Purpose

This document provides the description and specifications for Assessment Task 2 – Team Project (AT2). After you have read the following background description and assignment specifications, you should refer to the associated BISM7206 Team Project - Formatting and Submission Requirements document. If your team has any questions after you have read both documents and researched the issue, please post your questions to the ‘Assessment Task 2 – Team Project’ forum on the Discussion Board under the relevant thread.

Background

While Southeast Queensland agriculture supports a diverse range of plant and livestock industries, Sienna and Jake  Marshall focus their farming within the  horticultural  industry.  In  particular, the Marshalls grow strawberries and tomatoes on their farm at Beerwah on the Sunshine Coast. Sienna and Jake are young, very well educated and tech savvy. Their respective families were also farmers, so Sienna and Jake have hands-on farming experience.

Sienna and Jake both attended university and completed degrees in Agricultural Engineering. Their final year project required investigation of the accuracy and capacity of unmanned aerial systems (UASs) and imaging technologies for biosecurity surveillance in horticultural industries. Sienna and Jake  believed  these  emerging  technologies  and  the ‘smart  farming’  methods  and  tools  would maximize crop yields and other agribusiness outcomes.

Essentially, smart farming uses agricultural technology encompassing a broad range of disciplines and devices including autonomous machines, robotics, drones, mobile devices, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and satellites. In an era of ubiquitous automation and digital connectivity, Sienna and Jake decided they had to implement smart farming on their farm.

The application of these smart farming tools and techniques has optimised the Marshall’s farming activities, from  monitoring fields  and  using  drones for  pesticide  delivery to  creating the  perfect greenhouse  climate  and  harvesting. Although the  Marshalls  are  happy with their  smart farming achievements, they want to undertake some off-farm activity to generate further income. In this context, Jake would like to pursue his enthusiasm for smart farming and especially drones, by offering farming technologies to neighbouring farms as a paid service. For example, farmers could hire Jake to make harvest predictions using his drones, cameras, sensors, and artificial intelligence to count the number of flowers and fruit on their plants. Other services might include monitoring the health of plants, identifying diseases, spreading predatory insects and more. Jake hopes that other horticultural farmers will embrace the new technology and will be keen to hire Jake and his smart farming services.

To better understand the business potential of neighbouring farms, Jake wants to develop a business system called the Smart Farming System (SFS), to identify and categorise data about horticultural farms in the Sunshine Coast region. For example, SFS should maintain records about each horticultural farm within the Sunshine Coast region including the farmer’s name, address (including the local area), email address and phone number. Jake needs to know the crop types (commodities) grown on each farm  and  recognises  that  it  is  common  to  grow  more  than  one  type  e.g.,  the  Marshalls  grow strawberries and tomatoes. Ideally, the GPS coordinates for the location of each crop type as well as the field size would also be stored in the SFS.

For each crop type, Jake also wants the SFS to store the crop’s botanical name, a brief description, and the sub-industry it belongs to (e.g., vegetables). The names and descriptions of diseases and pests (e.g., insects) that commonly attack these crop types also needs to be stored. In the future, Jake hopes the SFS will include methods for preventing and eradicating pests and diseases, as well as images of affected plants. However, this requires significant research and will not be included in the SFS initially.

The  Marshalls  believe  that  embracing  technological  advancement  is  the  key  to  cost-effective agribusiness and they are keen to incorporate ‘digital agriculture’ into their future business strategies. Digital agriculture is the next generation of farming methods and tools using big data analytics and artificial  intelligence technology.  Data collected and analysed  is  based on satellite  data which  is processed and interpreted and enables farmers to gain a deep understanding of the overall state of their farms. While the Marshalls are keen to pursue this innovative approach, they realise that future growth strategies need to have the fundamental business information systems in place. To start with, therefore, the SFS will focus on the basic needs of Jake’s new business venture.

Some  of the  required  data  for  the  SFS  is  contained  in  a  large  dataset Jake  acquired  from  the Queensland  Department  of  Agriculture.  The  dataset  contains  records  for  various  agricultural industries in the north, south, and central state divisions of Queensland. He plans to use some of this data to determine the gross production value (GPV) of crop types within the Sunshine Coast. For example, Jake will compare the total GPV of strawberries against the total GPV of tomatoes to determine the crops with the highest production value which can be used as the best entry point for his business venture.

Jake will only be offering his SFS services to horticultural farms and initially, wants to limit his potential customers to those that  grow fruits,  nuts  and vegetables  including the following  crop types  or commodities: strawberries, tomatoes, pineapples, and bananas. Jake also wants to limit his travelling distance within the Sunshine Coast region to a subset of local areas including the following:

• Caloundra West

• Beerwah

•    Palmwoods

• Glass House Mountains

• Bli Bli

•    Landsborough

At this stage, the dataset contains more records and data than Jake requires, and it is challenging for him to determine the best way to export and integrate the data into the SFS. The Marshalls recognise that the success of the new business venture will largely depend on easy and timely access to accurate, complete, consistent, and useful information. Jake has done some research and believes that a well-structured database system would address his requirements. While being tech savvy, Jake does not have database development skills; nor does he have sufficient time to acquire these skills.

Consequently, your database design consultancy team has been hired to make recommendations for the development of Phase 1 of the SFS. Ultimately, a centralised database system that maintains data about the complete business will be required. Initially, however, a phased approach needs to be adopted to limit the extensive nature and complex possibilities of the SFS. Fundamentally, Phase 1 of the SFS database should enable access to the basic details about farms, crop types grown on those farms, and the diseases and pests that commonly attack those crop types within the Sunshine Coast region. Phase 1 will also include the gross value of the crop types.

Your team should consider the future growth of the SFS when designing Phase 1 of the proposed system. Therefore, Phase 1 should be designed in a manner that will enable the integration of future enhancements and additional functionality. However, your design should reflect the “as-is” processes or current requirements, not the “to-be” state and future requirements, of the SFS business venture.

Phase 1 Limitations and Assumptions:

You are only required to complete the first Phase of the project which has a limited scope.

Please take into consideration the following assumptions which may simplify your database design:

•    A particular crop type only grows in one field or location on a farm.

•    Only one variety of crop species is grown e.g., although many varieties of strawberry grow on the Sunshine Coast including Red Rhapsody, Juliette, Scarlet Rose and others, this assignment assumes only one variety is grown.

•    Assume that each crop type can only be attacked by one disease and only one pest.

•    For horticultural crops, the rural land/field sizes are best stored as hectares. For consistency, if any land/field sizes are specified in acres, Jake wants this to be converted to an approximate size in hectares (based on ten acres being equivalent to approximately four hectares).

• All GVP amounts should be in Australian dollars and should whole dollars.

Further assumptions made by your consultancy team should be documented and justified in your business report.

To avoid potentially unnecessarily complex designs, please post questions that you might ask the end- user, to the ‘Assessment Task 2 – Team Project’ forum on the Discussion Board under the relevant thread.

Assignment Specifications and Deliverables

Your database design consultancy team has been asked to design and develop a well-structured database for the SFS based on the previous background narrative and the stated limitations and assumptions. You are required to write a professional business report that includes or addresses the following:

1) Team charter:

Your team should have completed a team charter. Please provide documentation of elements in your team charter that address the following:

a)   Work breakdown and task allocation.

b)   Team  dynamics  including  communication  methods,  action  to  be  taken  for  poor  team performance and conflict resolution.

2) Logical database design (SFS DB Phase 1):

a)    Using Crows Foot notation, construct a relational data model that shows the logical database design (use app.diagrams.net). Your model should be based on the background narrative, limitations and assumptions, and the dataset referred to below in 4) Cleanse and import data.

a)   Create  a  data  dictionary  with  details  about  each  relation  including  attribute  names, descriptions, SQL data types and sizes as well as integrity constraints on the data and any default values. Your data dictionary should be presented as a set of tables in your report and it is suggested that you consider changing the Page Orientation to Landscape in this section to make it more readable.

3) Relational Schema

Draw a  relational schema  based on the  logical  database design  using app.diagrams.net. The relational schema should be drawn in the same way as the Week 4 Tutorial, remembering to include all relations and appropriate key notation.

4) Cleanse and import data:

Jake  has  provided  you  with  an  excel  workbook  containing  the  dataset  acquired  from  the Queensland Department of Agriculture (AgTrendsDataset.xlsx). It is likely that there will be errors in the dataset so you are required to cleanse and filter this data so that data imported into the new database is required. accurate, complete, and consistent. You are required to use this data to populate part of the new database (and incorporate this into your logical database design).

a)   Cleanse and filter the worksheet and import the data into the new database :

•    In addition to Jake’s requirements already specified in the background narrative, not all data in the dataset is required in the SFS. For example, Jake does not need data in the Division or Industry columns.

•    Document the step-by-step process you apply to achieve the requirements of 4a. e.g.

- What did you change or do to cleanse and filter the data in each step?

- How did you import the data into the new database?

•    Carefully consider and apply the details in the background narrative.