International Journal of Sustainable Agricultural Management and Informatics (9 papers in press)

Regular Issues

• Farmers Evaluation on Conservative Agriculture Practices  
  by Naeem Hayat, Abdullah Al Mamun, Noorul Azwin Md Nasir, Noorshella Che Nawi 
  Abstract: As the world faces challenging climatic issues, the agriculture sector seems to be at the losing end due to unpredictable farming conditions, such as short rainy seasons, rising temperature, and deteriorating farm fertility, as reported across the globe. The conservative farming practices have been advocated for more than seven decades, yet remaining at low adoption. As such, this study provides empirical evidence linked to value orientation adopted by Pakistani farmers as decision-makers and their perceptions towards conservative agriculture practices in the likely adoption of conservative agriculture practices. The survey data were collected from 145 farmers via interview method. The findings revealed that farmers with high orientation for production & environment and rated conservative agriculture practices had more performance expectation, socially influenced, and possessed facilitating conditions. However, farmers with low value orientation of production & environment rated these pratices as more effort driven. Farmers value orientation for production & environment most likely adopted conservative agriculture practices. Policy recommendations and future study suggestion are provided at the end of this paper.
  Keywords: Conservative Agriculture Practices; Production Orientation; Environment Orientation; Farmers; Pakistan.
  
  
• Very high resolution Satellite-based monitoring of crop (olive trees) evapotranspiration in precision agriculture  
  by Nikolaos Spyropoulos, Nicolas Dalezios, Yiannis Kaltsis, Ioannis Faraslis 
  Abstract: Precision agriculture or operational agriculture is a dynamically developing field of agricultural practices, which is based on geoinformatics. Remote Sensing contributes through the processing and analysis of very high spatial and spectral resolution satellite images to a decision support at field level. In this paper, in the integrated management of the olive tree farms of the Agricultural Association of Messolonghi-Nafpaktia in west Greece, the extraction of crop coefficient Kc and various vegetation indices, such as chlorophyll and red-edge, are presented aiming at the assessment of crop evapotranspiration and irrigation/fertilizer inflows in specific farms during a period of 24 months. Ten pan-sharpened satellite images WorldView-2 (0.5 m resolution) over the area of interest are used from 2013 to 2015. The methodological processing approach includes image filtering and pre-processing, as well as processing, which involves the generation of various vegetation indices, mainly Red-Edge, Chlorophyll and Fraction of Photosynthetic Active Radiation (FPAR), based on the second NIR band of WV-2 and clustering leading to the production of thematic maps. The so-called ETc (satellite) produced by using the reference ETo from FAO-56 Penman-Monteith equation, meteorological data set and Kc (satellite) extracted by NDVI utilizing the Red-Edge and second NIR bands of WV-2, respectively. The dynamic ETd compared with ETc. The applied methodology proved to be very useful for the implementation and verification of any Integrated Management Programme System compliant with AGRO 2.1 and 2.2 standards for agricultural production
  Keywords: Precision farming; Remote sensing; WV-2; red-edge; chlorophyll index; NDVI; Penman-Monteith; Etc; Kc; AGRO.
  
  
• Investigation and Comparative Analysis of Data Mining Techniques for the Prediction of Crop Yield  
  by Kanwal Preet Singh Attwal, Amardeep Singh 
  Abstract: Data Mining techniques can be used to analyse the effect of different factors on crop yield and to predict crop yield based on these factors. The current paper focusses on the sequence of steps to be followed in Data Mining process for prediction of crop yield starting from the determination of research goals to the application of the Data Mining Techniques to build a model. The study applies the defined Data Mining process to build a model for the prediction of paddy yield based on different climatic factors. The current research also provides an insight to the different metrics that can be used to evaluate various supervised Data Mining techniques. The metrics have been divided into three categories Threshold Evaluation Metrics, Numerical Evaluation Metric, and Built Time and Size Metrics. Comparative Analysis of five Supervised Data Mining Techniques has been carried out on the basis of their performance in these three categories of metrics.
  Keywords: Agricultural Data Mining; Yield Prediction; Data Mining Process; Data Mining Tasks; Data Mining Techniques; Classification Techniques; Classification Evaluation Metrics.
  
  
• A new algorithm for synthesizing locally most consistent priorities in analytic hierarchy process for group decision making  
  by Bojan Srdjevic, Zorica Srdjevic, Bosko Blagojevic 
  Abstract: The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is an efficient tool in supporting group decision making processes because it is offering various possibilities to aggregate individual opinions, judgments and/or priorities into group equivalents, allowing control over the consistency of participating individuals. This paper proposes a straightforward procedure to locally identify (1) the most consistent decision maker, (2) an associated prioritization method and (3) the corresponding best local priority vector (set of weights in given node of hierarchy), to be used for the final AHP synthesis. Minimum total Euclidean distance as a universal consistency measure for the hierarchy is guaranteed on the group of decision makers and on a set of most used matrix and optimization prioritization methods. The algorithm named AHP-DPE is applicable to the complete hierarchy (which is a philosophical pillar of AHP), for any size of a group and for any number of prioritization methods. Selected example from agriculture illustrates the concept.
  Keywords: Group decision making; new algorithm for AHP synthesis; complete hierarchy.
  
  

Special Issue on: NCACESM-2019 Applications of Computing in Engineering, Science and Management

• An Analytical Study of Applications of Human Resource Information System in Modern Human Resources Management  
  by Annpurna Bali 
  Abstract: Experts working in human resources (HR) space need to do many time consuming tasks related to employee management. With technological revolution and developing needs of HR it was understood that with the assistance of PCs and innovation, many valuable man hours of HR experts can be spared and used for strategic & progressively vital errands. The purpose of this study is to collect information regarding perceived performance and benefits of computer based human resource information system (HRIS). This study has proposed and verified a comprehensive model of success of computer based HRIS. The model comprises of five elements namely perceived performance of HRIS employee leave management, employee record management, performance & reward management, corporate communication and HRIS satisfaction. The research was carried out to understand and uncover the perceived performance of all five elements of HRIS and their relation with HRIS satisfaction by HR professionals. The results revealed that perceived performance of HRIS employee leave management, employee record management, performance & reward management are positively associated with HRIS satisfaction while HRIS corporate communication was found to have no positive association with HRIS satisfaction. This study can be further extended to develop success models of HRIS by including other stakeholders.
  Keywords: HR; HRIS; reward management; corporate communication; employee management; strategic management.
  
  
• Exploration of Multipath Routing Protocol for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks  
  by Gurpreet Singh, Amanpreet Kaur 
  Abstract: A Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) is a set of mobile wireless nodes linked together so as to create a dynamic system which does not require any fixed infrastructure. MANET nodes are characteristically distinguished by their restricted power, processing, and memory resources as well as elevated degree of mobility. To design the routing protocol which does not changes with network topology is one of the main issue in MANET. Although several routing algorithms have been proposed and few have been simulated. Multiple hops are required for a node in the network to swap information with any other node in the system. Thus the main challenge while designing MANET is routing. Various advantages that can be achieved by multipath routing are bandwidth aggregation, fault tolerance, enhancement in Quality of Service Metrics. Finding a path, traffic distribution and path preservation are basic fundamentals to a multipath routing. Choice of these protocols and a discussion on how multipath algorithms can be extended to wireless systems has been discussed. New trends by researchers use swarm based routing. A multipath ant colony inspired algorithm is also included to present the latest research work. Lastly a comparison table is revealed to represent the contrast of various performance issues. Video in agriculture is being used to protect some high valued crops by portray of a video surveillance system that can monitor the data over MANET.
  Keywords: MANET; MPDSR; AOMDV; MPDART; A-AOMDV-CB; Precision Agriculture.
  
  
• Effect of the position of base station in square fields of energy efficient small, medium and large-scale Wireless Sensor Networks - Internet-of-Things  
  by KHYATI SHRIVASTAV, Kishor D Kulat 
  Abstract: In the recent time, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are an essential component of the Internet-of-Things (IoTs). This has given new platforms for applications of integrated WSN-IoTs. The connection between the physical and virtual world of internet demands heterogeneous sensor nodes either deployed in an independent manner or embedded within other wireless devices. Stability and lifespan of the system are also decided by an important factor of the location of base station (BS) in the clustering of sensor nodes. Coverage, connectivity and an efficient communication in WSN-IoT integrated systems is decided by the position of base station in the midpoints of the four sides of a square field. The clustering in heterogeneous broad transmission distance protocol (HT-BTDP) with different base station locations shows the results of stability and lifetime. HT-BTDP is compared to the previous existing heterogeneous protocols in small, medium and large scale networks for peripheral midpoint placement of BS.
  Keywords: Wireless sensor network; internet-of-things; base station; cluster head; stability period; network lifetime; clustering; heterogeneous; mid point and square field.
  
  
• MODIS Land Surface Temperature Data for Prediction of Urban Heat Island Effect  
  by Mujtaba Shafi, Amit Jain, Irfan Rashid 
  Abstract: The unplanned urbanization especially in the developing countries has led to the Urban Heat Islands (UHI) largely impacting the local climate. The present study was carried out to assess the capability of Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Land Surface Temperature (LST) product at a spatial resolution of 1km for capturing urban heat island phenomenon of Srinagar city located in North West Himalaya, India. Satellite images acquired from MODIS has a revisit time for 1 day. Our analysis indicated that the LST data at the four observation times for the month of July 2012 is higher in urban built-up area than those within the surrounding suburbs. The built-up area and thermal signatures, as extracted from MODIS showed a good correlation thus establishing a fact that urbanization leads to UHI effect. We suggest ensemble approach using machine learning, neural networks that could be worked upon to obtain an optimal predictive framework.
  Keywords: UHI; Machine Learning; MODIS; LST; Temperature prediction; Machine Learning; Predictive Analysis; Modeling; Simulation.
  
  

Special Issue on: NCACESM-2019 Applications of Computing in Engineering, Science and Management

• An Improved hybrid algorithm for improving Quality Parameters in MANETs  
  by Rohan Gupta, Gurpreet Singh 
  Abstract: A mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) includes wireless mobile nodes that animatedly create a temporary system without requiring a central organization or an infrastructure. The Quality of service (QoS) allows a movable network to integrate wired or wireless systems. QoS-aware algorithms intend to discover a stable route among the source and target nodes that suits the QoS constraints. The proposed algorithm has improved QoS parameters i.e throughput, jitter and delay in comparison to different variants of ant colony optimization and particle swarm optimization.
  Keywords: Quality of Service; Mobile Ad-hoc Networks; Optimization; Hybrid protocol.