SmartVineyard an open source Web-GIS application for precision viticulture

SMARTVINEYARD: AN OPEN SOURCE WEB-GIS APPLICATION FOR PRECISION VITICULTURE T. De Filippis, L.Rocchi, A. Matese, E. Fiorillo, F. Di Gennaro, L. Genesio. Demands for geospatial information and geodata accessibility to support vineyard management using new technology for precision farming are increasing worldwide. The rapid evolution of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) and Geographic Science offer nowadays enormous potentialities for the development of optimized solutions for distributed information for precision viticulture. A Web-services based system was developed to support operational applications for agronomic treatments and grape harvest and to provide digital images for mobile devices that can be also integrated on agricultural machineries. Smart Vineyard is a system designed to store, manage, access and dissemination of data through WebGIS applications and advanced research in precision viticulture. It is designed to use distributed and integrated agro-meteorological data, remote sensing, chemical and physical analysis, soil and morphological data and has been tested on experimental vineyards. The system architecture is designed using Open Source and CrossPlatform solutions . The system developed is based on a general-purpose framework for customized applications aimed at environmental sustainability of viticulture. The main elements are (i) a Geodatabase based on PostgreSQL / PostGIS capable of storing data, (ii) a Wireless Sensor Network with software-based fully programmable with open source TinyOS platform, (iii) a WebGIS application for managing and querying data developed using PHP / AJAX and (iv) the Webapp Mobile for smartphones (Android ©, iPhone© and iPad©) implemented using Java 2EE with GIS functionalities. The aim of this system is to promote the costly-effective integration of information through the use of open source software and thus encourage the creation of an environment of shared knowledge to support new methods of analysis and transfer of results for site-specific operational applications. The system also aims to test the data-flow used by VRT (variable rate Technology) machines, either by the industry such as field agronomists, winemakers and researchers.