Senior Design Projects
ECS193 A/B Winter & Spring 2022
Interactive website displaying farmer priorities to inform research, extension, and policy in California
| ********** | |
| Name | Cameron Pittelkow |
| Affiliation | Plant Sciences |
Project's details
| Project title | Interactive website displaying farmer priorities to inform research, extension, and policy in California |
| Background | Cooperative Extension (CE) is a nationwide network of land-grant university researchers and educators who solve problems in agriculture, the environment, and human and community well-being. They work to foster a connection between the university and the public by delivering science-based information. However, UC Cooperative Extension is facing reductions in personnel, meaning current advisors are stretched thin and need to prioritize their efforts. At the same time, the landscape of California agriculture is rapidly changing and farmers are encountering new challenges such as regulations on labor and inputs. We recently conducted a statewide collaborative needs assessment to give a voice to farmers and others in agriculture to understand their priorities and inform future UCCE programs, increasing engagement and impact. Specifically, we administered an online survey to shed light on common challenges and top concerns of growers, consultants, and allied industry for agronomic crops across the state. Now, our team hopes to disseminate the findings to the general public through an interactive website. This resource will also be critical for state regulatory agencies and policy-makers to identify new opportunities for research, extension, and collaboration. |
| Description | Students working on this project will create an interactive data visualization website that will be hosted on the Agronomy Research and Information Center, or to a newly developed website depending on feasibility. The key idea is for data to be interactive so that users can see how important questions around field crop production differ across county, crop, farm size, and other demographic information. Similar to interpreting human health outcomes across a diverse population, it is critical to divide the survey data into relevant categories to better understand who is impacted and why (e.g. age, gender, eating and exercise habits, etc.). Some examples of what type of data visualizations we are interested in can be found here (1, 2). The project team will work on the following: ● Help UC Cooperative Extension make survey data accessible to the public through the development of flexible and interactive data visualizations that can be added to an existing website (or, to a newly developed website depending on feasibility) ● Testing and improving the visualizations/website by getting feedback from potential end-users of the data ● We (clients) will be available for 1 hr peer week or more to provide guidance. |
| Deliverable | Interactive data visualizations where the user can click on different sub-categories of data to display a new series of bar graphs (or other creative visualizations) ● The addition of these visualizations to a website (either pre-existing, or newly created) Live website with real-world impact for a variety of stakeholders working in agriculture and policy |
| Skill set desirable | The ideal team will have experience with online data visualization tools (some online open-source tools are available) Web development. Preferred frontend skills include design, basic frame of the website, data visualization and interactivity. Backend skills include database management and hosting of web on server and deploying website. |
| Phone number | ********** |
| Client time availability | 30-60 min weekly or more |
| IP requirement | Open source project |
| Attachment | Click here |
| Selected | Yes |
| Team members | N/A |
| TA | Tyler Mayxonesing |