[MUSIC]
Formulating and analytics problem.
I'm going back to problem formulation.
I'm going back to where we started in session one, for good reason.
Because most of the data that we are going to use here, will not be primary
informed it will be digital, it will be secondary, let's see these in action.
Here's an example, the background, the Earth's population is slated
to rise from 7.3 billion people now to 9.7 billion people by 2050.
Average incomes will also rise,
which basically means that people will want to eat more and eat better.
Which basically means more meat,
which basically means more resources needed to raise them.
So the question then becomes how can the world be fed in the future without
putting irreparable strain on the Earth's soil and oceans?
By 2050, the FAO which is the Food and Agriculture Organization part of the UN,
its 2009 report says that by 2050, agri production will have to rise
by something like 70% to meet projected demand.
There is no way out of this other than the industrialization of agriculture.
The most land suitable for farming would already been farmed.
It basically means this growth has to come from higher yields.
Higher yields have already happened.
Lot of agriculture has undergone yield enhancing shifts.
But even since then applied total think about the green revolution in
the 60s and 70s.
To go beyond that, we are now going to leverage technology, NDS analytics.
Let's see this.
Consider a farmer's challenges, sources of risk or uncertainty.
Take a minute, type what you think are the farmer's challenges.
You're a farmer.
What are the sources of risk, of uncertainty that you face?
Just write it out in a minute or two and then we will proceed.
So there are a number of risks, and what I have here is an incomplete list.
The biggest one probably is the weather.
The soil's moisture levels, the soil's nutrient content,
the competition to crops from weeds.
These are all risks and uncertainties.
That is a threat from pest centrum diseases and
the cost of taking actions should something like this happen.
All of them will basically in some sense way on farmers mind.
So think of the problem in some sense.
Think of the farmer's problem as a matrix with rows and columns.
Inputs are the variables.
They are the columns.
And rows are actually individual plants.
We will see this in action just how long.
Two questions arise at this point.
One, how to cost-effectively populate this matrix?
If I have matrix were each row is a single plant, and each column is things like
a weather, and soils moisture level, and soils nutrient content,
and the number of weeds around it, I can actually populate the entire matrix.
It's going to be time consuming how to do it cost effectively and two,
once populated how do you analyze the data to optimize yields and maximize profit.
You populate the matrix and data analytic will do.
Populating the matrix, how would you cost effectively populate the matrix.
With data on, let's say, interplant distances, data on weed growth,
data on soil conditions, how?
What I want you to do is take a minute, think about it, what is the easiest, best,
fastest, cheapest way to fill this matrix up?
Type a one line answer and then we'll proceed.
Well, there are two ways this can be done, the first is to take the aerial route.
Drones or planes flying on the fields.
So they overfly the field.
And when they do well you could take, that's what it look like in some sense.
When a drone or plane flies over it.
You can photograph the fields in high definition, or you could use even better,
something called multi spectral analysis.
So you have these cameras that see beyond the visible spectrum,
both in into ultraviolet.
What do they do to figure out crowd density,
to figure out crop held, to figure out soil conditions.
I can tell you moisture content in the surface by using multispectral analysis.
Why? Because wet soil tends to reflect
a different wavelength than dry soil.
Can I identify weeds?
Yes, because they would reflect, their leaves reflect a different wavelength.
Than that of the crop, I can do all of that by one overpass, one fly by.
You can also do accurate contour mapping, I'll maybe not go there, but
all of that is possible.
Sudhir VoletiAssistant Professor and ISB Research Fellow
