Identification of Landscape Features Eligible for EU Subsidy - Analysis of Large Scale Spatial Data

As part of the EU rural development policy, Member States can allocate EU funds to provide grants for sustainable use of agricultural land. In the Netherlands, agricultural landowners can apply for subsidies to preserve and enhance natural landscape features on their properties. The preservation of these features, such as hedges, trees, wetlands, heathlands and floristically enhanced grass margins, contribute to a diverse landscape and biodiversity. Not every one of these landscape features qualify for subsidy. There are conditions attached to the size, location but also its relationship with other landscape features. FME Desktop was used to identify which landscape features meet the criteria for grant funding. We used as main input the existing Dutch spatial dataset with all physical objects such as roads, water and land. Using the capabilities of FME for spatial analysis we were able to create a dataset with the subsidized features for the entire country. In FME Server we created automations to link the multiple workspaces and fully automate the process of landscape feature selection. Many challenges were faced due to the vast amount of geographical data and their geographical nature. Dividing the country into blocks using a tiling mechanism was a solution to the challenge of balancing high performance with the processing of millions of geographical records. But how can you efficiently monitor which features have been processed, track successful and unsuccessful attempts, and address cases where entire kilometers of areas have failed? Another challenge we addressed was determining which features to analyze in each tile to avoid missing topological relationships with features in adjacent or multiple tiles throughout the country. For example, we needed to ensure that a long water surface and its surrounding banks were simultaneously processed even though were not found in the same tile. FME's capabilities were instrumental in addressing these challenges, resulting in optimal performance and the identification of landscape features eligible for EU subsidies.