Irriman Platform: Enhancing Farming Sustainability through Cloud Computing Techniques for Irrigation Management

Forcén-Muñoz, Manuel; Pavón-Pulido, Nieves; López-Riquelme, Juan Antonio; Temnani-Rajjaf, Abdelmalek; Berríos, Pablo; Morais, Raul; Pérez-Pastor, Alejandro

Keywords: gis, precision agriculture, Intelligent irrigation, cloud systems, crop sustainability

Abstract

Crop sustainability is essential for balancing economic development and environmental care, mainly in strong and very competitive regions in the agri-food sector, such as the Region of Murcia in Spain, considered to be the orchard of Europe, despite being a semi-arid area with an important scarcity of fresh water. In this region, farmers apply efficient techniques to minimize supplies and maximize quality and productivity; however, the effects of climate change and the degradation of significant natural environments, such as, the “Mar Menor”, the most extent saltwater lagoon of Europe, threatened by resources overexploitation, lead to the search of even better irrigation management techniques to avoid certain effects which could damage the quaternary aquifer connected to such lagoon. This paper describes the Irriman Platform, a system based on Cloud Computing techniques, which includes low-cost wireless data loggers, capable of acquiring data from a wide range of agronomic sensors, and a novel software architecture for safely storing and processing such information, making crop monitoring and irrigation management easier. The proposed platform helps agronomists to optimize irrigation procedures through a usable web-based tool which allows them to elaborate irrigation plans and to evaluate their effectiveness over crops. The system has been deployed in a large number of representative crops, located along near 50,000 ha of the surface, during several phenological cycles. Results demonstrate that the system enables crop monitoring and irrigation optimization, and makes interaction between farmers and agronomists easier.

Más información

Título de la Revista: SENSORS
Volumen: 22
Número: 228
Editorial: MDPI
Fecha de publicación: 2021
Idioma: Inglés
Financiamiento/Sponsor: This research was funded by the International Joint Programming Actions 2017 included in the National R&D&I program on challenges to society by the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness of Spain, National Research Agency (AEI) (PCIN-2017-091)
URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/22/1/228
DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3390/s22010228

Notas: SCOPUS, WOS