Implementation of Thailand’s Agricultural Expert System Framework in the Philippines
E-Agricultural Services and Business
AFITA 2010 International Conference, The Quality Information for Competitive Agricultural Based Production System and Commerce
Implementation of Thailand’s Agricultural Expert System Framework
in the Philippines
Hideyuki Iwata
Promotion Committee
The Telecommunication Technology Committee (TTC)
Tokyo, Japan
[email protected]
Abstract— Under the auspices of Telecommunication
Technology Committee (TTC) with its slogan “LET’s
SHARE (Success & Happiness by Activating Regional
Economy) Together”, constructions of data communication
infrastructure have taken place in remote rural areas of
several Asian countries and pilot application solutions to
meet local needs in fields such as agriculture, education,
health care and environment have been provided. Here we
report on the implementation in the Philippines of an
agricultural solution in Thailand.
The Philippines is at present the world’s largest importer of
rice and in the first half of 2008 when this project was
launched the sudden steep rise in the price of rice due to
shortages was causing problems for the communities.
The agricultural solution in Thailand consist of
recommendation of fertilizer for soil using SMS, suggestion
from experts delivered by the network, knowledge database
and education system for children. Visitation to the project
site was conducted and discussion on the viability of
introducing the framework of the Thai agricultural solution
in the Philippines was made.
The key exchange technology being used is the languagegrid technology. Among our findings, agricultural problems
are very important but it has also been suggested that
overcoming problems in the fishery business is also
important for the Philippines.
Keywords-component; Knowledge, ICT, Telecommunications,
rural area, database, education, usability, multilanguage,
standards
I.
INTRODUCTION
TTC Promotion committee with its slogan: 刴 Let‟s
SHARE together 刵 (SHARE: Success & Happiness by
Regional Economy) has been implementing data
telecommunication infrastructure construction and local
needs customized agriculture, education, healthcare,
environment and etc applications pilot projects in several
countries in Asia. At the same time, TTC promotion
committee also conducts activities that supports the
deployment of the result of the pilot projects to the
surrounding countries. TTC promotion committee is
established in 2007 by Japanese major carriers and
vendors. Its philosophy is to contribute to the happiness of
Asia-Pacific people and society by appropriate sharing of
limited resources and using them as effectively as possible.
Its vision is to contribute to the development of ICT and
the standards originated from Asia towards NGN era. Its
mission is to the promotion and development of system &
solution towards bridging economical gap/regional
disparities/ standardization gap.
Some of activity in 2008FY is the construction of a
telecenter and the implementation of health application
carried out in the Tanah Datar Regency of West Sumatra
in Indonesia supported by Asia Pacific Telecommunity
(APT) [1]. Its population is about 350,000, but the
healthcare facilities consist of one hospital, 22 healthcare
centers, 66 healthcare clinics, 55 doctors. Medical
examinations are performed by medical practitioners at the
healthcare centers. The common problem encountered in
offering medical treatment in the rural areas is that “local
residents are not receiving sufficient health treatment
services”. By means of this pilot project, we could
implement the automatic measurement of the three most
basic health indicators-height, weight and blood pressure
using Bluetooth and create a database. In the health care
centers that have adopted this health checkup service,
every patient who comes to the centers started having their
physical examination indicators measured using the
system and doctors are starting to incorporate the BMI
(Body Measurements Index) values calculated from the
results of the measurements into health examinations. In
addition, the mobile vehicular telecenter with this system
mounted on it, is going round the schools, community
centers, offices etc. in the regency. By periodically
understanding the health condition of the local residents
and inputting the data into the database, we think that this
will help the local people stay healthy and that any signs of
illness can be found at an early stage and treatment can be
commenced.
AFITA 2010 International Conference, The Quality Information for Competitive Agricultural Based Production System and Commerce
cooperation between Kasersart agricultural university,
ALRO, NECTEC. The system is compatible for crops
such as rice, palm tree, rubber, etc.
Figure 2: item 3 refers to a optimization system of the
fertilizer that are suitable for the rice agriculture soil. As
seen from the pictures in Figure 1: item 3, the Nitrogen
(N), Phosphorus (P), Potassium (K) content of the paddy
field soil were measured using a simplified measuring
device; the measured value is sorted into 1, 2 and 3, which
the agricultural workers send to the information data
server in the local center using their mobile phones‟ Short
Messaging Service (SMS). Immediately afterwards, the
optimum fertilizer mixture value for the soil, obtained
from the sent NPK soil content value and the database
assembled by Kasetsart Agricultural University, was sent
back to the agricultural worker. By providing the optimum
fertilizer mixture values for the soil, the system has
resulted in increased harvest yield rate and reduced
fertilizer cost, and in some cases, doubling of revenue.
Figure 2: item 1 illustrates a direct training system by
the agricultural experts to the agricultural worker through
network. Agricultural experts provide direct instructions to
agricultural worker through the network about crop disease
and pest damage which could not be solved on site.
Figure 2: item 2 depicts a knowledge database system.
It
is a system that provides unified database service on
weather, disease information, marketing, cooking
instruction, etc.
Figure 2: item 4 illustrates an education system that
stimulates interest in agriculture among children. It is
expected that the children of the agricultural worker to
have interests in agriculture and dissemination of the
system to the families from the children who are able to
absorbs ICT Technology easily. The education system are
made available in local ALRO offices, primary schools
and households, and strive to spread among the society.
The system features some distinguished points: (1) the
usage of SMS system which are widely popular among the
population for immediate information and necessary
information in the field; (2) the ability to provide proper
guidance or instruction from the experts to the agricultural
workers, based on the photographs, etc taken from the site
that was delivered through the network; (3) improving
penetration to children who easily acquire ICT
Technology in the interest of system dissemination; (4) the
children, as the successor, takes interest in agriculture; (5)
subsequently, for the system dissemination, creating a user
friendly environment for the system; (6) providing a
unified database of separate databases from each
organization.
In this project, the viability of introducing the
framework of the Thai agricultural solution in the
Philippines was examined.
Figure 1. Increase in Rice Price
(Source: Thai national merchandise trade committee and export
restrictions)
Figure 1 refers to rice prices in Thailand from the
board of trade of Thailand. The prices were expected to
increase by 1.5 times, exceeding 1000 US Dollars/ton by
May 2008 due to rice export restriction in India and
Vietnam. The population of Philippines is approximately
90 million people, with annual rice consumption of 33
million tons. Although Philippine was one of the greatest
rice-producing countries, nowadays, Philippine is one of
the world‟s biggest rice importer (18 million tons), mostly
imported from Vietnam. The price has risen from 20
peso/kg to more than 30 peso/kg in this one month. As the
lowest stratum of 15% of the population lives by US$1 per
day, the rising price of rice has become a social issue.
Among the activities, here is a report on the study of
applying a proven agricultural solutions from Thailand in
Philippine with the support of Asia Pacific Telecommunity
(APT) in 2008.
The project, entitled “An Open Access Broadband
Farm to Market Ecosystem”, was lead by Philippines
Department of Transportation and Communications
(DOTC) and Ateneo de Manila University, realized with
the cooperation from Thailand National Electronics and
Computer Technology Center (NECTEC), Kasetsart
Agricultural University and Thailand Agricultural Land
Reform Office (ALRO) [2]. Philippines is currently the
world‟s largest importer of rice. In the first half of 2008
when the deliberation for the project was started, the
shortage of rice in the Philippines lead to soaring prices
and became a social issue. In this human resources
development exchange, the case example of ICT utilizing
agricultural solutions and services being implemented in
Thailand is being examined to be deployed to Philippines
under the assistance from Japanese National Agriculture
and Food Research Organization (NARO) and University
of Tokyo.
II.
AGRICULTURAL SOLUTION IN THAILAND
The agricultural solution in Thailand, entitled Cyber
Brain, is an agriculture expert system developed in
187
AFITA 2010 International Conference, The Quality Information for Competitive Agricultural Based Production System and Commerce
Figure 2. Example of the agricultural solution introduced in Thailand
III.
PROBLEMS TOWARD DISSEMINATION (LANGUAGE
GRID TECHNOLOGY)
As the agricultural expert system in Thailand was
developed in Thai language, there will be language barrier
problems for the its introduction in the Philippines. We are
considering to provide Thailand‟s agricultural expert
system in the Philippines by using Language Grid services.
Language Grid service has been developed by the
National Institute of Information and Communications
Technology (NICT), Japan, and is operated by the
Department of Social Informatics, Kyoto University [3].
It is widely applied by 88 organizations around the
world and a total of 41 language resources have been
registered with the Language grid as of June 2009.
Language Grid service is a system that capable to
improving the accuracy of multiple language machine
translation, with the technology to reconvert the translated
to its original language and make necessary corrections,
users can gradually make revisions thus resulting in
improvement of performance and accuracy (Fig. 3).
As Language Grid service uses existing translation
dictionaries and machine translation system, in this project,
agriculture related sample questions were prepared and
Thai and English dictionary were developed.
Figure 3. Outline of Language Grid
IV.
PROBLEMS TOWARD DISSEMINATION (USABILITY)
As previously mentioned, in order to translate the
existing crop disease and pest damage information
contents in Thailand, the usage of Language Grid
technology was considered, however, for a more
simplified exchange of information, a collaboration with
an education solution developed by PANGAEA NPO in
five countries (Japan, Australia, Kenya, Korea and
Malaysia) was examined [4]. The solution by PANGAEA
features the usage of Pictograph (Picton) for
communication between children in foreign countries and
procedure of creating a homepage by using pictures drawn
by the children and photographs (Fig. 4).
In the agriculture expert system in Thailand, the
questions directed to the experts are manually entered, to
188
AFITA 2010 International Conference, The Quality Information for Competitive Agricultural Based Production System and Commerce
allow for the children to operate it more easily, a method
that permits to ask a question without manual entry was
considered through cooperation between PANAGEA,
NICT and Kyoto University.
Figure 6 (a). Question and Answers in Thai language
Figure 4. Example of children‟s personal homepage / “House” in the
PANGAEA solution
The contemplated agriculture expert Question and
Answer system was made in consideration of three factors:
simple, enjoyable, and fancied by children. For
uncomplicated entry, photographs and graphical contents
was employed, icons and symbols are used instead of texts
and the texts are kept to the minimal. By employing pulldown entry, items of possible questions can be combined
to complete a question sentence. The options for the
example sentences of the pull-down entry are narrowed
down from the preexisting conditions of the clicked
graphical contents (Fig. 5). With this demo system, a
question can be made without the need to write the
sentence by hand. As shown in the Fig. 6 (a) (b), the
vernacular language is used during the formulation of the
question, and using the language grid system, it is possible
to easily convert it to the experts‟ language. The language
can be easily changed between Japanese language, Thai
language and English language with only one click.
Figure 6 (b). Question and Answers translated into English language
V.
SENSOR NETWORK TECHNOLOGY
A. Case example in Thailand
Figure 7 shows the field server used in Thailand‟s
Smart Valley Project and the measurement database.
NECTEC in Thailand has been promoting sensor
network research and development in the agricultural
sector. Agriculture Smart Valley Project has been
conducting a study on obtaining real time temperature,
rainfall, image information, etc of agricultural land from
the Web, from sensor network that utilizes field sensor and
Zigbee technology.
Figure 7. Example of agriculture smart valley project in Thailand
Figure 5. Options of Graphical contents to be chosen to describe a
situation
189
AFITA 2010 International Conference, The Quality Information for Competitive Agricultural Based Production System and Commerce
important for the Philippines and a study was made to see
if the agricultural solution introduced in Thailand could be
used to curb the problem that occurs at the beginning of
the rainy season each year in November around the lake in
San Pablo, Manila suburbs, where large number of fish die
from lack of oxygen. In this study, various kinds of
sensors were deployed around the edges of the lake and
basic data was measured such as water temperature, PH
(acidity), DO (dissolved oxygen), turbidity and
conductivity.
B. Case example in the Philippines
Figure 8 shows the rainfall measurement system which
is being developed by Ateneo de Manila University in the
Phillipines
Ateneo de Manila University is at present conducting
demonstration experiments on low-cost rainfall sensor
network. One of the experiments; the high frequency from
26 Ghz high frequency wireless system (WIPAS: Wireless
IP Access System) used as the telecommunication line is
susceptible to rain; during rain event, the decrease in
frequency are measured and by using the known
relationship between the amount of rainfall and amount of
decreased frequency, the system calculates the amount of
rainfall. Another experiment is on a simplified low-cost
sensor that calculates the amount of rainfall based on the
intensity of the rainfall by using ice cream can and MP3
recorder.
VII. FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS
Using the success of the agricultural solution in
Thailand as a reference, the results of studying its
introduction into the Philippines were that it should not
only be used in agriculture but also to overcome the issues
in the fishing industry, thus we implemented a study that
included the fishing industry (Fig.9). This time the basic
model of our investigation was to install sensors in rice
paddy fields and lakes, build a network architecture
linking these sensors, and input into a database all the
measurement information obtained from the sensors via
the network, and offer a beneficial and simple easy to use
service that is open and not just limited to people working
in the agricultural and fishing industry. Based on the
system we proposed, people working in the agricultural
and fishing industry can expect a stable harvests and
income, be able to expand their businesses, and we believe
they will be able to improve their standard of living, The
result of this project were adoption as the APT-J 3 pilot
project for FY 2009 where pilot test will be carried out.
Figure 8. Outline of rainfall sensor network system in the Philippines
VI.
APPLICATION FOR FISHERIES IN THE PHILIPPINES
As the study progresses, indeed agricultural problems
are very important but it has also been suggested that
overcoming problems in the fishery industry is also
Figure 9. Example of fish farming solution in the Philippines
190
AFITA 2010 International Conference, The Quality Information for Competitive Agricultural Based Production System and Commerce
VIII. EXPANDING STANDARDIZATION TO NEIGHBORING
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
COUNTRIES IN ASIA
The Bridging the Standardization Gap (BSG) Working
Group of the Asia Pacific Telecommunity Standardization
Program (ASTAP) which operates under the auspices of
the Asia Pacific Telecommunity (APT) has set up a Case
Study Team, aiming to spread the results of the APT
projects, where applications and services provided
through networks implemented in the concerned countries
only, to neighboring Asian countries. This group has also
started standardization activities for the utilization of ICT.
Based on the social problem-solving healthcare,
agriculture and fisheries, education and environmental
solutions examples, the main members of the group;
Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the
Philippines; have been clarifying the common parts which
can be used in each country and working on system cost
reductions, ensuring interoperability and preparing written
recommendations about the possibility of expanding the
projects to their own countries (Fig. 10).
We acknowledge APT for supporting our projects and
also would like to thank Mr. Francis Perez, Mr. Norberto
Conti, Mr. Clodualdo Rodil from Philippine Commission
on Information and Communications Technology (CICT),
Dr. Greg Tangonan and Dr. Nathaniel Joseph Libatique
from Ateneo De Manila University, Dr. Asanee
Kawtrakul from NECTEC, Ms. Yumiko Mori from
PANGAEA, and Dr. Touru Ishida from Kyoto University.
REFERENCES
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
Figure 10. Overview of SHARE Project
IX.
SUMMARY
The results of the project in the Philippines carried out
jointly by the Promotion Committee of TTC with the
support from APT have been described. In the deployment
of Thailand‟s agricultural solution to the Philippines, in
order to eliminate the language barrier, review of
Language Grid technology and simplified input/entry
methods, to make it child-user friendly, has been
conducted. As a result, the framework is being considered
to be implemented at a lake in the Philippines where large
number of aquaculture farm fish died from lack of oxygen,
in order to solve the problem.
From now on we plan to aim for realization of the
„SHARE‟ by means of standardization activities aimed at
spreadingg the result of implementing the deployment of
Thailand agricultural solution in the Philippines, from each
countries, to the other neighboring countries in Asia.
191
Akmam Amir, “Promotion of e-local Community with ICT
Solution in Indonesia” in Asia Pacific Telecommunication and ICT
Development Forum (ADF), Tokyo, Japan, May 18-20, 2010
Norberto A. Conti, “An Open Access Broadband Farm to Market
Ecosystem” in Asia Pacific Telecommunication and ICT
Development Forum (ADF), Tokyo, Japan, May 18-20, 2010
Kyoto University 2009, First visit to the Language Grid, viewed 20
August 2010,
Yumiko Mori, "Youth Mediated Communication Model:
NewChallenge to Bring Youths for Better World. Phase I
Agriculture" , Asia-Pacific Advanced Network: APAN2009, eCulture Session
AFITA 2010 International Conference, The Quality Information for Competitive Agricultural Based Production System and Commerce
Implementation of Thailand’s Agricultural Expert System Framework
in the Philippines
Hideyuki Iwata
Promotion Committee
The Telecommunication Technology Committee (TTC)
Tokyo, Japan
[email protected]
Abstract— Under the auspices of Telecommunication
Technology Committee (TTC) with its slogan “LET’s
SHARE (Success & Happiness by Activating Regional
Economy) Together”, constructions of data communication
infrastructure have taken place in remote rural areas of
several Asian countries and pilot application solutions to
meet local needs in fields such as agriculture, education,
health care and environment have been provided. Here we
report on the implementation in the Philippines of an
agricultural solution in Thailand.
The Philippines is at present the world’s largest importer of
rice and in the first half of 2008 when this project was
launched the sudden steep rise in the price of rice due to
shortages was causing problems for the communities.
The agricultural solution in Thailand consist of
recommendation of fertilizer for soil using SMS, suggestion
from experts delivered by the network, knowledge database
and education system for children. Visitation to the project
site was conducted and discussion on the viability of
introducing the framework of the Thai agricultural solution
in the Philippines was made.
The key exchange technology being used is the languagegrid technology. Among our findings, agricultural problems
are very important but it has also been suggested that
overcoming problems in the fishery business is also
important for the Philippines.
Keywords-component; Knowledge, ICT, Telecommunications,
rural area, database, education, usability, multilanguage,
standards
I.
INTRODUCTION
TTC Promotion committee with its slogan: 刴 Let‟s
SHARE together 刵 (SHARE: Success & Happiness by
Regional Economy) has been implementing data
telecommunication infrastructure construction and local
needs customized agriculture, education, healthcare,
environment and etc applications pilot projects in several
countries in Asia. At the same time, TTC promotion
committee also conducts activities that supports the
deployment of the result of the pilot projects to the
surrounding countries. TTC promotion committee is
established in 2007 by Japanese major carriers and
vendors. Its philosophy is to contribute to the happiness of
Asia-Pacific people and society by appropriate sharing of
limited resources and using them as effectively as possible.
Its vision is to contribute to the development of ICT and
the standards originated from Asia towards NGN era. Its
mission is to the promotion and development of system &
solution towards bridging economical gap/regional
disparities/ standardization gap.
Some of activity in 2008FY is the construction of a
telecenter and the implementation of health application
carried out in the Tanah Datar Regency of West Sumatra
in Indonesia supported by Asia Pacific Telecommunity
(APT) [1]. Its population is about 350,000, but the
healthcare facilities consist of one hospital, 22 healthcare
centers, 66 healthcare clinics, 55 doctors. Medical
examinations are performed by medical practitioners at the
healthcare centers. The common problem encountered in
offering medical treatment in the rural areas is that “local
residents are not receiving sufficient health treatment
services”. By means of this pilot project, we could
implement the automatic measurement of the three most
basic health indicators-height, weight and blood pressure
using Bluetooth and create a database. In the health care
centers that have adopted this health checkup service,
every patient who comes to the centers started having their
physical examination indicators measured using the
system and doctors are starting to incorporate the BMI
(Body Measurements Index) values calculated from the
results of the measurements into health examinations. In
addition, the mobile vehicular telecenter with this system
mounted on it, is going round the schools, community
centers, offices etc. in the regency. By periodically
understanding the health condition of the local residents
and inputting the data into the database, we think that this
will help the local people stay healthy and that any signs of
illness can be found at an early stage and treatment can be
commenced.
AFITA 2010 International Conference, The Quality Information for Competitive Agricultural Based Production System and Commerce
cooperation between Kasersart agricultural university,
ALRO, NECTEC. The system is compatible for crops
such as rice, palm tree, rubber, etc.
Figure 2: item 3 refers to a optimization system of the
fertilizer that are suitable for the rice agriculture soil. As
seen from the pictures in Figure 1: item 3, the Nitrogen
(N), Phosphorus (P), Potassium (K) content of the paddy
field soil were measured using a simplified measuring
device; the measured value is sorted into 1, 2 and 3, which
the agricultural workers send to the information data
server in the local center using their mobile phones‟ Short
Messaging Service (SMS). Immediately afterwards, the
optimum fertilizer mixture value for the soil, obtained
from the sent NPK soil content value and the database
assembled by Kasetsart Agricultural University, was sent
back to the agricultural worker. By providing the optimum
fertilizer mixture values for the soil, the system has
resulted in increased harvest yield rate and reduced
fertilizer cost, and in some cases, doubling of revenue.
Figure 2: item 1 illustrates a direct training system by
the agricultural experts to the agricultural worker through
network. Agricultural experts provide direct instructions to
agricultural worker through the network about crop disease
and pest damage which could not be solved on site.
Figure 2: item 2 depicts a knowledge database system.
It
is a system that provides unified database service on
weather, disease information, marketing, cooking
instruction, etc.
Figure 2: item 4 illustrates an education system that
stimulates interest in agriculture among children. It is
expected that the children of the agricultural worker to
have interests in agriculture and dissemination of the
system to the families from the children who are able to
absorbs ICT Technology easily. The education system are
made available in local ALRO offices, primary schools
and households, and strive to spread among the society.
The system features some distinguished points: (1) the
usage of SMS system which are widely popular among the
population for immediate information and necessary
information in the field; (2) the ability to provide proper
guidance or instruction from the experts to the agricultural
workers, based on the photographs, etc taken from the site
that was delivered through the network; (3) improving
penetration to children who easily acquire ICT
Technology in the interest of system dissemination; (4) the
children, as the successor, takes interest in agriculture; (5)
subsequently, for the system dissemination, creating a user
friendly environment for the system; (6) providing a
unified database of separate databases from each
organization.
In this project, the viability of introducing the
framework of the Thai agricultural solution in the
Philippines was examined.
Figure 1. Increase in Rice Price
(Source: Thai national merchandise trade committee and export
restrictions)
Figure 1 refers to rice prices in Thailand from the
board of trade of Thailand. The prices were expected to
increase by 1.5 times, exceeding 1000 US Dollars/ton by
May 2008 due to rice export restriction in India and
Vietnam. The population of Philippines is approximately
90 million people, with annual rice consumption of 33
million tons. Although Philippine was one of the greatest
rice-producing countries, nowadays, Philippine is one of
the world‟s biggest rice importer (18 million tons), mostly
imported from Vietnam. The price has risen from 20
peso/kg to more than 30 peso/kg in this one month. As the
lowest stratum of 15% of the population lives by US$1 per
day, the rising price of rice has become a social issue.
Among the activities, here is a report on the study of
applying a proven agricultural solutions from Thailand in
Philippine with the support of Asia Pacific Telecommunity
(APT) in 2008.
The project, entitled “An Open Access Broadband
Farm to Market Ecosystem”, was lead by Philippines
Department of Transportation and Communications
(DOTC) and Ateneo de Manila University, realized with
the cooperation from Thailand National Electronics and
Computer Technology Center (NECTEC), Kasetsart
Agricultural University and Thailand Agricultural Land
Reform Office (ALRO) [2]. Philippines is currently the
world‟s largest importer of rice. In the first half of 2008
when the deliberation for the project was started, the
shortage of rice in the Philippines lead to soaring prices
and became a social issue. In this human resources
development exchange, the case example of ICT utilizing
agricultural solutions and services being implemented in
Thailand is being examined to be deployed to Philippines
under the assistance from Japanese National Agriculture
and Food Research Organization (NARO) and University
of Tokyo.
II.
AGRICULTURAL SOLUTION IN THAILAND
The agricultural solution in Thailand, entitled Cyber
Brain, is an agriculture expert system developed in
187
AFITA 2010 International Conference, The Quality Information for Competitive Agricultural Based Production System and Commerce
Figure 2. Example of the agricultural solution introduced in Thailand
III.
PROBLEMS TOWARD DISSEMINATION (LANGUAGE
GRID TECHNOLOGY)
As the agricultural expert system in Thailand was
developed in Thai language, there will be language barrier
problems for the its introduction in the Philippines. We are
considering to provide Thailand‟s agricultural expert
system in the Philippines by using Language Grid services.
Language Grid service has been developed by the
National Institute of Information and Communications
Technology (NICT), Japan, and is operated by the
Department of Social Informatics, Kyoto University [3].
It is widely applied by 88 organizations around the
world and a total of 41 language resources have been
registered with the Language grid as of June 2009.
Language Grid service is a system that capable to
improving the accuracy of multiple language machine
translation, with the technology to reconvert the translated
to its original language and make necessary corrections,
users can gradually make revisions thus resulting in
improvement of performance and accuracy (Fig. 3).
As Language Grid service uses existing translation
dictionaries and machine translation system, in this project,
agriculture related sample questions were prepared and
Thai and English dictionary were developed.
Figure 3. Outline of Language Grid
IV.
PROBLEMS TOWARD DISSEMINATION (USABILITY)
As previously mentioned, in order to translate the
existing crop disease and pest damage information
contents in Thailand, the usage of Language Grid
technology was considered, however, for a more
simplified exchange of information, a collaboration with
an education solution developed by PANGAEA NPO in
five countries (Japan, Australia, Kenya, Korea and
Malaysia) was examined [4]. The solution by PANGAEA
features the usage of Pictograph (Picton) for
communication between children in foreign countries and
procedure of creating a homepage by using pictures drawn
by the children and photographs (Fig. 4).
In the agriculture expert system in Thailand, the
questions directed to the experts are manually entered, to
188
AFITA 2010 International Conference, The Quality Information for Competitive Agricultural Based Production System and Commerce
allow for the children to operate it more easily, a method
that permits to ask a question without manual entry was
considered through cooperation between PANAGEA,
NICT and Kyoto University.
Figure 6 (a). Question and Answers in Thai language
Figure 4. Example of children‟s personal homepage / “House” in the
PANGAEA solution
The contemplated agriculture expert Question and
Answer system was made in consideration of three factors:
simple, enjoyable, and fancied by children. For
uncomplicated entry, photographs and graphical contents
was employed, icons and symbols are used instead of texts
and the texts are kept to the minimal. By employing pulldown entry, items of possible questions can be combined
to complete a question sentence. The options for the
example sentences of the pull-down entry are narrowed
down from the preexisting conditions of the clicked
graphical contents (Fig. 5). With this demo system, a
question can be made without the need to write the
sentence by hand. As shown in the Fig. 6 (a) (b), the
vernacular language is used during the formulation of the
question, and using the language grid system, it is possible
to easily convert it to the experts‟ language. The language
can be easily changed between Japanese language, Thai
language and English language with only one click.
Figure 6 (b). Question and Answers translated into English language
V.
SENSOR NETWORK TECHNOLOGY
A. Case example in Thailand
Figure 7 shows the field server used in Thailand‟s
Smart Valley Project and the measurement database.
NECTEC in Thailand has been promoting sensor
network research and development in the agricultural
sector. Agriculture Smart Valley Project has been
conducting a study on obtaining real time temperature,
rainfall, image information, etc of agricultural land from
the Web, from sensor network that utilizes field sensor and
Zigbee technology.
Figure 7. Example of agriculture smart valley project in Thailand
Figure 5. Options of Graphical contents to be chosen to describe a
situation
189
AFITA 2010 International Conference, The Quality Information for Competitive Agricultural Based Production System and Commerce
important for the Philippines and a study was made to see
if the agricultural solution introduced in Thailand could be
used to curb the problem that occurs at the beginning of
the rainy season each year in November around the lake in
San Pablo, Manila suburbs, where large number of fish die
from lack of oxygen. In this study, various kinds of
sensors were deployed around the edges of the lake and
basic data was measured such as water temperature, PH
(acidity), DO (dissolved oxygen), turbidity and
conductivity.
B. Case example in the Philippines
Figure 8 shows the rainfall measurement system which
is being developed by Ateneo de Manila University in the
Phillipines
Ateneo de Manila University is at present conducting
demonstration experiments on low-cost rainfall sensor
network. One of the experiments; the high frequency from
26 Ghz high frequency wireless system (WIPAS: Wireless
IP Access System) used as the telecommunication line is
susceptible to rain; during rain event, the decrease in
frequency are measured and by using the known
relationship between the amount of rainfall and amount of
decreased frequency, the system calculates the amount of
rainfall. Another experiment is on a simplified low-cost
sensor that calculates the amount of rainfall based on the
intensity of the rainfall by using ice cream can and MP3
recorder.
VII. FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS
Using the success of the agricultural solution in
Thailand as a reference, the results of studying its
introduction into the Philippines were that it should not
only be used in agriculture but also to overcome the issues
in the fishing industry, thus we implemented a study that
included the fishing industry (Fig.9). This time the basic
model of our investigation was to install sensors in rice
paddy fields and lakes, build a network architecture
linking these sensors, and input into a database all the
measurement information obtained from the sensors via
the network, and offer a beneficial and simple easy to use
service that is open and not just limited to people working
in the agricultural and fishing industry. Based on the
system we proposed, people working in the agricultural
and fishing industry can expect a stable harvests and
income, be able to expand their businesses, and we believe
they will be able to improve their standard of living, The
result of this project were adoption as the APT-J 3 pilot
project for FY 2009 where pilot test will be carried out.
Figure 8. Outline of rainfall sensor network system in the Philippines
VI.
APPLICATION FOR FISHERIES IN THE PHILIPPINES
As the study progresses, indeed agricultural problems
are very important but it has also been suggested that
overcoming problems in the fishery industry is also
Figure 9. Example of fish farming solution in the Philippines
190
AFITA 2010 International Conference, The Quality Information for Competitive Agricultural Based Production System and Commerce
VIII. EXPANDING STANDARDIZATION TO NEIGHBORING
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
COUNTRIES IN ASIA
The Bridging the Standardization Gap (BSG) Working
Group of the Asia Pacific Telecommunity Standardization
Program (ASTAP) which operates under the auspices of
the Asia Pacific Telecommunity (APT) has set up a Case
Study Team, aiming to spread the results of the APT
projects, where applications and services provided
through networks implemented in the concerned countries
only, to neighboring Asian countries. This group has also
started standardization activities for the utilization of ICT.
Based on the social problem-solving healthcare,
agriculture and fisheries, education and environmental
solutions examples, the main members of the group;
Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the
Philippines; have been clarifying the common parts which
can be used in each country and working on system cost
reductions, ensuring interoperability and preparing written
recommendations about the possibility of expanding the
projects to their own countries (Fig. 10).
We acknowledge APT for supporting our projects and
also would like to thank Mr. Francis Perez, Mr. Norberto
Conti, Mr. Clodualdo Rodil from Philippine Commission
on Information and Communications Technology (CICT),
Dr. Greg Tangonan and Dr. Nathaniel Joseph Libatique
from Ateneo De Manila University, Dr. Asanee
Kawtrakul from NECTEC, Ms. Yumiko Mori from
PANGAEA, and Dr. Touru Ishida from Kyoto University.
REFERENCES
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
Figure 10. Overview of SHARE Project
IX.
SUMMARY
The results of the project in the Philippines carried out
jointly by the Promotion Committee of TTC with the
support from APT have been described. In the deployment
of Thailand‟s agricultural solution to the Philippines, in
order to eliminate the language barrier, review of
Language Grid technology and simplified input/entry
methods, to make it child-user friendly, has been
conducted. As a result, the framework is being considered
to be implemented at a lake in the Philippines where large
number of aquaculture farm fish died from lack of oxygen,
in order to solve the problem.
From now on we plan to aim for realization of the
„SHARE‟ by means of standardization activities aimed at
spreadingg the result of implementing the deployment of
Thailand agricultural solution in the Philippines, from each
countries, to the other neighboring countries in Asia.
191
Akmam Amir, “Promotion of e-local Community with ICT
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Norberto A. Conti, “An Open Access Broadband Farm to Market
Ecosystem” in Asia Pacific Telecommunication and ICT
Development Forum (ADF), Tokyo, Japan, May 18-20, 2010
Kyoto University 2009, First visit to the Language Grid, viewed 20
August 2010,
Yumiko Mori, "Youth Mediated Communication Model:
NewChallenge to Bring Youths for Better World. Phase I
Agriculture" , Asia-Pacific Advanced Network: APAN2009, eCulture Session