Constraint-Driven IoT-Based Smart Agriculture for Better e-Governance

Abstract

Agriculture, with its allied sectors, is one of the largest livelihood providers in India as well as other developing countries. It also contributes a significant figure to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 23% in India in 2016. Several research works have used IoT to automate and revolutionize different aspects of agriculture but have not been able to achieve a significant level of automation in India. These solutions are not able to have ground-level impact due to challenges faced in deploying wireless sensor networks, developing of application and incorporating diversity of crop, soil type, and climate parameters in a single solution. Other practical limitations include absence of funds with farmers to deploy such sophisticated solutions, lack of technical knowledge, and erratic power supply in remote areas. In this paper, we propose a solution to the above challenges faced in field deployment in the form of a Geo-Intelligent Platform with inherent monitoring of soil and crop irrigation requirements using IoT nodes. Resource-based analytics are developed by integrating data from the field nodes, weather forecasts, and Agromet Advisory from Agriculture department. The proposed solution is aimed to provide a direct knowledge sharing channel between farmer and government agencies to facilitate farmers in proper crop management and government agencies in policy formation, subsidy finalization and issuing of advisories as part of e-Governance initiatives adopted worldwide.