The surge in global population is compelling a shift toward smart agriculture practices. This coupled with the diminishing natural resources, limited availability of arable land, increase in unpredictable weather conditions makes food security a major concern for most countries. As a result, the use of Internet of Things (IoT) and data analytics (DA) are employed to enhance the operational efficiency and productivity in the agriculture sector. There is a paradigm shift from use of wireless sensor network (WSN) as a major driver of smart agriculture to the use of IoT and DA. The IoT integrates several existing technologies, such as WSN, radio frequency identification, cloud computing, middleware systems, and end-user applications. In this paper, several benefits and challenges of IoT have been identified. We present the IoT ecosystem and how the combination of IoT and DA is enabling smart agriculture. Furthermore, we provide future trends and opportunities which are categorized into technological innovations, application scenarios, business, and marketability.

An Overview of Internet of Things (IoT) and Data Analytics in Agriculture: Benefits and Challenges

Machine learning approaches for crop yield prediction and nitrogen status estimation in precision agriculture: A review

Multiagent Systems is the title of a collection of papers dedicated to surveying specific themes of Multiagent Systems (MAS) and Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI). All of them authored by leading researchers of this dynamic multidisciplinary field.

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Multiagent systems: a modern approach to distributed artificial intelligence

Wireless sensor networks for agriculture

A review of wireless sensors and networks' applications in agriculture

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is getting popularity among identification technologies owing to its low cost, light weight, reduced size and inexpensive maintenance. Due to the recognition of RFID in the area of manufacturing, retail, pharmaceuticals and logistics, it is now in consideration for use in many different areas like ubiquitous computing, health care, agriculture, transport and security. Now a days security, power conservation and scalability are among the top issues that are in consideration for designing projects. In this paper, we contemplate the said issues and present how emerging technology of RFID can be used for building a smart university. Prototype is developed considering major use cases involved in a smart university. The system is taking care of maintaining attendance record, switching control of electrical items and security locks of rooms. Results show that consumption of energy and object tracking time is decreased while security of rooms and credibility of attendance record are increased.

Building a Smart University Using RFID Technology

Semantic Web is a succession of the current world wide web in which all the contents, resources and services over the web will have well-defined meanings. Due to this well-defined semantics, semantic web will enable the automated processing of web contents by machines. To achieve this vision; a number of methodologies, tools and standards for semantic web have been proposed during last few years. In this paper, a critical review of these constituents of semantic web has been presented. In particular, a comparative analysis of ontology languages, ontology tools, ontology development methodologies and semantic web services is done. In addition, some missing research areas have also been also highlighted in which further research work should be carried out.

Semantic Web: Choosing the right methodologies, tools and standards

Workflow technology is an effective means of modeling and management of complex interacting business processes and is now being employed in other diversified domains. Although the workflow technology is already quite mature and commercial workflow management products are readily available, it has been observed that the technology lacks certain context related components and concepts when applied to domains like e-commerce, mobile and pervasive computing. The context-aware or smart workflows are those that operate as per context information gathered from environment or domain knowledge. In order to make workflow management context-aware, extensions and modifications are required in existing architectures and standards of workflow management systems. This paper describes a framework for designing and managing context-aware workflows that encompasses different aspects of context change. It indicates the changes and extensions required in the current technology for smooth integration of context in workflows to enable their smart execution. We present a simplified technique of workflow representation with the introduction of context-activity architecture as the basis of our framework.

A Conceptual Framework for Smart Workflow Management

Software maintenance is one of the major concerns of software development and maintenance organizations. Over the years, the cost of maintenance has become the critical factor in decision making pertaining to long term viability of business and information systems. Software maintenance has strong bearing with overall software development life cycle. Depending upon the abilities of project team in the overall software development environment, a good software maintenance process would reduce the cost involved in terms of money, manpower, resources and time. In this paper we have discussed a simple but comprehensive framework for software maintenance and support phase. Based upon the guidelines of the proposed framework for software maintenance could be easily manageable and also become cost-effective.

Abu Zafar Abbasi

Papers

A review of wireless sensors and networks' applications in agriculture

Building a Smart University Using RFID Technology

Semantic Web: Choosing the right methodologies, tools and standards

A Conceptual Framework for Smart Workflow Management

A framework for software maintenance and support phase