Challenges to Precision Agriculture (PA)

The benefits of PA do not appear immediately. A farmer, who invests money, wants to see immediate change but he needs some historical data to see the new changes. There are always chances of malware and viruses as the data reside on third party devices. It is difficult to detect and remove these attacks. By using PA techniques agriculture becomes more and more mainstream and things are become more automated. A lot percentage of the labors lose their jobs. Other sectors should have capacity to absorb this labor.

Increasing more smart and electronic devices means more electronic waste. In 2013 the total volume of electronic waste was in exceed of 52 million metric tons. PA consists of many connected devices. One malfunction sensor or hardware can result serious damage to crops productivity. Even a few minutes of power failure result in serious consequences particularly when backup power is not available. Backup power mean more resources and money need which can result in increased cost. PA needs heavy data center and gateways / hubs for the operations of smart sensors and other devices which can lead to heavy energy consumption.

PA concept is still relatively a new trend. There are only few firms in the market who involves making equipment. Low rate of competitiveness of the market can prevent new firm from entering this domain.

Many farmers have habit of considering their farm as one unit / Zone. PA farm is divided into different zones which bases on varying soil quality and fertilizer requirements. There is not much reference work for farmers to go by, while trying to divide their land into these zones. As an alternative many farmers continue to follow uniform fertilizers.

PA consists of big data which needs to be monitored by farmer on daily, weekly and monthly basis. This is almost impossible to look into large amount of data. Farmers don’t know which layer of data they should look and which should be ignored.

There are some cutting edge technologies involved in PA which are difficult to understand for less qualified farmer. Lack of knowledge before implementing these technologies could be dangerous. Many remote locations across the world specially the rural area in many developing countries do not have fast internet facilities. PA always depends on gateways/ sensor which communicate with cloud. High speed of internet availability is mandatory. Different type of tools, platforms have different standards for interpret-ability which could result in lack of uniformity in final analysis

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN)

WSN consists of several sensors nodes, Radio Frequency which can communicate over the network or Link. This network can be implemented on PA which can minimize wastage of pesticides, diseases and will provide sufficient nutrients to crops. Wireless communication technologies consist of many protocols and standards like ZigBee wireless protocol, Bluetooth wireless protocol, large range radio protocol and WiFi wireless protocol. Wireless sensors triggers based on these four factors.

• · Humidity
• · Temperature
• · Rain gauge
• · Leaf wellness

Decision Support Model

In first phase of Decision support model Land / Farm is divided into different zones based on Physical type or properties of the land. Different management zones are created by using Gamma-ray spectrometer. In second phase decision is made on basis of Spare (Scenario Planning, Analysis and Risk Evaluation) model. The decision could be based on margin, risk or other factors. The study shows that precision agriculture can be used to reduce the cost and increase more productivity.

How Private are we on social media (with one example)?

LinkedIn is one off the service which saves a lot of paper and we can submit our information electronically. LinkedIn can be an extremely powerful tool in an experienced hand. It has amazing search technology which helps leaders to find more and more new skilled and experience personnel’s. With 300 million people, you have every possible player you need for your team. We cannot call it strictly social, but it helps in finding new employee, business partner, new business opportunities. LinkedIn profiles shows up high in google search engine. It’s mean more or increased SEO (Search engine Optimization) leads to more web traffic. More people will visit the company website and read more about Mission, background and members of the team. In others words best thing to do business advertisement and save a lot of time in finding new skilled employees. Leader can share their expertise and knowledge on subject that is an important aspect of your business. It also provides abilities to build a network of industry-related colleagues, contacts and peers. It also keeps up to date with the news of competitors or industry of interest. You are aware of upcoming trends and new inventions. It also provides a lot of information regarding any company or employee. But our all information is up and any one can use it negatively. If our profile is 100% completed than there are lots of chances we get a new job. But on the other hands we put all personal information on the third party network. Anyone use your phone or email as spam or advertisement or anything else. Now e days it is hard to get job by using paper resume as 91% of companies only rely on LinkedIn to research candidates. LinkedIn also require personal time to spend to get your connection flowing and conversation started. Overall this is solid platform for business and individuals.



Graph shows the popularity of Link din during three years(2009 to 2012) quarterly basis

Role of Technology in sharing economy

Technology has very important role as sharing economy. Today I am not talking about developed countries. I will give you example of sharing economy in under developed country.

For example, Asian countries (India/ Pakistan) don’t have car pool system (Separate Road lan) on their 95% roads because both countries have very narrow road structure. Pakistan uses

Tripda app for carpooling system. It allows people to offer and accept rides easily via smartphone. If you have regular route to office or are simply going to another city and want to split cost, offer your ride on Tripda and interested people would contact you. Security is big concern in Pakistan but from 2014 to 2017, has not been reported a single incident. Tripda estimates that their platform saved 6 million rupees and reduced carbon emission by 180k KG which is equal to planting 413 trees.

It started in 13 countries including USA. It does not work in U.S because gas and tolls are cheaper than other countries which mean there is less incentive for drivers to share their rides.

AUTONOMOUS ACCELERATION

How fast do they autonomously accelerate? Here’s each car’s response to the lead car abruptly pulling out of the way (the dotted lines) compared to the track-tested best runs (all without the usual 1-foot roll-out). The Tesla Model S was the quickest, both at the track (no surprise) and in autonomous driving. The Cadillac was painfully leggy off the line, making it a target for aggressive drivers angling to cut in front of you.

Are we Social?

Despite having a significant difference in population The United States Of America and France show some similarities when it pertains to digital growth. When it comes digital ownership 85% of the people own mobile phones in the USA compared to 91% in France. In the USA 57% of the population own smart phones compared to 62% in France. 72% of Americans own a laptop or desktop computer compared to 74 percent in France. 35 percent of Americans own a tablet device compared to 32 percent in the country of France. To highlight the proximity between the two countries, 79 percent of Americans use the internet daily while 82 percent of the French use the internet daily. I guess it’s safe to say Facebook has the largest population in the world, with that being said 41 percent of America’s population belongs to Facebook and 43 percent of France's population also belongs to Facebook. The strongest connection and similarity these two countries share in my opinion exist in E-Commerce by device. In the last 30 days 66 percent of Americans purchased a product or service online. Ironically 64 percent of the French purchased a product or service online in the past 30 days. Despite the obvious geographic distances the citizens of both countries are acting alike setting similar digital trends!

PowerPoint Dashboard to show the Progress of Company (Baldwin)

Attached slides is a cockpit (Dashboard) for data visualizations for company Managers to make decisions. I have created this for a company Baldwin. If you need power point copy please leave your email in comments

Thank you!

What is the Biggest Threat to Information Technology?

There are lots of security threats but today I think Phishing is very important to discuss. The most devastating attacks by the most sophisticated attackers almost always begin with simple act of spear-phishing. The fraudulent practice of sending emails ostensibly from a known or trusted sender in order to induce targeted individuals to reveal confidential information is called spear-phishing. Technology is way to fight phasing but most important is education.  Ninety-one percent of hacking attacks today begin with phishing scams or spear phishing attacks.  Preventing a spear phishing attack requires sophisticated security email solutions.

There are many examples of phishing scams but I am will discuss only three phishing techniques.

The first one is started from business email com starts from BEC fraud, where an email appearing to be sent from your boss asks you to make a payment on their behalf. According to FBI, Around 22000 organizations around the world have lost more than 3 billion to it over last three years.

Next example when you book hotel, you go to reception desk and provide all of your information (Personal, credit card etc.). Next someone from outside of the hotel (fraudster) calls the front desk and asks to forward call to your room. And then says “this is the front desk” when checking in , we came across a problem with your charge card information. Please re-read me your credit card information.

Third one is the following window. Please do not call the number listed on window with text that your computer is being hacked. They will ask your personal information and can control your computer or will ask for money to clean up your computer from virus.