NIBIO

The Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomics (NIBIO) is a government agency with special authorizations and its own board, subject to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. The head office is in Ås. The institute has several regional units and a branch office in Oslo.

Through research and knowledge production, NIBIO will contribute to food security, sustainable resource management, innovation and value creation within the food, forest and other bio-based industries. The government agency will provide research, administrative support and knowledge for use in national preparedness, administration, business and society at large. NIBIO is to be the national leader in developing knowledge about bioeconomics.

As part of the fulfillment of its social mission, NIBIO maps Norwegian agricultural land, how the land is used, soil quality and potential for cultivation. Aggregated statistics for Norwegian municipalities and counties are made publicly available through a service NIBIO has called the area barometer. The information in the area survey provides an important basis for decision-makers and contributes to increased knowledge and awareness about Norwegian agriculture, for the benefit of all stakeholders. At a time when the need for preserving food soil is constantly being weighed against other interests, it is very important that decisions are made based on updated data.

In the past, the service has been prepared manually for each municipality and county, preferably in text format. This has been very time-consuming work and has required considerable resources. NIBIO has therefore wanted to automate this process to streamline its work.

The assignment from NIBIO:

• Design and develop a digital solution for the Area Barometer for all counties and municipalities in Norway.
• Create an intuitive and efficient design, ensuring a relevant and user-friendly service for everyone.
• Simplify the process of updates and any further development.

• Forte Digital has built a solution for a dynamic display of statistics on agriculture, agricultural area and landscape data for counties and municipalities in Norway.
• The service is built in React with server-side rendering (SSR) and runs in a node.
• Data is presented in table and graph form using the graph library Highcharts.
• The texts are generated dynamically based on data merged into templates retrieved from Sanity headless CMS. The computer model Forte Digital has built-in Sanity supports both Bokmål and the New Norwegian language.
• Website: Arealbarometer

The digitization ensures that the information in Arealbarometeret is up to date and available to all stakeholders at all times. NIBIO has put in place a user-friendly and convenient service consisting of a thin frontend application built on top of APIs. Since the application is based on APIs, NIBIO will be able to work on data quality maintenance and immediately see this reflected in the service.

This architecture enabled, among other things, a seamless transition to a new municipality and county structure. The entire system was updated from day one in accordance with the new municipal reform. During 2020, a lot of time will go to further development, based on useful and valuable feedback NIBIO has received from its users.