Web-based decision support system for paddy planting management

Precision farming offers numerous benefits and advantages to the farming community for farm productivity improvement. Previous research has led to the development of the offline-based Precision Farmer©. Our current research extends further the previous work by developing a Web Paddy GIS©. The need for this arises due to limitations of Precision Farmer© such as portability, offline system accessibility and affordability by the end users, who include semi-literate farmers. This new system has been developed to function on Windows and Linux platforms. A user satisfaction assessment was conducted on website acceptability, and performance testing was made. This study demonstrates that Web Paddy GIS© can successfully run on both platforms. However, the Linux platform has proven to be superior to Windows, based on factors such as CPU usage, speed and user satisfaction. This paper presents a novel management tool of Web-based precision farming for the semi-literate paddy farming community of a developing country. The development of the Web Paddy GIS© is very useful for paddy farmers, farm managers, decision makers and researchers

Assessing the suitability of affordable housing based on demand criteria

Affordable housing has become essential to provide housing with affordable prices, but most of the locations of affordable housing are often not suitable with the people's demand. To assess the suitability of affordable housing, several initiatives has been developed, to match the demand and location of the affordable housing, but most the models lacks of spatial element, other model focusing on the goal related to site suitability to cities, and people's preferences of housing. This study aims to integrating spatial information and analysis to assessing the suitability level of affordable housing in Malaysia. This assessment model consists of 3 main indicators; suitability house according to neighbourhood context, demographic factor and commute distance. The method use in this study is using multi-Criteria Analysis, using weighted scoring techniques. The results show that most of the affordable housing score more than 60% average, with the highest score are 84% and the lowest score are 57.9%. this shows that the suitability level of affordable housing in the study area is good. These indicators can be used for further investigation of other affordable housing, and also in finding the suitable site for affordable housing in the future

Applications of drones in emerging economies: a case study of Malaysia

Drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are becoming increasingly popular for commercial and noncommercial uses - especially in fields of environment, surveillance, aerial photography, digital communications, search and rescue operations and military. Drones are in fact low cost aerial robots, that require little preparation and infrastructure and can be equipped with any number of sensors or cameras making them ideal for monitoring the environment. Environmental monitoring plays a major role in analyzing climate and management impacts on natural, agricultural systems, assessing, forecasting and even preventing natural disasters and enhancing hydrological cycle. Monitoring and data collection systems are based upon a combination of ground-based measurements and remote sensing sensors observations. These data however have spatiotemporal constraints. Drones offer an opportunity to bridge the existing gap between field observations and remote sensing by providing high spatial detail over relatively large areas in a cost-effective way. Drones have become popular in several developed countries in recent years. However, the use of drones is still in the infancy stage of development at developing countries such as Malaysia. This paper attempts to review the development of drone applications in Malaysia in order to identify future directions, applications, developments and challenges. We summarize that, to leverage the full potential of drones approaches in Malaysia, measurement protocols, retrieval algorithms, and processing and evaluation techniques need to be harmonized to ensure the sustainability and resiliency of the implementation

Mapping of utilities risk for sewerage system asset management

Sewerage system provide infrastructure that conveys sewage or surface runoff using sewer network. Sewerage system requires perfect infrastructure to ensure that sewage can be channelled to the sewage treatment plant safely. Meticulous asset management for sewerage system is highly recommended to avoid any risk to assets that deliver sewage. Risk assessment strategy for sewerage asset is basically will evaluate the risk factor that influences the asset to encounter the potential problem. Current risk assessment framework didn't include spatial analysis to show the locations of the assets with risk. This study focused on the production of risk map that aims to analyse potential risk for asset management of sewerage system in Majlis Perbandaran Johor Bahru Tengah (MPJBT) using spatial analysis. The spatial analysis used in this study is slope analysis and asset's analysis focusing on age sewerage assets parameter. Combination of both factors show the risks that require more attention from the sewerage system management. The results show there were 90.8% of the asset have low risk, 8.9% have medium risk and 0.3% asset have high risk. These results can be used by the sewerage assets authority to make better decision in preventions and manage risk that could happen to the sewerage assets

Web-based GIS Decision Support System for Paddy Precision Farming

Precision farming offers numerous benefits and advantages to the farming community for farm productivity improvement. Previous research has led to the development of the offline based Precision Farmer©. This research extends further than the previous work by developing a Web Paddy GIS. The need for this arises due to limitations of Precision Farmer© such as portability, offline system accessibility and affordability by the end users which include semi-literate farmers. The objectives of this research were to design web-based Geographical Information System decision support system data model for paddy precision farming (Web Paddy GIS) and to develop and implement the web-based GIS decision support system for paddy precision farming using open source software. This new system has been developed to function on Windows and Linux platforms. User satisfaction tests were conducted concerning website acceptability and performance testing were made during this research. The research demonstrates that Web Paddy GIS can successfully run on both platforms. However, the Linux platform has proven to be superior to Windows, based on factors such as CPU usage and speed. The system was implemented for an area in Selangor, Malaysia. This research presents a novel contribution addressing web-based precision farming for the semi-literate paddy farming community of a developing country. The development of a Web Paddy GIS is very useful for paddy farmers, farm managers, decision makers and researchers

Merekabentuk konseptual laman sesawang berasaskan GIS bagi kawalan serangga perosak dan serangan penyakit untuk tanaman padi

Beras merupakan makanan ruji rakyat Malaysia dan tahap penghasilan kendiri (SSL) adalah sebanyak 71.5%. Kerajaan Malaysia telah menetapkan untuk menaikkan tahap SSL kepada 100% menjelang tahun 2020. Penghasilan beras dapat ditingkatkan melalui sistem pengurusan dan teknik penanaman yang baik. Oleh itu, maklumat mengenai serangan perosak dan gejala serangan penyakit amatlah penting kepada golongan petani bagi mengelak sebarang serangan sepanjang tempoh penanaman. Justeru, objektif kajian ini adalah untuk mencari dan mengkaji laman sesawang sedia ada yang menyediakan maklumat mengenai masalah ini dan merekabentuk konseptual laman sesawang berasaskan GIS bagi kawalan serangga perosak dan serangan penyakit untuk tanaman padi. Aplikasi ini akan membantu golongan petani untuk mencari solusi dan sekaligus membantu menguruskan penanaman padi dengan lebih baik. Aktiviti kajian ini dibahagikan kepada dua fasa. Fasa pertama melibatkan aktiviti mengkaji laman sesawang sedia ada dan fasa kedua adalah merekabentuk sistem maklumat yang mempunyai informasi mengenai serangga perosak dan jenis penyakit berdasarkan kepada kajian literatur. Dapatan daripada kajian ini adalah rekabentuk konseptual yang komprehensif bagi aplikasi atas talian dan boleh dijadikan garis panduan oleh pihak kerajaan pada masa akan datang. Kajian ini merupakan titik permulaan untuk melaksanakan Internet of Thing (IoT) dalam bidang pertanian. Sistem ini akan membantu golongan petani untuk mendapatkan maklumat mengenai cara mengawal serangga perosak dan serangan penyakit di sawah. Seterusnya produktiviti penghasilan beras dapat ditingkatkan dan konsep laman sesawang ini boleh digunakan untuk tanaman lain seperti kelapa sawit, getah, nenas dan jagung

Production of spinach under variable water supply

The effects of a variable water supply on the growth and yield of spinach grown in cocopeat medium was examined in a field experiment. Three irrigation treatments; (T1) common practice (T2) crop water requirement; and (T3) time scheduling were monitored through the season from transplanting to harvest, 28 days (from January and February 2018) after planting located in a shade house. For T1, spinach was irrigated 2 times per day until the medium surface is wet. An estimated value of crop evapotranspiration (ETc) was determined for spinach during this period in T2, giving a water requirement of 3.72 mm/day (for January 2017) and 4.04 mm/day (for February 2017). The irrigation interval was three days and scheduled water was given based on the ETc value in T2 for T3. There were no significance response to the irrigation treatments for plant height, number of leaves, canopy diameter and leaf length despite differences in biomass production measured. Plant fresh weight and root length density was more sensitive in T3. The insignificant difference was hypothesized to be contributed by that cocopeat medium used in this study that had provided satisfactory available water for the spinach growth regardless different amount of irrigation water applied

Rice chlorophyll content monitoring using vegetation indices from multispectral aerial imagery

Precision agriculture is a concept of agricultural management, based on analyzing, measuring, and reacting to inter and intra-field variability in crops. One of the tools deployed for crop monitoring in precision agriculture is the use of an unmanned aerial vehicle, able to obtain high flexibility with fewer restrictions, and high spatial and spectral resolution in comparison to airborne and spaceborne system. In this paper, the assessment of various vegetation indices were performed for paddy stress monitoring using red edge band from multispectral imagery. The objective of the study was to create rice field maps with the use of aerial imagery and object-based image analysis technique to validate vegetative indices in rice field maps by using soil plant analysis development (SPAD) data. The result showed Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (R=0.957), Normalized Difference Red Edge (NDRE) (R=0.974), Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (R=0.964), and Optimized Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (R=0.966), all of which provided positive linear correlations with SPAD readings. NDRE showed higher correlation compared with other vegetation indices, exhibiting a better measure ment for farmers to make decisions. This paper has demonstrated how aerial imagery can be used to collect an accurate mapping in real time that can be analyzed to monitor conditions of crop and chlorophyll content by using SPAD to enable farmers to make informed decisions. Further investigations need to be carried out by validating the real chlorophyll content to improve existing correlations

Smartphone application development for rice field management through aerial imagery and normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) analysis

In the current practices, farmers typically rely on the traditional method paper-based for farming data records, which leads to human error. However, the paper-based system can be improved by the mobile app technology to ease the farmers acquiring farm data as all of the farm information will be stored in digital form. This study aimed to develop a smartphone agricultural management app known as Padi2U and implement User Acceptance Test (UAT) for end-users. Padi2U was developed using Master App Builder software and integration with the multispectral imagery. Padi2U provides recommendations based on the Department of Agriculture’s (DOA), such as rice check, pest and disease control, and weed management. Through the Padi2U, farmers can access the field data to understand the crop health status online using the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) map derived from the multispectral images. The NDVI is correlated to the Soil Plant Analysis Development (SPAD) value, corresponding to R² = 0.4012. UAT results showed a 100 percent satisfaction score with suggestions were given to enhance the Padi2U performance. It shows that Padi2U can be improved to help farmers in the field monitoring virtually by integrating multispectral imagery and information from the field