Information Technology Reference
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field quantitatively is imperative. Second one is the efficient knowledge transfer.
Most of often, long term experience and intuition are required for cultivation.
Therefore, quantifying invisible empirical knowledge and transferring tacit
knowledge to explicit knowledge are absolutely necessary. And also the case base
reasoning is significant. Third one is the optimization and risk management to support
making decision during cultivation based on acquired data and knowledge. Last one is
the framework to support decision making. Thus, in agricultural field, the
construction of ICT-aided cultivation support system that enables collecting local data
becomes important.
Field Server for Environmental Information Monitoring.
In relation to the
construction, there is a strategic device called Field Server (FS). Figure 3 shows a Field
Server developed for a long-term monitoring in a field [10] [11] [12] [13]. As it can be
seen in the figure, various kinds of data such as ambient temperature, relative humidity,
amount of insolation and soil moisture can be acquired as well as growth situation
imageries by its onboard network camera. In addition, other environmental data such as
carbon dioxide can also be acquired if the sensor is attached to the Field Server. Those
data can be collected from remote locations by the use of wireless LAN.
In this study, we have considered the utilization of data acquiring at two locations
taking modern-day farm conditions into account. One is the internet-enabled site,
which is online site. The other is where internet connection is not available, which is
offline site. The types of data we have acquired includes ambient temperature, relative
humidity, amount of solar radiation, soil temperature and soil moisture as growth
situation data as well as images focusing on olive tree, fruits and trunk near ground.
Figure 4 shows the schematic diagram of field monitoring system introduced in
Shodoshima. As is mentioned above, data can be collected via internet at online site.
However at offline site, data is stored at the data storage of the Field Server. And
then, it is manually collected and transported regularly to the data storage at online
site. After that, it is collected via internet to the data server at the computer center for
Fig. 3.
Field Server and the acquirable data
