The German Development Cooperation initiative FAIR Forward has started a tender process on "Collection of Geospatial Field Data & Organization of Data Challenges for an AI-driven Open-Source Crop Map of Telangana". FAIR forward is an organization that strives for an open, inclusive and sustainable approach to AI on an international level by working together with five partner countries - Ghana, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, and India. The initiative is part of Germany’s AI strategy, commissioned by the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), and implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmBH. 

FAIR Forward has partnered with the DoA & ITE&C department of the Government of Telangana to sustainably enhance the use of open Machine Learning for Earth observation (ML4EO) and support the development of an AI-based crop type map for the State of Telangana. This is part of FAIR Forward's goal to "remove entry barriers to AI and improve access to training data and AI technologies for local innovation".  

According to the tender notice released by the organization, ground-truth data for the training and testing of AI models is required. ML and AI, when combined with satellite imagery, offer a wide range of opportunities in agricultural practices. The usefulness and quality of the model will depend on the quality of the data. 

Trained AI models will lay the foundation for AI-driven agricultural surveying, crop identification and more advanced analytics such as health & disease monitoring and yield estimation. This supports evidence-based decision-making for sustainable agriculture and boosts Telangana's agricultural sector by enabling local companies and NGOs to develop innovative applications for farmers and the state.  

The primary objective is the creation and publication of a high-quality, open-access ground-truth training dataset for different crops in Telangana. Organization of a data challenge that uses openly available satellite imagery to build an ML model to predict crop type classes for a dataset and roadmap implementation of AI solution for crop classification. 

The organization has called for proposals from bidding forms in hard copy and in a sealed envelope. The detailed documentation with regards to this call for proposals includes terms of reference for the assignment, a grid for assessing the eligibility of firms, a technical evaluation grid, bidding conditions and financial formats. 

The deadline for submitting the proposal is 19th October 2022 by 5:30 PM.