Research of Real-time Agriculture Information
Collection System Base on Mobile GIS
Xu Chen1 , Jingyin Zhao1
1. Agricultural Information Institute of Science and
Technology,
Shanghai Academy of Agricultural Sciences,
Shanghai , China;
e-mail: chenxu@saas.sh.cn
Abstract—Accurate and reliable agricultural information is the
basis of the implementation of digital agriculture. Currently,
the processing of agricultural information collection and data
acquisition is more complex. It urgently needs to develop a
portable agricultural information collection system with high
degree integration and a wide range of versatility. It can
process information in "one-stop" service. It can capture the
GPS coordinates of the farmland, the agricultural attribute
data, image information, and sent to the monitoring system
immediately using 3G network or GPRS network. In this
paper, The system supports android and IOS system mobile
phones , the Widgets technology and http communicationis
technology is be used to develop a real-time agricultural
information collection system, which is based on
cross-platform mobile GIS.
Keywords-Mobile GIS , Information Collection , Agriculture
Information, Multiple Information,Widgets,Embedded GIS ，
RIA，OGC，WMS，WFS
I. INTRODUCTION
Accurate and reliable agricultural information is the basis
for the implementation of digital agriculture, agricultural
information consists of two parts at macro level: one is
spatial location information, including samples of the
longitude, latitude and elevation, that in which the spatial
location. we can capture the other part of the required
information only if the spatial location information is
determined, which is attribute information, such as pest
monitoring data, soil water, organic matter, nitrogen,
phosphorus and potassium content, crop growth and yield
belong to the attribute information area.
At present, collecting information and follow-up process
is complicated. For example, in the period of collection, the
people collecting information need carry a variety of devices,
which include GPS satellite positioning equipment, digital
cameras, notebook computers, field information sensors and
so on; There needs complex process after finishing collecting
data, we need export data from a variety of equipment, and
classify, matching and convert format of the data one by one.
The data acquisition and processing is too complicated and
Junfang Bi2 , Linyi Li1*
2. Yangtze River Estuary Survey Bureau of Hydrology
and Water Resource, CWRC, Ministry of Water Resources,
Shanghai ,China
e-mail: newgis@163.com
Error-prone. So it is urgently need to have a high degree of
integration and wide range portable agricultural information
collection system, provides "one-stop" service of data
acquisition and processing.
II. RELATED WORK
In recent years, with mobile phone trends to the
development of intelligent, the occupancy of smart phone
market continues to improve, processor frequency speeds
increases and the prices falls, and most have built-in GPS
positioning module, so a smart phone as hardware carrier of
multi-source agricultural information collection system has
better prospects of promotion applications. Domestic and
foreign scholars has some useful practice and exploration in
the use of mobile devices collecting agricultural information,
such as the U.S. Trimble computer’s AgGPS EZ-map farm
solutions, which can achieve map display and simple control
of the sampling based on Pocket PC; China Agricultural
University applied Mobile GIS for precision promote county
seed varieties; Chinese Academy of Sciences Guangzhou
Institute of Geochemistry applied embedded GIS to collect
tobacco fields information and so on[1-3].
However, these applications are often designed for
specific areas and purpose, and exists deficiencies in terms of
flexibility and expansion, often can’t customize new features
and programs, if it meets the farm information collection
can’t be used in pest and disease data collection, and these
applications often ignore synchronization correlation of the
image (video) information and the state, GPS data, GIS map
data, image (video) information is also part of the attribute
information area, but the attribute information collected by
current mobile GIS is often limited to the literal text.
Mobile GIS is a GIS system based on GPRS and use
GPS smart phone as the end, is another hot new technology
following the desktop GIS and WebGIS [5-8]. It integrates
GIS function such as collect geographic information,
positioning, and analysis capabilities into phone, provide
real-time and efficient technical services for users. In the
applications of agriculture, Mobile Phone GIS not only can
meet needs of managers to survey agricultural land use
situation, but also allows the scene suitability match
according to the actual growing conditions, soil nutrient
conditions and species in the fields, design planting scheme
based on the local conditions for the farmers, and can
automatically associate measured data of pests and disease to
the disease location for further analysis and early warning.
The introduction of mobile GIS technology will improve
office efficiency and provide farmers for more accurate
information services.
Therefore, it is urgent to develop mobile GIS system
supports "one-stop" collection of multi-source agricultural
information and easy to extend.
III. SYSTEM DESIGN
A. Physical Structure Model of The System
Mobile GIS is a comprehensive integration which
includes an embedded GIS, GPS positioning, wireless
communications and other technologies. The system use
smart phones as underlying hardware platform for collecting
information, obtain GPS positioning information and the
space geometry information of points through in-built GPS
module of phone. Capture images and video information via
Built-in camera of phone. Collect field measurements data
through a variety of sensors. The spatial location information
and attribute information are recorded in the mobile GIS
system, and are conversed format automatically at the mobile
client to form a complete collection data, then upload
pre-processed information by the mobile client to the data
server and GIS server through GPRS mode or connect USB
to desktop applications programmers, complete the data
acquisition and processing. The physical structure of the
system is shown below:
Figure 1. The System Physical Structure Model
B. The Design of Mobile Client Soft Model
To make the system can capable of collecting
multi-source agricultural information, we use Widgets mode
in the design of mobile client application programmers,
design different patterns according to different agriculture
information collection areas, then schedule Widgets
assembly vie Widgets manager to meet the needs of multiple
agricultural fields application. These Widgets are logically
divided into multiple independent levels, reducing coupling,
the design not only can each Widgets focus on a particular
area, and there is a problem in a module will not affect other
modules of the system, but also improve the reliability of the
system.
The so-called Widgets way is to achieve the function
expansion through loading widgets by main program, if the
system needs add new features, as long as you write a new
widget without revising the main program code and without
recompile the program to achieve Widgets dynamic loaded,
this software architecture model can realize infinite
expansion in function. This system can organically integrate
widget into one platform and work effectively; the system
consists of three components: application framework, widget
assemblies, and sub component library. The system has a
main frame and multiple widget assemblies, each function is
divided into relatively independent widgets, these widgets is
set up under a unified standard and turn into infinite
expansion applications system.
Figure 2. Multi-Source Agricultural Information Collection System
Model
The framework of main application is an object attaches
to widget, it consists of three parts, the main interface
program which parses widget objects and delegate and
associated widget objects events; widget manager, it resolves
widget assembly, extracts widget type information and
generates its corresponding widget objects, stores these
widget objects in the widgets collection and transit to the
interface procedures; communications contract, which is a
standard recognized by platform and widget, it always in
form of interface, only if the type object was achieved
specified interface, it can be recognized as widget
component. Widget assemblies can be resolved by widget
manager and used by the main framework, which are
specific functions bearers of open-frame. Subsidiary
component is not a necessary part of widget framework; it is
a set of tools and libraries developed to make sure the
framework run better.
C. The Design of WebService in Web Server
In order to cooperate with the mobile client software,
which is used Widgets as design model. The web server and
GIS server are designed using service-oriented architecture
(SOA) to achieve business and functional separation. The
services are packaged through the web service, and use the
web service description language (WSDL) to describe the
published service. The services which published by web
service will register to the universal description discovery
and integration (UDDI).When a customer requests the
service, the web server will perform the service call by
simple object access protocol (SOAP)[10-11].
The web service in web server includes the upload and
inquiry service of collection point coordinates and photos,
the download service of vector map data, the download
service of remote sensing image tiles. Map data release to
comply with the OGC (Open GIS Consortium Inc.)
specifications the WMS, WFS map service.
The detailed description of service interface and the
callback data type are as follows:
TABLE I. THE DESCRIPTION OF WEBSERVICES
The Description of Interface
WebService Name Input
parameter
Upload collection point Longitude,Latitude,Photos,Na
information me,Collection Date,
Upload Date,UserName
Inquiry collection point Collection Point Name,
information UserName
Download vector map Map Extent
Data（WMS）
Download remote Map Extent
sensing image tiles
（WMS）
IV. SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION
After the completion of the agricultural resource
management system, timely and efficient data update
information systems to maintain the timeliness of the
necessary conditions. In order to solve the problem of
agricultural resources system data update cycle, GIS data
update tedious, based on RIA（Rich Internet Applications）
technologies, the portable agricultural information collection
system ".The latest version of the mobile development
features in the Flex SDK and Flash Builder are targeted at
creating standalone installed applications using the Adobe
AIR runtime for mobile devices. By focusing on AIR, Flex
can take full advantage of the integration AIR provides with
each mobile platform, such as the ability to handle hardware
back and menu buttons and to access local storage. AIR for
mobile devices allows developers to create applications that
can be deployed (and, if desired, sold) the same way as
native applications on each platform. This means that
applications built with AIR can be posted to the Android
Market, the iOS App Store, and BlackBerry App World.
Portable agricultural information collection software can
be installed in the smart phone or tablet PC, update the Web
service to get the WMS map services and system data in the
shared services through 3G (GPRS) network, can be
collected in the field survey site agricultural points of interest
(POI) name, location GPS coordinates, scene photos
delivered directly through the shared service interface to the
system database, the system of agricultural data, "one-stop
collection and quickly update.
Output
parameter Figure 3. Collecting agricultural information using Tablet PC with
Succeed or android system
Failed
V. CONCLUSION
Longitude,La
titude, The system is based on a portable smart phone mobile
Photos,Colle GIS, adopt easy-to-extensible software architecture to meet
ction
Date,Upload
requirements of multiple agricultural application areas that
Date agricultural information site "one stop" collection and rapid
Vector Map processing.
Tiles 1) Achieve "one stop" information collection and upload
Image Tiles We can use the system browse and edit the spatial data
and attribute data on smart phone, achieve conversion format
of data and upload data. It can access and analysis real-time
GPS data provided by built-in GPS device of smart phone
and image data collected by camera, realize the
synchronization between smart phones built-in equipment
and mobile GIS module data collection, and meet
synchronization associated requirements among GPS data,
image data and GIS map data.
2) Scalable software architecture system design
Mobile client adopts widgets mode and achieve easy
explanation of functions through dynamic load widgets,
extend lifecycle of software. The server adopts SOA
architecture; the mobile client invokes web service through
GPRS and completes the upload and download of
agricultural information.
3) Field test assessment of system availability
We carried out field test on Zhuanghang Comprehensive
experiment Station which is under the jurisdiction of
Shanghai Academy of Agricultural Sciences, collected
agricultural information of soil, plant disease monitoring and
plant management, test system performance and reliability
according to real-time image, video processing and wireless
transmission experiment.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would also like to express appreciations to
colleagues in our laboratory for their valuable comments and
other helps.
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