A team of volunteer specialists in the Ukrainian office of EPAM Systems, Inc. (NYSE: EPAM), a leading company providing digital transformation and product development services, has developed a platform to collect data for the sowing campaign in Ukraine.
This is a special online platform initiated by the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine. Just two weeks before the sowing, it made it possible to collect and analyze the current state of farms, machinery and fuel, the area of bombarded or mined fields and fields ready for sowing, as well as the available amount of seeds, fertilizers, etc.
In total, more than 2,500 farmers have used the platform and shared data regarding material and technical support considering the conditions of sowing during the war. Minagro specialists conducted a detailed analysis of the received information, communicated with international and Ukrainian partners and directed appropriate assistance when needed.
The ministry considers that 2022 will be the year of the most crucial sowing campaign in the entire history of Ukraine. And it was this platform that made it possible to quickly collect and process the information in the conditions of the onset of war. It also helped to assess the necessary scale of intervention of the state and international partners for a more effective sowing campaign in Ukraine. It is worth noting that a large part of the produce is sold for export, therefore the successful sowing was important not only for Ukraine, but also for the whole world.
A team of 5 specialists from the Ukrainian EPAM office, comprising solution architects, software engineers, developers and designers, volunteered to work on the development of the platform.
The main idea of the platform is to enable farmers to intuitively and quickly fill out the form, and provide the ministry with all the necessary information in an aggregated state suitable for viewing it in the infographic form with a possibility for data manipulation. As a repository for data – Firebase Realtime Database was used, then with the help of Firebase Cloud Functions the data was aggregated in Google BigQuery, to which Google Data Studio was connected to make possible the aggregation with infographics. The result – the specialists from the ministry are able to view the map of Ukraine with daily updates regarding the quantity of agrarian areas for sowing and the details of relevant needs for seeds, fuel, herbicides or pesticides for farmers.
The platform was created in just five days. During its development, all modern requirements for information security and protection were taken into account and data security measures were enhanced due to wartime conditions.