Olivenia: an integrated solution

Olivenia uses ICT technologies in order to help olive farmers to effectively and efficiently tackle the diseases and pests of olive trees by providing detail instructions on the least harmful possible required preventive and therapeutic actions in order to maintain quality and quantity of crop. ICT methods will allow not only for easy pertinent data collection by the farmers and fast prediction activities on the threats of the crop but also for knowledge mining and extraction from collected data that would otherwise be very hard to do manually and are necessary for better crop management.

Cropland management

Initially, users/farmers will determine the geo-characteristics of their farmland to allow the system to use the geographical features for predictions. The main entity of land will describe the geographic area of a user’s olive grove but also mounting points of pest traps. The user will be able to overlay information, though a graphical interface, on a map to manage both the polygon defining the croplands of interest & points / trees (within its area of interest) with placed traps.

Information collection from traps

Olivenia will include a mobile application (app) for android & iOS operating systems that will be designed & implemented to allow users / farmers perform a semi-automated information collection from traps. The app will use the GPS position sensor to determine the trap being tested & will subsequently raise predefined questions regarding the status of the trap to be replied the user/farmer. The questions will be related to the nature of the collected olive-fruit flies (e.g. number of pests in the trap, number of male pests into the trap, etc.). Moreover, the app will require taking a picture of collected pests for future use (automatic inference of pests’ characteristics through deep learning). The collected data will be automatically submitted to the service using the Internet access of mobile device or retained for submission in the first available opportunity with access to the internet.

Then we will create a fully automated trap (to the degree possible, i.e. manual change of sheets for sticky versions or liquids for McPhail versions). This trap will be self-sustainable as far as electric power is concerned by use of a battery and a charging solar panel. Accordingly, the trap will be able to feature a multitude of meteorological sensors, a camera as well as networking capabilities. An array of such sensors, placed in an olive grove, will form an ad-hoc network that will make propagation of information easier, almost not requiring physical presence (given internet access at any point of the ad-hoc network).

Pest tackling activities

The app will have special provision for the submission of information on the actions of users/farmers in order to tackle the pests. The submission interface will guide the user/farmer as to the information that is necessary to be registered & will be based on a user-friendly graphical interface. This information will include pest tackling activities details (e.g. date, amount & type of active substance, area & method of application, etc.).

Exacerbation & treatment recommendations predictions

The user/farmer will have the opportunity, provided that operating conditions such as (a) submission of already executed pest tackling actions, (b) submission of information collected from the traps, etc., to receive outbreak predictions and treatment recommendations for olive-fruit flies. The predictions will be customised to the characteristics of the farmland of the specific user/farmer. Information predictions & treatment proposals, aside from being available at request, will also be sent (pushed) to the mobile device of the user/farmer when available for timely information. Accordingly, if a prediction for actions to users/farmers whose results are especially likely to affect other users/farmers (e.g. due to physical proximity of their croplands), the service will notify all interested parties.

It is thus evident that Olivenia tackles the knowledge creation & information dissemination as a continuous process not relying or necessary requiring the interested parties’ action to provide timely results.