Internet-of-Things for Precision Agriculture (IoAT)

Dear Colleagues,

Precision agriculture is core to satisfying the ever-increasing worldwide demand for food products of good quality, whilst allaying the societal concerns over animal welfare and reducing heavily the load on environmental resources. The principle is that if the needs of animals and crops are satisfied at the highest granularity, then farmers and the supply chain including consumers will benefit. Over the recent past, the sector has been subject to an increasing drive towards efficiency and performance enhancement to improve sustainability against a backdrop of increasing demand and the volatile trading environments that may emerge as a consequence of political change.

A direct consequence is that the farmers have less time to execute traditional practices and are becoming increasingly reliant on technology. Thus, there is a growing range of opportunities for the delivery of precision farming solutions through the integration of a mix of hardware and software technologies. In turn, the evolution to new business models based on provisioning a range of services to the agricultural community becomes possible, fueling further the ready uptake of technology for the benefit of all operating within the supply chain.

The solutions required to support this evolution harness a number of technologies that follow Internet of Things (IoT) principles. IoT is a platform that allows a network of devices to communicate, gather data and process information collaboratively in the service of individuals or processes. The solutions rely on engineering data driven by consideration of the impacts in order for the derived product/application/service to be not only fit-for-purpose but can also be easily deployed and maintained with a minimum of perturbation to a sector that has followed entrenched practices for many years. These platforms generate large amounts of data in a variety of formats and is ‘Big’ comprising many different streams of single stranded data, but markedly different from the ‘Big Science Data’ sets routinely encountered in drug development and oil exploration. The data can then be translated into actionable information through machine learning, artificial intelligence, statistical and other advanced techniques, models and methods, to create value for the spectrum of stakeholders across the agricultural supply chain, in so doing optimising production and sustaining the security of the food supply.

The Special Issue will capture the latest innovations from fundamental scientific concepts to commercially robust IoT-inspired solutions (Internet of Agricultural Things—IoAT) relevant to the development and adoption of precision agriculture methodologies. The Guest Editors invite submissions that range from new sensors through cloud-based computing to data-driven applications/services. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• Intelligent Sensing Technologies
• Data Architectures and Management
• Edge Computing
• Network and Communications Technologies
• IoT Platform Integration
• Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence
• Emerging Applications/Services and Cloud Analytics
• Information Visualisation
• Security, Privacy and Trust
• Inter-Operability and Standards
• Emerging Business Models

Prof. Ivan Andonovic
Prof. Craig Michie
Dr. Christos Tachtatzis
Guest Editors

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