ERCIM News 113

Farming with Mathematical Precision

Details: Category: Special Theme; Published: 17 April 2018; Hits: 7059

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.

AmI Garden: Building an IoT Infrastructure for Precision Agriculture

Details: Category: Special Theme; Published: 18 April 2018; Hits: 7649

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.

Exploiting Low-cost Depth Cameras for Body Measurement in the Livestock Sector

Details: Category: Special Theme; Published: 17 April 2018; Hits: 7796

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.

Smart Farming: From Automated Machinery to the Cloud

Details: Category: Special Theme; Published: 18 April 2018; Hits: 5855

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.

Data Science Techniques for Sustainable Dairy Management

Details: Category: Special Theme; Published: 17 April 2018; Hits: 5783

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.

Measuring Micro-climate to Create Disease Prediction Models

Details: Category: Special Theme; Published: 17 April 2018; Hits: 4671

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.

Adopting Precision Agriculture Strategies to Survey the Effect of Tillage Systems on Crop Growth Under High Spatial Variability Soil Conditions

Details: Category: Special Theme; Published: 18 April 2018; Hits: 4311

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.

Agrodat: A Knowledge Centre and Decision Support System for Precision Farming Based on IoT and Big Data Technologies

Details: Category: Special Theme; Published: 18 April 2018; Hits: 5439

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.

Drone Swarms in the Field

Details: Category: Special Theme; Published: 17 April 2018; Hits: 7975

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.

Satellite and Aerial Image Processing for Smart Farming and Biodiversity Conservation

Details: Category: Special Theme; Published: 17 April 2018; Hits: 6739

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.

Information Systems for Precision Agriculture: Monitoring Computation of Prescription Maps

Details: Category: Special Theme; Published: 18 April 2018; Hits: 4279

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

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

Integrating Agronomic Knowledge into Precision Agriculture

Details: Category: Special Theme; Published: 18 April 2018; Hits: 4209

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.

Case-based Reasoning for Forecasting the Allocation of Perennial Biomass Crops

Details: Category: Special Theme; Published: 16 April 2018; Hits: 4797

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.

Distributed Management of Scientific Workflows for High-Throughput Plant Phenotyping

Details: Category: Special Theme; Published: 16 April 2018; Hits: 5802

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.

Virtual Research Environments to Support Agriculture and Food Research Communities: The AGINFRA+ Project

Details: Category: Special Theme; Published: 16 April 2018; Hits: 4289

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.

PERSEPHONE: Using Biogas Residues to Mitigate Agricultural Nitrogen Pollution

Details: Category: Special Theme; Published: 16 April 2018; Hits: 4659

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.

Computational 3D X-ray Imaging for the Food Industry

Details: Category: Special Theme; Published: 16 April 2018; Hits: 4976

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).

Security Threats and Risk Analysis of an IoT Web Service for a Smart Vineyard

Details: Category: Special Theme; Published: 16 April 2018; Hits: 10027

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.

Research Evaluation in Informatics

Details: Category: Research and Society; Published: 16 April 2018; Hits: 3875

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.

Recommendations for Informatics Research Evaluation

Details: Category: Research and Society; Published: 16 April 2018; Hits: 3091

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.

On the Conferences vs. Journals Controversy

Details: Category: Research and Society; Published: 16 April 2018; Hits: 3501

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.

Evaluation in Academic Publishing: Crowdsourcing Peer Review?

Details: Category: Research and Society; Published: 16 April 2018; Hits: 3664

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].

Taking Software Development Activities into Account when Evaluating Researchers

Details: Category: Research and Society; Published: 16 April 2018; Hits: 3082

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.

Open Access and Research Assessment: Why Would We Link the Two?

Details: Category: Research and Society; Published: 16 April 2018; Hits: 3253

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.

Revisiting the Scientometric Conceptualisation of Impact and its Measurement

Details: Category: Research and Society; Published: 16 April 2018; Hits: 3572

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.

A Research Agenda on Quantum Algoritmics

Details: Category: Research and Innovation; Published: 16 April 2018; Hits: 4410

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.

An Innovative Technology for Vision Aids

Details: Category: Research and Innovation; Published: 16 April 2018; Hits: 4082

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.

Beyond Summaries for Ontology Exploration

Details: Category: Research and Innovation; Published: 16 April 2018; Hits: 4404

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.

Enabling 3D-TLC NAND Flash in Enterprise Storage Systems

Details: Category: Research and Innovation; Published: 16 April 2018; Hits: 9436

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.

CasAware: A Semantic-based Context-aware System Enabling Ambient Assisted Living Solutions

Details: Category: Research and Innovation; Published: 16 April 2018; Hits: 4513

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.

Durchblick - Combining Sensor Outputs and Supporting Forensic Investigations in Robot-Assisted Analysis of Suspicious Objects

Details: Category: Research and Innovation; Published: 16 April 2018; Hits: 4154

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.

Engineering Cryptography for Security and Privacy in the Cloud

Details: Category: Research and Innovation; Published: 16 April 2018; Hits: 4015

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.

A 3D Modelling and Photorealistic Simulation Pipeline for 3D Heritage Edifices

Details: Category: Research and Innovation; Published: 16 April 2018; Hits: 5029

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.

Having Trouble Deciding Which Wine to Order? Try Le Sommelier Recommendation System

Details: Category: Research and Innovation; Published: 16 April 2018; Hits: 4404

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.

Digitalisation of Seas and Oceans is the New Gold of the Future

Details: Category: Events; Published: 18 April 2018; Hits: 3564

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.

International Workshop on Computational Intelligence for Multimedia Understanding

Details: Category: Events; Published: 11 April 2018; Hits: 3525

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.

IFIP Networking 2018

Details: Category: Events; Published: 11 April 2018; Hits: 3589

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 Memoriam Gerrit Blaauw

Details: Category: In Brief; Published: 10 April 2018; Hits: 4131

Obituary

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).

ERCIM News 113

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