NEUROPUBLIC’s participation and distinction at the 25th MARS Conference

NEUROPUBLIC participated in the 25th MARS Conference, the European Commission’s annual international event that facilitates the presentation and discussion of Member States’ experiences and general observations regarding the Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS), engaging both the public (e.g. Paying Agencies) and the private (e.g. providers of technology and solutions) sector.

The event was co-organized by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), in collaboration with the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development (DG AGRI) and the Czech Republic Paying Agency for Agriculture (SZIF), in Prague between 26-28 November 2019.

NEUROPUBLIC had a significant presence in this year’s MARS Conference:

1. Corporate stand

A corporate stand was set up and available to Conference participants during the whole duration of the event. NEUROPUBLIC’s Technical Project Manager Yorgos Efstathiou and Machine Learning Engineer Nikolaos Mallios, were on the spot and had the opportunity to discuss with participants about the Earth Observation-based offerings of NEUROPUBLIC for the monitoring of the Common Agricultural Policy and the agricultural sector in general – including the company’s gaiasense smart farming system. Printed and giveaway material were also available at the stand.

2. Presentation

On the 2nd day of the event, NEUROPUBLIC delivered a presentation titled “Deep Learning towards succeeding in the monitoring approach“. The presentation was based on the Pecha Kucha format and provided an overview of NEUROPUBLIC’s coherent solutions in agriculture.

Going in more details, the presentation explained how state-of-the-art Deep Learning algorithms can be successfully applied to EU’s CAP monitoring approach. The presentation demonstrated the great potential of Deep Neural Networks in monitoring tasks such as crop type classification, harvest detection and parcel boundary identification.

3. Poster & Award

Posters were available throughout the duration of the Conference in the main hall and a poster session was arranged on the 2nd day. Conference participants were invited to vote for the best poster based on three factors:

1. Innovation;
2. Relevance;
3. Visual Quality

NEUROPUBLIC’s poster was available in the poster area of the Conference and was awarded with the Best Poster Presentation.

The title of the winning poster is “Towards monitoring: Nationwide crop classification in Greece using Deep Neural Networks” presenting an innovative approach for crop classification using advanced Deep Learning algorithms. The poster can be displayed here.

About the Conference

This year’s MARS Conference, which marked its 25th anniversary, was a highly successful one, a fact validated by the higher number of participants and exhibitors compared to previous years; numerous IACS stakeholders, including Paying Agencies, researchers, providers of Earth Observation-based solutions etc. participated in the Conference, making it the most successful of the series so far.

With the new Common Agricultural Policy focusing even more on the integration of digital technologies for facilitating inspections and improving the services offered to farmers, the digitization of IACS was for once more at the core of related discussions.