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Web-Based GIS Decision Support System for Paddy Precision Farming CYNNorasma, ARMShariff, MSMAmin, S Khairunniza-Bejo and ARMahmud Department of Biology and Agriculture Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Selangor, Email: niknorasma@yahoo.com, rashidpls@gmail.com Abstract Web based technology has revolutionized the way information is traded or shared across the internet. While e-commerce and information dissemination activities have benefited, there are communities that have been left out due to their inability to purchase commercial web mapping software. A potential solution is through the use of open source technology. However only a few web-based Geographic Information System (GIS) are currently developed based on open source for agricultural applications. Generally the web is free, accessible to all people in the world, any time, anywhere without the need to purchase or software installation. This study explored the use of open source software, Minnesota Map Server (UMN), Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP), Apache Web server and MySQL database. The study area selected was the Sawah Sempadan rice growing area in Tanjung Karang, Selangor, Malaysia. The web-based system developed in this research allows the farmers access to the information about rice cultivation in their area. The system allows variable rate fertilizer application maps to be printed for the farmers. Farmers are aided by the historical data about yield per paddy lot and fertilizer application in the previous planting seasons. This helps farmers to analyze and reflect on the best strategy for the coming growing season. The benefits of this work is that it allows information sharing among farmers especially on recommendations of fertilizer, and to provide equal access to web-based information from end-users to policy makers for improving the productivity and efficiency of rice production through precision farming (PF). Introduction Precision farming (PF) usually involves using satellites, sensors and field or thematic maps. It is in fact a comprehensive system designed to optimize agriculture production by carefully tailoring soil and crop management to fit the different conditions found in each field while maintaining environmental quality [26]. The PF organizations of today can provide the technology for the environment friendly agriculture of tomorrow. The advantages of PF is it offers chance to improve agriculture productivity, and product quality reduces agro-chemical wastage through efficient application, which result in minimizing environment pollution and in energy conservation [1],[3],[5],[19],[22]. Expectations of farmers using the new technology are usually twofold- a decrease in fertilizer required for the same yield and/or higher yields with the use of the same amounts of fertilizer. Plant protection is secondary. Recently, there have also been demands for site-specific seeding [3]. Now the World Wide Web is the open community of hypertext-enabled document servers and readers on the web. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) also has created new opportunities to accelerate the information of traditional farming into precision agriculture [3]. ICT can facilitate extension and advisory services on a real time basic, which will enable the farmer to plan his productivity post-harvest management and marketing in an efficient manner [2]. Advanced technologies like GIS and Remote Sensing (RS) can be instrumental in resource management, dispute handling, crop-and region-wise production estimate and so on. E-Agriculture is an emerging subject, and realizing the immense potential of ICT application for agriculture it is important to collect energies and mind in this endeavor to map the potentialities, and do the bit of agrarian the agrarian slow down [2]. A GIS is a system composed of hardware and software used for storage, retrieval, mapping and analysis of spatially referenced data. It creates a link between spatial data and their related descriptive information [10]. Web-GIS software’s high costs, complexity and special requirements have prevented many organizations from deploying their data and geo-processing capabilities over the WWW. There are no cost effective source software (OSS) alternatives to proprieties software system, web servers, and Relational Database Management System [9]. In the most recent GIS-based enterprise application system with large physical database, efficient uses of the interoperability, the standards and new web technologies have been regarded as one of the important issues [11], [20]. As for the interoperability and the standards among these issues, OGC-GML (GML of Open Geospatial Consortium) [4], [5], as an international eXternal Markup Language (XML) standard for geo-spatial information [8], is known to show advantages over conventional GIS applications handling value-added contents and features from various types of source: working on a general web browser, easy customizing of map styling, editing and so forth [4]. In developing countries like Malaysia, the agriculture sector will greatly benefit from Information Technology (IT) support. Online information, consultation and land suitability maps with web-based GIS play an important role in improving and updating the knowledge of farming groups [13]. On the other hand, there is a lack of online information for the agriculture sector such as the nice granary in Tanjung Karang. Most of the rural areas in developing countries are information isolated. Farmers are still engaged with traditional farming with limited application of modern technologies. Furthermore, application map in paddy precision farming in web-GIS environment are unavailable in Malaysia. Presently available application map are only in desktop base and only one person can see the data. In addition, any other information about crop cultivation and so on is available only in hard copy format, such as books or journal. Most of the farmers are unable to pay for the required information. Web GIS for information on paddy precision farming data can be a better solution for most of these problems. Therefore the objectives of this study were to develop an interactive Web-based GIS for decision support system, which provides information on paddy precision farming and application map in Sawah Sempadan, Tanjung Karang. This web GIS was specially developed for farmers and other interested parties with little experience in using IT. All of the software used are open source. It is free and can be downloaded from the internet, hence cost effective for users. Methodology A Web Based GIS for Paddy Precision Farming was developed using several open source software for database management (MySQL and PHP), internet server management (Apache), interactive web client interface (PHP, and Minnesota) and geographical data visualization through the internet. The newly developed web-based database systems are linked together showing relationships between thematic maps and a geospatial database by using MySQL for database and PHP for interactive web mapping services. The language used is the Malay language for web interfaces, so that the farmers and managers can easily understand the contents and comfortable with them. MapServer is an open source development environment for building spatially-enabled internet applications. MapServer supports two different modes of operation: CGI and MapScript. In CGI mode, the MapServer executable is called directly, and renders the entire HTML page based on parameters passed in the query string, and static configuration files stored on the web server. Using MapScript, MapServer is called by a server-side scripting language. The server-side script, parse from the query string then render the final page and calls MapServer functions when necessary. PHP is the best documented and probably most widely used MapScript interface, but there are also Perl, Python, and Java MapScript interfaces. The MapServer CGI interface relies on two files stored on the web server: a Map file and a Template file. The Map file is an ASCII file containing configuration information and object definitions. Configuration information includes items such as the path to the data files and the map’s units and projection. The Map file also defines the graphic objects (the main map, reference map, scale bar, and legend) and the look and characteristics of each of these objects. Finally, the Map files define the layers, including the layer’s thematic characteristics (style, color), labeling, and display scale range. The web shows the general information about rice growing like land preparation seeding, irrigation, information about disease, controlling weed, and so on, and the most important is showing fertilizer application map and yield map. Five-year data from season 1 (2003) to season 9 (2007) were used for the study. These data include soil sampling data, yield data and the results of the analysis from the Precision Farming, a collabprative research work between Remote Sensing Malaysia, IADA, DID DOA, and Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM). All these data were used to create maps. The fertilizer application map and yield map shown inside the web is only for season 9 (2007) which is the latest data for the project area .Only eight lots from block C Sawah Sempadan in Tanjung Karang are included. Interpolation technique (Kriging) was used to produce the software application map from the soil sampling and yield data by using ArcGIS. The results shown inside the web so that all users can make decision and make prediction. For map viewing inside the web we use map server and all the shapefile shown on the screen uploaded by template file and map file. Inside the map file there exist the coding to identify the layers. All the data involved will be saved inside the folder data so that users can view the map through the internet freely and openly. Architecture of web-based GIS The web-based GIS are designed in two parts as shown in Figure 1. The first part is the server side, which was developed using Minnesota open source software (internet mapserver) and Apache web server to augment point observations with other GIS data layers such as land, paddy lot and area boundaries. This is the basic function of web-based GIS system which allows users to navigate and visualize area of interest on map at different scales according to the selected areas. The second part of the system is web client interface which will be developed using PHP and MySQL which could establish a web database connection that enables users to integrate web based map browsing, spatial query, data services, and map overlaying capabilities. Based on the selection of parameters by the user, a My query structured query language (MySQL) could be built and sent to the database server for execution. The results of the execution can be obtained by the web application server and converted into PHP format to display in the client-side web browser.  Figure 1: Architecture of Web-based GIS Results Application map is fertilizer recommendation map for each lot based on the soil sampling and yield. The map shows only eight lots out of the 2300ha total paddy area of Sawah Sempadan. Web GIS is a new solution for farmers to solve their specific problems quickly. The mapping approach The mapping approach is based on historical data about client distribution and availability of plant nutrients in the soil. Both pieces of information can be established in practice accurately [3], [7]. The web shows the map using map server. Map server is considered as the world’s leading open source web mapping tool, used as the map server and developed by University of Minnesota [13]. This site allows custom map creation similar to a GIS, but provides no interaction with the map image once it is produced. Map browser sites allows users to browse (zoom in/out/pan) maps, dynamically change displayed layers, query, and retrieve data. These are the most interactive online GIS services and approach the look and basic functionality of a desktop GIS system [24] (Figure 2).  Figure 2: Spatial data using map server. This concept is not new. What is new is the ability to automate data collection and documentation and the utilization of this information for strategic farm management decision in the field operations through mechanization, remote sensing and communication technology through web. Web based GIS enables the people to communicate with the public 24 hours a day, seven days a week. From this we can choose the layer needed and tick the respectively layer so that we can view the needed layer (Figure 3). It can also point the layer so that we can identify the lot number of the area. Figure 4 shows the example where the lot number 3117 has been selected.  Figure 3: Map layers for selection.  Figure 4: Example of layers selected As an example farmers can get instant access and information for improving their rice production, beneficial for the end-users and managers. A good relationship will be built among end-users and policy makers. “Ricecheck” is one the most important management tools in growing rice. It has led to great changes in rice management and extension delivery (1). Farmers can now monitor and check crop, have a group meeting (often with agronomists) to discuss results to see how their crop compare to the benchmarks for high yields. Before Ricecheck farmers rarely venture thoroughly into the crop, nor did they collect data for analysis or comparison. Components of the program are the Ricecheck Recommendations, the Crop Database and farmer discussion groups. Ricecheck has created a learning culture and also led to closer collaboration between farmers and key stakeholders. These web-based farmers can check for their daily activities on what activity they must do thought the growing season (Figure 6).  Figure 6: The interface for “ricecheck” showing all activities to be done by farmers. Crop yield is a function of soil, crop, climate and management. Management plays a very important role in productivity and profitability. Precision farming may be used to improve farm management from several agronomical perspectives like adjustment of cultural practices to take into account the real needs of the crop (e.g., better fertilizer management, monitoring pest and disease). One of the goals of precision farming is to cut crop production inputs, which result in cost and environmental savings. Conventional farming methods apply herbicides to the entire field. Site-specific variable-rate application puts the herbicide where the weeds are. Figure 7 shown information about disease and pest are also needed in the web-based decision support system. Farmers can now get information about diseases and pests.  Figure 7: Information about pets and diseases Precision farming has the potential to help farmers improve input allocation decisions, thereby lowering production costs or increasing outputs, and, potentially, increasing profits. To increase the yield, farmers must be consistently following the precision farming technique. In this web-based GIS, it can show the yield information for each plot based on season (Figure 8).  Figure 8: Information about yield This web-based decision support system allows dynamic models built on open source GIS, server interacting with GIS data and external data source through scripting like thematic map, query map, build query and browse map. Advantages online GIS over desktop GIS software:
Conclusion The research implemented using MySQL, PHP, Apache and UMN MapServer to develop a Web Based GIS decision support system precision farming provides public users data sharing and mapping services. It shares the information and geospatial datasets that will reduce operation costs management and assists people in their decision-making process. There is a need to develop more web-based tools to share the geospatial datasets and information with users because web-based GIS has the potential to share data, assemble data, and allows users with limited GIS knowledge to access the information customized for specific topics. The GIS and internet technologies can be efficiently combined as a mechanism to share paddy precision farming information freely and openly. Before this, lack of IT experience prevents farmers from getting electronic information. So the web will provide user friendly system which helps farmer with lack of IT experience to access information and retrieve data without any difficulties. This web-based decision support system has utilizes most of the open source components (free software) and thus can be considered as a low cost application which is very appropriate for developing country like Malaysia. It is obvious now that the agricultural sector will benefit tremendously from involvement of the government and the private sector using a web-based GIS decision support system for precision farming of rice. References
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