During 2020 - 2022 the ITC Faculty has conducted a Tailor-Made Training Plus (TMT+) as a NUFFIC-funded project. The TMT+ with the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) and support from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), was carried out in consecutive stages. The first stage from March 2021 to May 2022 was developed through the online platform MOODLE due to COVID-19 restrictions. The second stage, from June to July 2022 took place at the ITC Faculty in the Netherlands with the visit of 22 participants from Bangladesh. The third stage began with a trip to Bangladesh of five ITC trainers in November 2022.
The Tailor-Made Training Plus ‘Open Source Scientific Computing for AgroGeospatial Big Data Analysis' is coming to an end. The last stage of this TMT+ had three steps: the first consisted of UAV training, the second consisted of a physical workshop and the third step will consist of two online courses.
UAV Training
At the beginning of November 2022, Panagiotis Nyktas, Assistant Professor from the ITC Faculty, conducted a 5-day training in Gazipur (Bangladesh). The 26 participants took part in lectures that dealt with UAV terminology, categories, data types, photogrammetric processing and software and hardware fit for agricultural use cases.
Besides the lectures, the participants followed four practicals for flight planning and data processing utilising two types of data (RGB and multispectral) and three software tools. A demo flight and data acquisition took place on BARI experimental fields using ITC equipment.
Workshop
At the end of November 2022, Professor Andy Nelson, Associate Professor Roshanak Darvishzadeh, Associate Professor Anton Vrieling and Assistant Professor Mahdi Khodadadzadeh from the ITC Faculty visited BARI at Gazipur (Bangladesh) for the opening of this training phase to coordinate the five final projects of 20 participants.
The final workshop with scientific presentations from the five projects took place at the BARC installations in Dhaka (Bangladesh) with the participation of Dr Thijs Woudstra, Deputy Head of Mission and Head of Development Cooperation & Economic Affairs of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (EKN), Mr Osman Haruni, Senior Policy Advisor from Food Security and Agriculture of EKN, Dr Shaikh Mohammad Bokhtiar, Executive Chairman of BARC and Dr Timothy J. Krupnik, Country Representative of CIMMYT-Bangladesh.
This trip also included a visit by Prof. Andy Nelson to the Dutch Embassy in Dhaka to discuss future collaboration opportunities with Mr Folkert de Jager, First Secretary / Thematic Expert of Water Management and Food Security, and alumnus of the University of Twente.
