by Simon van Mourik, Peter Groot Koerkamp and Eldert van Henten (Wageningen Universiteit)

A key challenge in precision farming is complex decision making under variable and uncertain circumstances. A possible solution is offered by mathematical models and algorithms.

by Manousos Bouloukakis, Christos Stratakis and Constantine Stephanidis (ICS-FORTH)

A unique implementation of precision agriculture in an experimental greenhouse in Crete, Greece, utilises software driven automations to boost greenhouse vegetable cultivation. The system is based on agricultural scenarios for each individual species that grows inside the greenhouse, consisting of the environmental parameters that each vegetable needs for an optimum life cycle, as well as machine learning techniques that allow the system to predict and provide information about possible hazards.

by Andrea Pezzuolo, Luigi Sartori and Francesco Marinello (University of Padua, Italy)

Animal dimensions play a key role in providing data in support of management decisions regarding livestock production. In the last fifty years, manual measurements have been the most common way to get an indication of animal growth. An alternative approach, which overcomes the limitations of manual direct measurements, is to use techniques based on optical detection instruments.

by Christoph Schmittner (AIT), Christian Hirsch (TU Wien) and Ma Zhendong (AVL List GmbH)

Smart Farming – the application of IoT and Industry4.0 technologies within the agricultural domain – has the potential to increase yield and efficiency while decreasing environmental impact. A European project will address the challenges necessary to reach these goals. The results will be demonstrated in multiple real world agricultural demonstrations.

by Kevin Fauvel (Inria), Véronique Masson (Univ. Rennes), Philippe Faverdin (INRA) and Alexandre Termier (Univ. Rennes)

A multi-disciplinary team of experts from Inria and INRA are working towards improving farmers’ income and working conditions in an environmentally friendly manner.

by Christian Hirsch (TU Wien)

In crop production there are still many diseases where the time of infection and outbreak in connection with the weather is still not known. Some farmers have weather stations in their fields to monitor weather conditions in order to prevent a possible spread of a disease. However, the measurements of the weather stations represent the climate within an area of several 100 m2. To overcome this problem, TU Wien and BOKU Wien are preparing an IoT infrastructure to measure micro-climate in vineyards. Many sensors are placed all over the field and the collected data will be used to create disease prediction models using machine learning algorithms.

by Marco Sozzi, Donato Cillis, Francesco Marinello and Luigi Sartori (University of Padova, Italy)

Precision agriculture tools can be of benefit to low-intensity tillage systems. This study investigates spatial variability in a conservative tillage system using proximal sensors and satellites.

by Róbert Lovas (MTA SZTAKI), Krisztián Koplányi (eNET) and Gábor Élő (Széchenyi István University)

Since 2014 the Agrodat project and its collaborating partners have been working on introducing new, cost-effective sensor technologies and advanced ICT solutions for the Hungarian agriculture sector. Currently, 50 farmers and other targeted user communities have access to data analytics services with automatic warnings in case of hazardous conditions.

by Dario Albani and Vito Trianni (ISTC-CNR)

Drawing inspiration from the behaviour of honeybees, a buzzing swarm of small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will fly over hectares of cultivated fields seeking weeds.

by Andrea Manno-Kovács, András L. Majdik and Tamás Szirányi (MTA SZTAKI)

Over the last three years, the Institute for Computer Science and Control (SZTAKI) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA) has been conducting research in the area of smart farming. The Machine Perception Research Laboratory [L1] has been integrating drone-captured aerial images  with freely available European Space Agency (ESA) Sentinel satellite imagery to develop an operational system for smart farming applications.

by Simone Lanucara, Cristiano Fugazza, Paolo Tagliolato and Alessandro Oggioni (CNR-IREA)

Implementing a semantics-aware dashboard allowing for automated flagging of missing data.

by Marco Napoli, Anna Dalla Marta, Marco Mancini and Simone Orlandini (University of Florence)

Technology is increasingly being used to make farming processes more efficient. We are integrating agronomic knowledge and precision farming techniques in order to achieve an adequate agronomic planning at the farm or consortium level and then to transfer this knowledge to farmers, facilitators and farm advisors.

by Florence Le Ber (Université de Strasbourg, ENGEES), Jean Lieber  (Université de Lorraine, Inria) and Marc Benoît (INRA)

A farmer’s decision to plant new perennial biomass crops is a complex process that involves numerous parameters and can change the food / non-food balance. The paradigm of case-based reasoning is able to deal with the kind of complex and sparse information that is available in this situation, to model and forecast the allocation of these crops.

Christophe Pradal (CIRAD), Sarah Cohen-Boulakia (Univ. Paris-Saclay), Gaetan Heidsieck (Inria), Esther Pacitti (Univ. Montpellier), François Tardieu (INRA) and Patrick Valduriez (Inria)
 
High-throughput phenotyping platforms allow acquisition of quantitative data on thousands of plants required for genetic analyses in well-controlled environmental conditions. However, analysing these massive datasets and reproducing computational experiments require the use of new computational infrastructure and algorithms to scale.

by Panagiotis Zervas, Leonardo Candela and Pythagoras Karampiperis (Agroknow)

Virtual research environments are proposed as a prominent cloud-based solution for agricultural and food scientists willing to collaborate and seamlessly access, use and reuse research resources such as datasets, mathematical models, software components results and publications.

by Bella Tsachidou, Philippe Delfosse and Christophe Hissler (LIST)

At the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), a multidisciplinary scientific group is looking to prove how recycling of biogas residues back to agricultural soils has the potential to mitigate nitrate leaching, enhance long term storage of nutrients in the agro-ecosystems and improve agronomic performance.

by Joost Batenburg and Robert van Liere (CWI)

The Computational Imaging group at CWI develops mathematical techniques and algorithms for 3D image reconstruction. One of the main application areas is industrial quality control and rapid inspection, which is becoming increasingly important in the food processing industry. Characteristics that need to be tested and possibly also quantified include appearance of the product (size, shape, colour), texture, flavour, as well as internal factors (chemical, physical, microbial).

by Massimo Borrelli, Vanes Coric, Clemens Gnauer, Jennifer Wolfgeher and Markus Tauber (FH Burgenland)

The grape-growing industry is changing as growers increasingly combine technology with traditional growing methods in smart vineyards. If wine makers want to maximise the potential of their plants, it is no longer enough to rely on gut-feeling, but rather on locally gathered environmental data. These data help to accurately plan individual tasks, such as fertilisation, plant protection, and harvesting. This is where automated and IT-supported farming, or smart farming, comes into play.

This section was edited in cooperation with Informatics Europe. Guest editors: Hélène Kirchner (Inria) and Fabrizio Sebastiani (ISTI-CNR)

Research evaluation, as applied to individual researchers, university departments, or research centres, plays a crucial role in recognising and supporting research that can lead to advances in knowledge and benefits to society.

In March 2018, Informatics Europe published a report [1] focusing on the main principles and criteria that should be followed when individual researchers in informatics (computer science) are evaluated for their research activity, addressing the specificities of this area. This subsumes evaluation of a specific piece of research and can often be generalised to university departments or research centres, since their research performance is largely determined by their individuals.

by Dino Mandrioli (Politecnico di Milano)

Conferences are harmful for research evaluation.

The document [1] addresses the critical issue of informatics research evaluation in a complete and thorough way, touching all the main facets of the problem. I substantially agree with most of the arguments and proposals presented therein. In this note, however, I discuss the only point of serious disagreement, i.e., the role assigned to conferences for the evaluation of research in computer science. I admit that it is a fact that in our community – probably the only scientific community that exhibits this specificity – conferences often overwhelm journals in the research assessment procedure, but I believe that this anomaly is seriously flawed, dangerous, and should be contrasted – not be accepted or, even worse, encouraged.

by Stefano Mizzaro (University of Udine)

In academic publishing, peer review is the practice adopted to evaluate the quality of papers before publication. Each submission undergoes a thorough review by some peers, who decide whether the paper is worthy of publication. The pre-publication filter by peer review is important to guarantee that scientific literature is of high quality. However, although peer review is a well known, widely adopted, and accepted practice, it is not immune to criticism, and its appropriateness has been challenged by many. One recent example is the paper by Tomkins et al. [1].

by Alain Girault and Laura Grigori (Inria)

Software is becoming increasingly important in academic research and consequently, software development activities should be taken into account when evaluating researchers (be it individually or teams of researchers). In 2011, a dedicated working group of the Inria Evaluation Committee addressed the issue of software evaluation and proposed criteria that allow researchers to characterise their own software. In the context of recruitment or team evaluation, this self-assessment exercise allows the evaluators to estimate the importance of software development in the activities of the authors, to measure the impact of the software within its target community, and to understand its current state and its future evolution.

by Laurent Romary (Inria)

Despite some concerns within the scientific community, open access has the potential to offer a wealth of information for the strategic management of research.

by Giovanni Abramo (IASI-CNR and The University of Waikato)

“Impact”, jointly with “citation”, is probably the most frequent term in scientometric literature. It recurs so often that its definition is more and more taken for granted, hardly ever spelled out. Impact is often defined by means of the indicators employed to measure it, rather than as a concept in itself. The obsessive pursuit of measurement resembles a case of gold fever. One apparent aspect of this is to “first measure, and then ask whether it counts”. The aim of this short note is to revisit the conceptualization of impact, and relevant measurement indicator, which could serve in opening a discussion.

by Luis S. Barbosa, Alexandre Madeira (QuantaLab, and HASLab INESC TEC, Universidade do Minho)

Quantum algorithmics is emerging as a hot area of research, with the potential to have groundbreaking impacts on many different fields. The benefits come at a high price, however: quantum programming is hard and finding new quantum algorithms is far from straightforward. This area of research may greatly benefit from mathematical foundations and calculi, capable of supporting algorithm development and analysis. The Quantum Algorithmics Agenda at QuantaLab is contributing by seeking a suitable semantics-calculus-logic trilogy for quantum computation.

by Carmelo Lodato and Patrizia Ribino (ICAR-CNR)

Vitreoretinal diseases are widespread and on the rise. These pathologies can cause the degeneration of parts of the retina, and in particular of the macula. The visual perception, compromised by these ocular pathologies, can be improved with our non-therapeutic corrective technology, incorporated into a display device, which is viewed by the user in binocular vision.

by Haridimos Kondylakis, Georgia Troullinou, Kostas Stefanidis and Dimitris Plexousakis (ICS-FORTH)

The recent explosion of the web of data and the associated Linked Open Data (LOD) initiative have led to an enormous number of widely available RDF datasets. These datasets often have extremely complex schemas, which are difficult to comprehend, limiting the exploitation potential of the information they contain. As a result, there is now, more than ever, an increasing need to develop methods and tools that facilitate the quick understanding and exploration of these data sources.

by Roman Pletka, Nikolas Ioannou, Nikolaos Papandreou, Thomas Parnell and Saša Tomić (IBM Research Zurich)

The sustained increase in storage density and simultaneous cost reductions of NAND flash memories have ensured their continued popularity.  But these positive attributes are linked to less desirable trends such as a reduction in the reliability of memory cells, requiring an increasingly overwhelming amount of sophisticated mitigation techniques, which become most apparent when applied to enterprise-level storage systems.

by Daniele Spoladore, Enrico G. Caldarola, Atieh Mahroo and Gianfranco E. Modoni (ITIA-CNR)

The CasAware research project combines context awareness with ambient assisted living by using a semantic-based framework that enables the smart home paradigm for everybody.

by Michael Sonntag (Johannes Kepler Universität Linz) and Michael Hofstätter (AIT)

Terrorism represents a serious threat to human life and infrastructure, and it is vital that police officers are equipped to investigate suspicious luggage, rubbish bins that might have been tampered with, etc., for improvised or unconventional explosive devices. Common investigation techniques currently include video cameras and transmission x-rays on mobile robots. Modern and advanced sensors are being incorporated into a prototype to allow more detailed investigations, while simultaneously ensuring the data is usable as evidence.

by Stephan Krenn, Thomas Lorünser and Christoph Striecks (AIT)

A large body of research in cryptography was established over recent decades but little of it has been commercialised. This is to the detriment of cloud computing, where the new methods would help to establish end-to-end security, which is not yet common practice.

by Maria Pateraki and George Papagiannakis (ICS-FORTH)

Methods and technologies for creating photorealistic 3D models have undergone an impressive evolution with a positive impact in the cultural heritage sector. Using widely available standard tools we describe a modelling and simulation pipeline, which generally provides for most visualisation projects with an acceptable trade-off between visual consistency, accuracy and automatism.

by Nikoleta Tsabanaki, Theodore Patkos and Dimitris Plexousakis (ICS-FORTH)

Le Sommelier is a recommendation system that helps users choose one or more different bottles of wine that pair nicely with their joined orders. This is a frequent issue met by restaurant customers who have no specialised knowledge on the subject, and requires the satisfaction of a combination of complex rules. Our system represents, to a large extent, the expert’s knowledge of the field in the form of both strict and weak prioritised rules. In addition to the formalisation of general empirical knowledge, an important feature of the system is the utilisation of users’ preferences. Our system’s research contribution is the modelling of a complicated combinatorial problem in an accessible way and the execution of reasoning that can be fine-tuned with user-friendly defined adjustments based on the customers’ or restaurateur’s preferences and needs.

by Sara Garavelli (Trust-IT)

“Supporting Blue Growth with innovative applications based on EU e-infrastructures” was the motto of the final event of the BlueBRIDGE project [L1], held on 14-15 February 2018 with participation of over 50 stakeholders, including policy makers, marine and maritime data practitioners, representatives from research institutions, international organisations, governments and EU-funded initiatives.

by Davide Moroni (ISTI-CNR), Behçet Uğur Töreyin (İTÜ) and A. Enis Cetin (Bilkent University)

Around twenty researchers attended the International Workshop on Computational Intelligence for Multimedia Understanding (IWCIM) organized annually by the working group Multimedia Understanding through Semantics, Computation and Learning (MUSCLE) of the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM), which took place as a satellite workshop to EUSIPCO-2017 held in Kos, Greece, September 2, 2017, with eleven original research papers. The IWCIM 2017 website is hosted by Istanbul Technical University and full-text papers may be accessed via MDPI Proceedings.

The IFIP Networking 2018 Conference (NETWORKING 2018), to be held in Zurich, Switzerland, from May 14 to May 16, 2018 is the 17th event of the series, sponsored by the IFIP Technical Committee on Communication Systems (TC6). Accepted papers will be published in the IFIP Digital Library and submitted to the IEEE Xplore Digital Library.

In March 2018 the Dutch computer pioneer Gerrit Blaauw passed away, 93 years old. He did pioneering research at the Mathematisch Centrum (MC) in Amsterdam, currently called CWI. Blaauw worked from 1952 until 1955 at the MC, where he contributed to the design of the ARRA II, one of the first computers built in the Netherlands, under supervision of Aad van Wijngaarden. Blaauw was also involved in the design of the FERTA computer for Fokker Aircraft. Later in his career he co-designed the architecture of the IBM System/360 mainframe computer in the USA. He became famous for his methodological manner of building computer machines, making a difference between architecture, implementation and realization of a machine. Later in his career Blaauw became a professor at the University of Twente and a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).