Unlocking crop protection models for decision support: web infrastructure and integration

Decision support systems (DSS) in crop protection provide valuable support for pest risk prognosis and recommendations for pest control, enabling farmers to make better-informed decisions. As a part of the European Union’s strategy for the sustainable use of plant protection products, the “IPM Decisions” project developed an online platform that gives farmers and advisors access to a wide range of DSS for major pests, weeds, and diseases in a variety of crops across Europe. Multiple DSS models relevant for different crops and geographical regions of Europe were selected for integration in the platform. Information on the models is compiled into a model catalogue, which serves as a core component of the IPM Decisions platform. To facilitate the use of these models, two application programming interfaces (APIs) were developed. In line with the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) principles, the DSS API provides access to models and their metadata, including descriptions of input and output parameters. The weather API enables access to European online weather data sources and adapts this data to meet the requirements of DSS models. While these APIs are integrated into the IPM decisions platform, they are also open source, allowing other crop protection and farm management software to inspect, download, modify, install, run, and use them. In this article, we describe the development of the DSS and weather APIs, outline their structure and definitions, and present the services that DSS API and weather API provide. Finally, we demonstrate their application through three practical use cases.