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The Poseidon Project
Technology Category
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Connectivity Platforms
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms
Applicable Industries
- Agriculture
- Education
Applicable Functions
- Logistics & Transportation
- Product Research & Development
Use Cases
- Smart Irrigation
- Farm Monitoring & Precision Farming
- Water Utility Management
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- Data Science Services
The Challenge
Irrigation is essential to grow the crops that feed and clothe the human population – but overconsumption of water is draining the earth’s river basins faster than rain can replenish them. Humanity’s growing water footprint is partly a function of our increasing population; but it is also compounded by the fact that irrigation systems, especially in the developing world, are often extremely inefficient. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization states that even a good irrigation scheme is only 50-60 percent efficient. Poorly built systems can result in the vast majority of the water being lost to evaporation, seepage and other problems before it reaches the fields. Moreover, once it gets there, if farmers choose to irrigate at the wrong time (for example, just before it rains), the water will be wasted and the crops may even be damaged.
About The Customer
The Poseidon Project is a voluntary initiative led by the IBM Center for Advanced Studies in Amsterdam and the Dutch Courage Foundation. It aims to build a global community to find solutions that reduce water usage by applying Internet of Things technologies, especially in the agricultural sector. The project is led by Robert-Jan Sips, Research Lead at IBM’s Center for Advanced Studies in Amsterdam. The project was initiated as a way to educate farmers about water usage, helping them avoid waste and inefficiency, and raise awareness about a key environmental issue for students and the general population.
The Solution
By developing low-cost Internet of Things-enabled soil moisture sensors, the Poseidon Project aims to revolutionize agriculture by helping farmers pick the most effective times to irrigate their crops. The project involves using a low-cost Raspberry Pi computer to monitor soil moisture, temperature and air pressure, and upload the data using the MQTT protocol to the cloud. The IBM® Internet of Things Foundation acts as a message broker between all the Raspberry Pi machines and IBM Bluemix™. The Bluemix cloud-based application platform stores the data in a highly scalable IBM Cloudant® database, and enables users to build applications that present the data in graphical form, as well as pushing it out to Twitter and sending notifications to users’ mobile phones.
Operational Impact
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