscape.

The application implements a state-of-the-art hydrological model and predictive statistical analysis incorporating Big Data sourced from NASA, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, and other prominent organisations to anticipate the impact of water resource management and the optimal approach for the expansion of productive land. Potentially arable land is identified based on temperature, rainfall, solar exposure, topography, soil quality and groundwater availability data.

Our potential end users are agricultural organisations and governments in countries with scarce arable land. We aim to first capture the global market for geoengineering analytics with the potential to pivot towards the space colonisation industry. As the techniques necessary to address the environmental challenges on Mars are a natural extension of those on Earth, our tool is highly adaptable to terraforming the Martian environment.

With Terra Farmer, engineers will be provided invaluable insight into the prospects of hydrological terraforming, giving them the ability to add value to marginal land. Terra Farmer will expedite the feasibility study process, optimising time management within the agricultural-industrial complex and playing a pivotal role in ushering in a new post-scarcity era of peace, love and prosperity.

Resources

Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology

Australian Bureau of Statistics

User guide for Land use of Australia 2010–11, Australian Government Department of Agriculture and Water Resources

Groundwater in Australia, National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training, Australia.

DIVA-GIS (http://www.diva-gis.org/gdata)

QGIS 2.8.6-Wien