Automated control of compliance with production standards in precision agriculture

Aalto University, P.O. Box 11000, FI-00076 Aalto www.aalto.fi Author Raimo Nikkilä Name of the doctoral dissertation Automated control of compliance with production standards in precision agriculture Publisher School of Electrical Engineering Unit Department of Automation and Systems Technology Series Aalto University publication series DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS 84/2013 Field of research Information systems in agriculture Manuscript submitted 14 January 2013 Date of the defence 7 June 2013 Permission to publish granted (date) 2 April 2013 Language English Monograph Article dissertation (summary + original articles) Abstract Significant manual effort is currently involved in monitoring the compliance of agricultural production with legislation. While this administrative effort has little actual benefit for farms, compliance with legislation, or more generally production standards, is tied to the payout of economically vital farm subsidies. Information technology, together with the data collected automatically in precision agriculture, could alleviate this problem by automatically determining compliance with a significant portion of agricultural production standards. This thesis identifies the technical requirements of automated compliance control, formulates a design that conforms with the requirements of the stakeholders in precision agriculture and evaluates this design. The primary research objective can be further subdivided into three information systems: a farm management information system (FMIS) for precision agriculture, an infrastructure of Web services for automated compliance control and finally, spatial computer inference. These research objectives are addressed with the methodology of design science, using the agricultural field operation of precise fertilisation as the principal use case for automated compliance control. The results consist of information system designs and evaluation of these designs for functionality and feasibility. This thesis contributes the designs for three information systems: a software architecture for an FMIS in precision agriculture, a service infrastructure for automated compliance control and spatial computer inference with an interchangeable rule format. Through their prototype implementations, these are evaluated to constitute the necessary framework for automated compliance control. While technically demanding, automated compliance control with pertinent agricultural legislation is attainable, given the functionality of precision agriculture and the information systems presented in this thesis. However, the feasibility of the process relies on a degree of data interchange, which due to the lack of established data formats is currently difficult in agriculture. On the other hand, parts of the proposed solution can be applicable on a shorter time frame in agriculture or other domains.Significant manual effort is currently involved in monitoring the compliance of agricultural production with legislation. While this administrative effort has little actual benefit for farms, compliance with legislation, or more generally production standards, is tied to the payout of economically vital farm subsidies. Information technology, together with the data collected automatically in precision agriculture, could alleviate this problem by automatically determining compliance with a significant portion of agricultural production standards. This thesis identifies the technical requirements of automated compliance control, formulates a design that conforms with the requirements of the stakeholders in precision agriculture and evaluates this design. The primary research objective can be further subdivided into three information systems: a farm management information system (FMIS) for precision agriculture, an infrastructure of Web services for automated compliance control and finally, spatial computer inference. These research objectives are addressed with the methodology of design science, using the agricultural field operation of precise fertilisation as the principal use case for automated compliance control. The results consist of information system designs and evaluation of these designs for functionality and feasibility. This thesis contributes the designs for three information systems: a software architecture for an FMIS in precision agriculture, a service infrastructure for automated compliance control and spatial computer inference with an interchangeable rule format. Through their prototype implementations, these are evaluated to constitute the necessary framework for automated compliance control. While technically demanding, automated compliance control with pertinent agricultural legislation is attainable, given the functionality of precision agriculture and the information systems presented in this thesis. However, the feasibility of the process relies on a degree of data interchange, which due to the lack of established data formats is currently difficult in agriculture. On the other hand, parts of the proposed solution can be applicable on a shorter time frame in agriculture or other domains.