IOT AND GIS-ENABLED SMART FARMING

Abstract

Agriculture is the backbone of Pakistan’s economy. It contributes 25% to GDP and employed 40% of the workforce in the nation. Because Pakistan’s economy is fundamentally agrarian owing to its natural resources including fertile arable land, favorable climate conditions, and the largest irrigation system in the world, the agricultural sector is of utmost significance. However, Pakistan is still unable to generate enough excess crop yield to meet domestic and global market demands due to several issues, including drastic climate changes, a lack of technological adoption, and inefficient use of important resources like water, electricity, fertilizer, and pesticides. Furthermore, farmers, particularly in agricultural countries like Pakistan continue to cultivate crops using more than century-old methods and rely on intuition. These methods need a significant amount of human effort and ongoing farmer monitoring. In contrast to this, several state-of-the-art technologically based strategies are being used in developed countries to increase agricultural productivity while making the most use of available resources. With the growing population and shrinking agricultural land, there is a need to improve the efficiency and productivity of the agriculture sector. This can be achieved through our concept of IoT and GIS-enabled Smart Farming. Smart farming is a modern farming concept that utilizes IoT (Internet of Things) technology that is built for monitoring the crop field with the help of sensors that measure agricultural parameters such as soil moisture, soil temperature, air temperature, relative humidity, and light intensity and can automate the irrigation system. Coupled with the utilization of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) technology it will assist farmers to map their farms, analyze spatial data, and make informed decisions related to crop management. It includes techniques such as interpolation algorithms applied to the point data acquired from the sensors, multi-criteria decision-making methods, device tracking, and interconnected sensors to monitor the fields and crops. The data from the field can be monitored in real-time on our web dashboard, mobile app, and cellular networks. An interactive web map will further assist the farmers and the industry by providing a spatial decision support system. The paper concludes that the adoption of IoT and GIS-enabled smart farming practices has the potential to revolutionize agriculture in Pakistan, leading to higher yields, improved efficiency, and sustainability in the long run.