Drone4fish

Blend of Big data, IoT, Drones, and Collaboration technologies to support Costal Communities and their fish and clams farming 

Fish and clams farming – a business that support many coastal communities across Italy – is affected by many issues that impact, and in some case jeopardize, this important revenue source many families depend on. These issues usually fall in two main categories:

• Thefts. Fish and clams are stolen and the infrastructure (nets) are damaged
• Natural factors that influence the overall farm productivity: temperature, salinity, oxygen, changes in the territory morphology (e.g. tides changing the seabed in lagoons)

These observations spruced us to conceive something to effectively address the above problems, so we blended the latest ICT technologies in a single solution to:

• Supply a low-cost security enforcement in the farm areas
• Enhance the productivity by adding a distributed, real-time monitoring of large areas, something generally not achievable with fixed solution
• Allow use of Big Data, Analytics and Artificial Intelligence as a complement to human expertise.

Furthermore, we wanted our solution to be a foundation for a possible ‘digitalization’ of other segments of the production chain (e.g. traceability, quality maps, etc.)

Relevant to notice that the solutions currently available suffer from multiple ‘environmental’ limitations: salt is not definitively friendly with electronic devices and fixed installations break often and carry very high maintenance cost. More, fixed installations do not cope with changing environmental conditions (e.g. tides changing seabed, thieves changing paths of attack, etc.).  Finally, some of the installations currently used are off-shore and the standard communication systems (e.g. 4G) may not be available for real time data transmission.

Drone4fish relies on autonomous drones, both aerial and marine, to collect real-time sensor data and transform that into relevant, actionable information that are in turn shared - using easy to use Unified Communication solution such as Cisco Spark - with all the relevant decision makers (e.g. fisherman cooperatives, fleets, coastal community’s planners, physical security managers).

By having mobile drones equipped with different kind of sensors (e.g. video/thermal, salinity, oxygen, bathymetry), real time information can be collected and sent to a central dashboard. Data then can be immediately analyzed (AI) to extract automatic information (e.g. high temperature for claims, thermal fingerprint of a malicious boat) and, if any specific rule is matched, alerts can be sent to the surveillance or production specialists. At any point in time, these specialists can also query BOTs via their Spark IM mobile app and get an immediate status-update in natural language – or watch what the sensors/drones are streaming if they want/need.

Drone4fish is also integrated with GIS (Geo-graphic Information System) to provide a location-based, structured set of information. Integration with broader GIS datasets is also possible.

In summary, the key advantages of Drone4fish are:

• Implement low-cost, effective security policies in the fish/claims farm areas
• Enhance farm productivity by:
  • adding a distributed, real time monitoring of large areas
  • Use of big data, relevant analytics and Artificial Intelligence as a complement to human expertise.
•  Provide the technology foundation for the potential digitalization end-to-end of the production process (e.g. traceability, quality maps, etc.)

Our solution applies an holistic approach to allow coastal communities to preserve the natural resources their business is based on, while extracting the maximum economic value out of them.

The combination of a drone-carried multi-sensor network with real time data analytics (AI based), and the capability for people to “chat” via BOT with the sensors/platform in natural language, makes the solution uniquely effective.

Users will have handy instruments to get the most updated information on the status of their business operation, whilst men and machine, experts and sensors, will be connected in a virtuous collaboration loop.

Technology integration is at the heart of the solution. Sensors will be digitized and data securely transported over a VPN protected network. Data transformation into information and then knowledge happens via the combination of AI algorithms powered by people experience to provide the most effective result. Last but not least, the ChatBOT technology solve the digital dividend issue since everyone (role based) will be able to chat with other people and/or sensor on his/her smartphone.

Our plan is to achieve one or two commercial pilot happening within twelve months, targeting 80% of the overall features of the platform. In particular Machine Learning algorithms needs to be trained with a qualified set of data that shall be collected during phase 1 (next 12 months). More, we plan to extend first pilot we did, targeting surveillance, with the capability to have automatic recognition of issues (thefts).

Our 3-year vision is to help 20% of the italian coastal communities dependent on fish and clam farming. Life of these communities will be improved stabilizing and growing their source of income with our solution. This will be pursued working in parallel on two levels:

• use the pilot as a reference to attract other coastal communities to adopt our solution;
• create awareness of our solution within the environmental protection authorities.

We aim to become with our solution a reference model  in term of long-term preservation of natural resources and optimization of the maximum economical value

The plan is to work with partners and sell the solution as a service, so relieving the customer (fish farmers) from the need to manage technology that is not their core business. More, this will relieve customers from taking care of technology upgrades, maintenance and so on. At the end of the day, what they need to have is a simple solution for their problems and this is what we will provide via a simple consumption model. Engaging Customer experience, ongoing optimization and support.

As described, the solution is at prototyping level so far. We had some demonstrations and proofs of concept delivered for a major fish farm outside the Italian coast line (10 km far from the coast).

We are also planning to have more proofs of concept with other coastal communities.

Initial plan is to address few hundreds (1500) of fishermen within next 12 months to have an extended field test and start collecting data and train the Machine Learning algorithms on specific issues (e.g. identify other growing areas, identify possible issues such as fresh water infiltration in lagoons, etc.). following period will include customer search and presentations. Fishermen represent just a fraction of the coastal community they live in and that will benefit from the increased economy.

Our team include people coming from many different areas of technology with a common passion for problem solving. This makes the environment extremely cooperative and stimulating for people, since technologies we adopt (drones, IoT, AI, etc.) are effective by them selves but have a multiplier effect when combined. So cross-pollinating knowledge to solve real life problems is showing to be extremely attractive for people wishing to make an impact.

Revenue model will be partially depending from the partners we'll work with for final commercial deployments. Current idea is to provide a full solution as a service. That will provide several advantages for final customers, including the freedom from technology maintenance and upgrade costs, exercise , allowing them to focus on their core business. Simplicity to access to what they need (problem solved and identification of risks/opportunities) is the key element in our approach.

We believe that working with Solve we will give us the chance to meet partners that could potentially contribute to improve our solution. Drone4Fish is a big-data generator. For part of this data we already know how to transform it into usable knowledge; however, we also believe there is a bulk of unexploited data that only an additional, multidisciplinary contribute could convert into new, valuable knowledge.  To this end, Solve might be a great venue to find people wishing to apply their brains to this challenge: helping us to extract the still hidden knowledge of the solution.

Drones, especially the aerial ones, are subject to regulation that, as of today, are somewhat unstable and incomplete. For example, Beyond Visual Line Of Flights (BVLOS) operations are currently not allowed although experimentations are under way by most Aviation Authorities. At the same time, the aerial drones play a crucial role in many fields as an effective, low-cost platform for mobile sensor (e.g. visual, thermal, others). Working with Solve might help to both rise the relevance of the overall Drone business case and get the attention of the relevant authorities involved with the regulatory issues.