Role of IoT in the Project SWAMP

People always needed to eat and drink. The development of the agricultural sector is always a priority in this regard. The use of IoT in agriculture has a bright future. IoT is a driving force in increasing agricultural production while remaining cost-effective. Smart farming, enabled by IoT technologies, increases farmer productivity while decreasing waste generation.

 

The SWAMP project recently published a paper in an IEEE Internet of Things Magazine special issue on IoT-based smart agriculture. The first SWAMP paper to specifically address the combination of IoT and artificial intelligence, along with physical agronomic models, to provide better irrigation prescription plans that save water and energy while improving productivity. Let's understand in detail in the blog! 

 

 

What is Project Swamp?

 

The intensive use of technology in precision irrigation for agriculture is gaining traction in order to optimize water use, reduce energy consumption, and improve crop quality. The Internet of Things (IoT) and other technologies are natural choices for smart water management applications, and the SWAMP project will deploy on-site pilots to demonstrate the appropriateness of IoT in real-world settings.

 

At the same time, as technology becomes more prevalent, agriculture faces new security risks, which may have an impact on crop development as well as the commodities market. A security breach can permanently damage a crop, and data eavesdropping can jeopardize prices and contracts by exposing sensitive data such as crop quality, development, or management.

 

Water is critical for ensuring global food security, and agriculture is the largest consumer, accounting for 70% of freshwater consumption. Water waste is primarily caused by leaks in distribution and irrigation systems and field application methods. Surface irrigation, the most common technique, wastes a large percentage of the water by wetting areas where no plants benefit from it. Localized irrigation allows for more efficient and effective water use, avoiding both under and over-irrigation.

 

However, in order to avoid under-irrigation, farmers feed more water than is required, resulting in both productivity losses and water waste.

 

The following are the SWAMP project's challenges:

 

• Reducing software development efforts for IoT-based smart applications;

• Automation of advanced platforms, as well as integration of various technologies and component

• The integration of heterogeneous and advanced sensors, particularly flying sensors (drones) that provide precision in irrigation water supply

• The deployment of pilot applications for smart water management using a Software Platform in conjunction with technologies such as IoT, Big Data, Cloud/Fog, and drones

• Developing, testing, and validating new business models for IoT applications in smart water management settings

• Technological components must be adaptable and flexible enough to adapt to different contexts and be replicable in different locations and contexts.

 

The SWAMP project will create the high-precision smart irrigation system concept depicted in the figure above. The main idea is to enable irrigation, water distribution, and consumption optimizations based on a holistic analysis that collects data from all aspects of the system, including the natural water cycle and accumulated knowledge related to growing specific plants. It saves money for all parties because it detects all leaks and losses and ensures better water availability in situations where the water supply is limited.

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Precision irrigation based on smart water management

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Contribution of IoT in Project Swamp: 

 

The SWAMP project recently published a paper in the Sensors Journal that summarized theory and practice related to designing IoT Architectures, developing IoT Platforms, and deploying IoT Smart Applications. Architecting and Deploying IoT Smart Applications: A Performance-Oriented Approach builds on the project's initial experience with smart irrigation and extends it to various IoT Smart Applications.

 

We recognize that various smart applications (such as cities, agriculture, healthcare, and industry) share characteristics that are influenced by the design of the IoT Architecture and the inherently distributed nature of the IoT deployment process. Thus, valuable lessons learned in agriculture can be applied in other areas, as evidenced by a performance analysis study.

 

IoT architectures give almost no indication of where components should be placed. A one-size-fits-all approach does not adapt well to varying demands in such a complex environment and may impede the adoption of IoT Smart Applications. We propose a 5-layer IoT Architecture (IoTecture) and a 5-stage IoT Computing Continuum (IoTinuum), as well as insights into the mapping of the former's software components into the latter's physical locations.

 

The SWAMP project develops and pilots IoT-based methods and approaches for smart water management in the precision irrigation domain in Italy, Spain, and Brazil 

 

The SWAMP project is based on existing research, such as the EU-funded IoT solution library FIWARE, which is used for smart applications and precision irrigation. SWAMP shares several characteristics with other precision irrigation systems.

 

Initiatives such as the FIGARO project aims to increase water productivity and improve irrigation practices by developing a cost-effective precision irrigation management platform that does not directly involve IoT. SWAMP intends to conduct experiments in real-world settings by combining IoT with cloud-based services and big data analytics. 

 

Brewster et al. discuss the implementation of large-scale IoT pilots in agriculture and describe technologies that may be present in some agri-food domains. Furthermore, the European project IoF2020 aims to promote IoT adoption in large-scale pilots in the farming and food domains.

 

Also Read | Machine Learning in Agriculture: Advantages and Uses

 

Security Challenges For IoT in Agriculture:

 

In general, IoT security requirements include data privacy, confidentiality and integrity, authentication, authorization, and accounting, as well as service availability. Because many IoT devices have limited power, processing, and memory resources, security mechanisms must be energy efficient. 

 

Although there is no unified vision for IoT security, many security solutions are being proposed and may be used in smart agriculture and irrigation. Some of the major challenges faced are:

 

1. Water is a critical resource on which our lives rely. Many issues may arise during smart agriculture irrigation. Due to a lack or excess of irrigation, an attacker could take control of the system and decimate an entire crop. A DoS (Denial of Service) attack on the sensors, irrigation actuators (e.g., central pivot), or distribution system may have an impact on the system's availability.

 

2. Changes in the values of some sensors are also a threat because they can cause systems or decision-makers to take incorrect actions, jeopardizing months of work and production goals. If an attacker gains control of the actuators (e.g., pumps or central pivots), irrigation and water distribution are jeopardized, potentially causing crop damage.

 

3. Intruders using eavesdropping may gain access to private farm data and crop yield information, as well as manipulate commodity markets, posing a more serious threat. Autonomous vehicles, such as drones and tractors, used for image collection and crop monitoring, must also be secured. An unauthorized node in the network (sensor node or drone) may send false crop information.  A drone or sensor node carrying out the Sybil attack could send false images and measurements, resulting in incorrect interpretation of actual soil conditions, incorrect calculation of the NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index), and so on.

 

4. The SWAMP architecture must deal with data control by farmers or producers, ensuring that each owner controls their data and decides on access control to the data and services. The platform must include effective mechanisms for authentication, authorization, and access control. SWAMP also addresses the sensitive issue of water distribution among users.  The basis for information exchange must be trust, privacy, and security. Data anonymization is another useful technique for data governance, and governments are even discussing agricultural regulation and legal frameworks.

 

5. One of the most important security challenges for IoT in agriculture is not only technology integration but also understanding and correlating the expected sequence of events and behavior of agriculture applications. SWAMP has many characteristics that must be evaluated, and a baseline must be established to promote security effectiveness. Regardless of the data acquisition rate or the number of sensors installed, the system will most likely only have a partial view of the environment. As a result, negligent use of a given profile may cause crop damage, and security mechanisms should account for this when producing their results.

 

Also Read | 7 applications of IoT in agriculture

 

Conclusion:

 

IoT is an advanced automation and analytics system that uses artificial intelligence, sensor, networking, electronics, cloud messaging, and other technologies to deliver complete systems for products or services.

 

The world's growing population is expected to reach around 10 billion by 2050. Agriculture must marry technology to feed such a large population and achieve the best results. Another important domain for IoT is agriculture. IoT systems are critical for crop and soil monitoring and providing appropriate solutions. 

 

The Internet of Things leads to smart farming. Farmers can reduce waste and increase productivity by utilizing IoT. The system makes it possible to monitor fields using sensors. Farmers can keep an eye on the situation in the area.

 

SWAMP intends to use IoT to improve the use of water resources in a variety of pilots, each with its own set of characteristics and challenges. The use of an open-source platform such as FIWARE as the foundation of SWAMP platform development has advantages, but the use of IoT in agriculture also brings several security challenges, as a variety of threats may cause severe and irreversible crop damage. 

 

To protect IoT devices and cloud systems, the SWAMP platform should address not only device security, data confidentiality, and authentication mechanisms, but also mechanisms to prevent fake data. The latter may result in crop misunderstandings or allow for eavesdropping, which may lead to commodity market manipulation.

Also Read | Smart Waste Management using IoT