We are delighted to announce that a research paper developed under the mF2C Project, has been accepted for publication in IEEE Computer Magazine.
Title “Fog-to-Cloud Computing for Animal Farming: Towards Low-Cost Technologies, Data Exchange and Animal Welfare”,
by Admela Jukan*, Francisco Carpio*, Xavier Masip-Bruin+, Ana Juan Ferrer§, Nicole Kemper£, Birgit Stetina%
* Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany
+ Advanced Network Architectures Lab (CRAAX), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Spain
§ ATOS SA Research and Innovation
£ University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Foundation, Germany
% Sigmund Freud University, Vienna, Austria
Abstract:
Coordinated fog-to-cloud computing systems are expected to expedite the evolution of cloud-based smart farming, towards openness and data sharing, while making farming economically sustainable for smaller farms. We demonstrate a fog-to-cloud enabled animal farming system that not only deploys low-cost technology for data collection and sharing, but also uniquely considers animal welfare and quality-of-life. On an practical example of a multi-master replication of SQL Server databases between Microsoft Azure Cloud and multiple fog nodes on the farm, we show that fog-based systems can help improve performance, scale to higher amounts of database entries, pre-process data with aid of machine learning, while providing reliability of the system in an easy-to-use fashion. Considerations of animal welfare, cloud-based data analysis, fog-enabled farming along with mobile applications are envisioned as common place for future farmers and consumers alike, and are in line with a recent trends connecting animal welfare, human health and the environment.