Ontology-based reflective Iot middleware-enabled agriculture decision support system

Abstract

Modern agricultural management relies strongly on many different sensing methodologies to provide accurate information on crop, climate, and environmental conditions. Strong challenges in Decision Support Systems still regard the way a smart IoT-based architecture is designed in order to make it robust with respect to the contextual changes it continually undergoes. In this paper we propose an extensible self-adaptive Decision Support System for managing heterogeneous data sources.

Introduction and motivation

Proposed approach and Instantiation of the model

We propose to adopt the reflective paradigm for modeling an IoT middleware, by implementing the software design pattern Reflection[ 2 ]. In this way we can designing a completely configurable and extensible IoT system, adaptable to different operating environments. The main concept in Reflection pattern is the distinction between baselevel and meta-level. Let us consider its instantiation in a use case scenario, i.e. consider the agricultural domain and challenges related to the management of pesticides[ 1 ]. The scheme in Figure 1 is an overview of the implemented framework. The system will automatically perform actions according to the data received by the sensors of devices by matching the set of formal rules. Variables to be monitored are air, temperature, humidity and fine dust emissions.

In this instantiation we model an OWL 2 ontology using part of Agrovoc (a controlled vocabulary covering all areas of interest of the Food and Agriculture Organization) thesaurus concepts and the support of human experts. The ontology contains the main knowledge related to pest management and control with particular reference to the guidelines issued by the Ministry of Agriculture. 3

Conclusion

Agriculture in urban areas have become a new trend. This field is one of the most dangerous of all sectors. We propose an ontology-based Decision Support System enabled by a reflective extension of an IoT middleware. In this way, the proposed tool, using a user-friendly website, Farmers can (i) obtain all the general information related to crops, plant diseases, treatments, commercial products, doses, Active substance, defense plans, fertilizers, and so on; (ii) receive alerts, personalized defense plans, fertilization plans, real-time weather information, etc., after subscribing an account on the website, indicating their crops.

Acknowledgements. The author Francesco Nocera acknowledges support of Exprivia S.p.A Ph.D grant 2016.

References

1. Wasim Aktar , Dwaipayan Sengupta, and Ashim Chowdhury . Impact of pesticides use in agriculture: their benefits and hazards . Interdisciplinary toxicology , 2 ( 1 ): 1 - 12 , 2009 .

2. Frank Buschmann , Kevlin Henney, and Douglas C Schmidt. Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture , Volume 4 , A Pattern Language for Distributed Computing . Wiley, 2007 .