The team members are Ismail Al Faruqi (Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering, 2019), Muhammad Ilyas Irfan Syiraaj (Information and System Technology, 2019), Izzudin M Hisyam (Agricultural Engineering, 2019), and Muhammad Reza F (Water Resource Engineering and Management, 2019).

ASEAN Geospatial Challenge 2023: Geospatial Youth Edition is a competition for young talents in ASEAN to use technology and geospatial information to support countries in achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This event is organized by Singapore Land Authority (SLA). This competition is participated by undergraduate students from ASEAN universities.

The Ganesha Jogja team chose agriculture and irrigation as their research topic. In an interview with ITB PR reporter, Mail as the team leader said that their proposed topic was a development from their previous competition at the Datathon Jabar Georestart 2022. Mail and his team want to analyze the suitability of agricultural land and Indonesia’s irrigation network prioritization scheme and create a prototype in the form of digital application.

According to the Ministry of Public Works and Housing, around 46% of Indonesia’s irrigation network have some level of damage. The team proposed an idea to create an application that can help stakeholders to identify the location of potential new agricultural land and irrigation system.

The competition takes up quite a lot of Mail and his team time. Mail, who came from Surabaya, did this competition in the midst of his busy schedule as an 8th semester student.

Mail said that his motivation to participate in this competition had existed since 2022 but was delayed due to insufficient ideas and team. December 2022 marked the first step of Mail and his team to prepare for this competition. Mail focused on geospatial data processing, irrigation map output from machine learning and spatial analysis, and building geospatial databases.

Izzudin and Reza were responsible for searching the parameters that will be analyzed. The gathered agricultural and irrigation data will then be processed by Mail. Quite often, they gave each other advice based on their own expertise. The final product was worked on by Ilyas in the form of an application design named ASRI (Agriculture Suitability & Recommendation for Irrigation Priority Development on Mobile Application).

Mail and his team were awarded the first position at the national stage in February 2023. Then they were chosen as the representative of Indonesia to compete at the ASEAN stage on 21 February 2023. On 5 March 2023, the Ganesha Jogja team was announced as the recipient of the Distinction Award. They were invited to the awarding ceremony in Marina Bay, Singapore, on 14-15 March 2023.

“In Singapore, our product attracted a lot of attention. Several parties expressed their hope that our product can reach the implementation stage,” expressed Mail.

The achievement of the Ganesha Jogja team does not end in Singapore. From their prototype, they are planning to take it even further. Mail also said that they will enlist their project at the upcoming Student Creativity Program (PKM).

“Courage to try and prepare long before due,” said Mail.

Reporter: Pravito Septadenova Dwi Ananta (Geological Engineering, 2019)
Photo: Team Doccumentation
Translator: Favian Aldilla R (Civil Engineering, 2019)