The Spanish agri-food cooperative Dcoop, the biggest olive oil producer worldwide, assessed the benefits of the MED-GOLD Dashboard for the olive and olive oil sector in an online workshop held on June 15, 2021.
During the event, six Dcoop representatives evaluated the potential of the easy-to-use visualisation tool (the Dashboard) developed during the MED-GOLD project. This tool was co-developed with different users to ensure that it addresses the needs and expectations of the olive sector. The Dashboard provides access to past climate information and future predictions at different time scales, to support the adaptation of the olive and olive oil sector to the impacts of climate change.
Climate predictions are becoming crucial for olive growers and olive oil producers to increase the resilience of the sector to the effects of climate change, which in the near future is likely to exacerbate extreme weather and climate events, such as droughts and heatwaves.
The workshop, run in Spanish, was facilitated by partners from Dcoop, Barcelona Supercomputing Center and GMV. Workshop participants represented different departments of Dcoop, including olive oil logistics, quality of olive mills, R+D+i, the olive oil laboratory and the section of table olives. Participants had the opportunity to have a preview of the MED-GOLD Dashboard. The demonstration was performed by Javier Lopez (Dcoop/MED-GOLD), who explained the main aspects related to the service, focusing on the Andalusian region and the olive sector, and described the different time scales and climate variables the users can find on the dashboard.
Afterwards, Dcoop participants completed a questionnaire on different aspects regarding the usability of the dashboard and the added value that it can bring to the olive sector. All the comments and suggestions gathered will be useful to define the project results and to improve the tool, as well as extending it to other agri-food sectors in the future, to help them better adapt to climate change.
The workshop was well-received by Dcoop representatives, and those who had participated in previous workshops congratulated the MED-GOLD project for the progress achieved in the new version of the dashboard shown during the online workshop. However, participants suggested that increasing the benefits of the tool for the olive and olive oil sector would require to sustain and exploit the tool after the project’s lifetime as well as to personalise the dashboard by allowing the creation of different profiles that will make it more intuitive and usable for a wider range of users.
Explore the User Guide of the MED-GOLD Dashboard for olive and olive oil sector users.
Written by José L. Cánovas (Barcelona Supercomputing Center)
