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Abstract— This paper presents an introduction to the Poseidon (1) To accommodate the increasing world population,
Project. An open collaborative research project aiming to reduce combined with the growing preference for animal
the Water Footprint in (crop) agriculture, by opening up access based diets, global food production needs to increase
to low-cost in situ sensing and cognitive computing to farmers
substantially, and
globally. Currently the Poseidon Project, is in the inception
phase. We give an overview of the motivation, the underlying (2) Global soil and water resources are limited, vulnerable
scientific principles, and a future outlook on the project. and coupled with the very processes that govern
climate change.
Index Terms—Water Footprint, Open Computing, Cognitive
Computing, Machine Learning Currently, many regions in the world are already seeing the
effects of the continuously increasing demand. A prominent
I. INTRODUCTION example is Central Asia, as observed by Sorg et al. [6]
Climate Change is widely agreed to be already a reality [1].
The extreme weather in recent years [2][3], provides visible “Water shortages in summer will place the entire region’s
proof of the changes in our global climate and the need to agricultural system under pressure, thus fuelling tensions
mitigate the consequences. Countries in the developed world, that have existed since the collapse of the Soviet Union in
such as the Netherlands and the UK are preparing themselves the early 1990s. The high water demand for irrigation has
for increased risk of flooding from ocean and rivers [4], by already transformed downstream sections of powerful
rapidly increasing the available budgets for Flood Control. rivers such as the Syr Darya, Amu Darya and Ili into small
rivulets, thus exacerbating the drying-out of the Aral Sea
In the developing world however, most severe impact is
expected in food security and access to clean drinking water and Lake Balkash.”
[1]. In many countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America,
where agriculture is the major source of income –e.g. 60-70% Research and policy have traditionally observed shortages
of the population in Africa relies on agriculture for their in water as national or regional problems. Hoekstra and
income- the impact of Climate Change is expected to be Mekonnen [7] observe that governments have traditionally
potentially disastrous [5], strengthened by the fact that the low matched national water demand to national water supply,
access to technology in the developing world makes the studied at local, national or river-basin level, thereby ignoring
agricultural systems less resistant to the effects of Climate the global dimension of water demand patterns.
Change [1]. However, given the active global trade in water-intensive
Even more stress is expected on global agriculture, through commodities, such as cotton or bovine meat, they propose to
rising population and increasing welfare in many parts of the measure the Water Footprint of a nation, rather than its
world, changing both the amount of food necessary, as well as national water use. Figure 1 depicts the Virtual Water balance
the types of food demanded. In a recent review paper, Lal [5] of nations, showing in red the countries which are high
concludes: importers of fresh water and in green the countries which
export fresh water.
By using this definition, Chapagain et al. [8] conclude that
EU25 consumers are 20% responsible for the decline of the
Aral Sea in Central Asia, the most famous example of the will discuss how Cognitive Computing and Open Source hardware are
effects of water extraction for irrigation. expected to contribute.
All in all, mitigation of the global water shortage should
aim at 2 core elements: III. OPEN COMPUTING
Significant progress has been made in ubiquitous
computing. The rise of Open Source hardware, such as the
Raspberry Pi and Arduino, dramatically reduced the cost of
hardware deployment in, most prominently research and
education.
For instance, Fisher and Gould [16] report the use of Open
Source hardware in the context of Precision Agriculture
Research. In a comparison with commercial-grade hardware,
they conclude that Open Source hardware can be a reasonable-
Figure 1. Virtual water balance per country and direction of gross virtual water flows quality, low-cost alternative for commercial solutions, which
related to trade in agricultural and industrial products over the period 1996–2005. Only often create a large cost boundary for in field research projects;
the biggest gross flows (>15 Gm3∕y) are shown. [6] the reported Open Source soil moisture probe promises great
cost-reduction for Precision Irrigation; the reported hardware
(1) Increasing the resistance of third-world agriculture solution costs around $100,-, where commercial, closed,
towards the effects of climate change and devices cost at least the tenfold.
(2) Increasing awareness about the global dimension of However, they conclude that significant effort has to be
water shortage. spent in the calibration of sensors and that the use of these open
solutions requires significant technical knowledge from the
In this paper, we describe the Poseidon Project, aimed at users; moreover, the quality of low-cost sensors may lag
using recent technological advances to tackle the first of these. behind compared to commercial devices.