Update of the Italian national agro-meteorological network

CAE has won an important tender, launched by CREA, relating to the four-year framework agreement for the “turnkey” supply and maintenance of 39 stations, located throughout the Italian national territory, for the acquisition of the data necessary for the reconstruction of meteorological events (temperature, rainfall, relative humidity, etc.) of the national agro-meteorological network (RAN).

The Council for Agricultural Research and for the Analysis of the Agricultural Economy (CREA) is a public research body subject to the supervision of the Italian Ministry for Agricultural, Food, Forestry Policies (MIPAAF) and the current national agro-meteorological network reports to it; this network consists of a set of automatic monitoring stations, located in mainly agricultural areas, whose construction began in 1991 and then continued in the following years with the creation of a wider network, spread throughout the national territory.

Currently, the 39 monitoring stations that compose the network need an adaptation. For this reason, the framework agreement was signed with CAE, which won the tender and will take care of the disposal of the old stations, as well as of the supply, installation and maintenance of the new ones.

The monitoring network, located throughout the country, will be populated by the brand new CAE stations powered by a solar panel rechargeable battery, equipped with a Compact datalogger and new sensors such as: radiometer, THS thermo-hygrometer, leaf-wetness sensors, anemometer, PG2R rain gauge, barometer, thermometers for surface and soil temperatures.

The stations will be equipped with a UMTS/GPRS modem, that will send the detected data to the CREA control unit in Rome, on a Cloud web platform, where, thanks to the new software for acquisition and display via WEB provided by CAE, it will be possible to perform continuous and real-time monitoring, as well as to allow station configuration, alarm management and data validation. CAE will guarantee not only supply but also services: the stations will be maintained thanks to a preventive and corrective maintenance service, together with remote maintenance and assistance, and an H24 availability service.

The agro-meteorological quantities measured by the RAN stations will be used for the reconstruction of meteorological events (temperature, rainfall, relative humidity, etc.), as well as for the monitoring of the agricultural season. The data collected will be acquired on an hourly basis and systematically checked as far as their correctness, physical and weather/climate consistency, before being archived in the CREA Cloud web platform and subsequently in the National Agro-meteorological Database of the National Agricultural Information System (SIAN).

In these days the first executive contract is being signed, resulting from the signing of the framework agreement. This first contract is about the “turnkey” supply and maintenance of the first 12 stations, which will replace as many non-operative control units of the national agro-meteorological network, as well as of the software infrastructure for data acquisition and display.


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