Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 85 (2012) 109–111

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Computers and Electronics in Agriculture

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate /compag

Application note

Real-time mobile phone application to support land policy

Francisco Javier Mesas-Carrascosa ⇑, Isabel Luisa Castillejo-González, Manuel Sánchez de la Orden,Alfonso García-FerrerDepartment of Graphic and Geomatics Engineering, University of Cordoba, Campus de Rabanales, 14071 Cordoba, Spain

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history:Received 21 October 2011Received in revised form 9 April 2012Accepted 15 April 2012

Keywords:AndroidAccelerometerDigital cameraGPSMobile computingSmartphone

0168-1699/$ - see front matter � 2012 Elsevier B.V. Ahttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2012.04.003

⇑ Corresponding author. Address: DepartmentEngineering, University of Cordoba, Campus de Raban2ª planta, 14071 Cordoba, Spain. Tel./fax: +34 957 21

E-mail address: ig2mecaf@uco.es (F.J. Mesas-Carra

Agricultural subsidies can only be effectively allocated if there is a suitable information system both atthe level of subsidy providers – the government – and recipients – agricultural organizations. Govern-ments have to set up complex schemes to control subsidies using techniques such as remote sensingor photogrammetry. If these techniques do not help, technical staff has to visit the plots. This paperexplains the development and implementation of a mobile application to make fieldwork easier. Theapplication uses a number of devices in a Smartphone such as a GPS or a camera to collect informationand broadcast it to an office in real time. This application, called GeoFoto, computers was tested in realscenarios in the Spanish region of Andalusia. This provided information about its advantages and disad-vantages, and the final results are highly encouraging.

� 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Smartphones are the product of the convergence between reg-ular mobile phones and PDAs (Chang et al., 2009). Our workinglives have been changed by the increasing use of these devices,whose small size and low weight provide convenience and porta-bility. From a social point of view, mobile communication has anunquestionable relevance. It has also created new forms of busi-ness (Fuentesalz et al., 2008). In recent years, the interest of thescientific community in such communication has increased.According to the literature, mobile applications are used success-fully in the areas of health care (Dala-Ali et al., 2011), traffic mon-itoring (Chen et al., 2011; Monares et al., 2011), tourism (Ahaset al., 2008), education (Chang et al., 2011; Ruchter et al., 2010).Mobile services in the agricultural sector are a fact today. Rafosset al. (2010) developed an application to track down disease out-breaks in plants using GPS devices in mobile phones. Cunha et al.(2010) collected information such as climate data that can be ap-plied to production management. Smartphones make it possibleto work with real-time data; this is an important factor in decisionsupport systems (Antonopoulou et al., 2010; Zheng et al., 2011)and in documentation and traceability systems to track productsor product properties (Sallabi et al., 2011). The studies mentioned

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of Graphic and Geomaticsales, Edificio Gregor Mendel,

8 537.scosa).

show how different sectors can benefit from mobile services in dif-ferent ways, given their diversity of needs and conditions.

The major objective of the present research was to develop andimplement an application using the GPS, camera, accelerometerand WiFi/GPRS devices of Smartphones so that technical staff canuse it as a tool in fieldwork when inspecting agricultural plots.

This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 describes thematerials used; Section 3 shows the results and Section 4 includesthe final concluding remarks.

2. Materials

The software packages used for developing the final applicationwere the following: (a) Android Software Development Kit, (b)Android Development Tools (ADT) and (c) Eclipse used as an Inte-grated Development Environment (IDE) to develop the applicationin Java. The application for mobile phones was developed usingGPS, camera and accelerometer devices and WiFi/GPRS connection.The proposed solution was designed to be flexible and highly avail-able and tested on mobile phones running the Android 2.3.4 oper-ating system. It is flexible, as it is possible to implement newfunctions.

The solution is divided into two layers: a user interface and abusiness layer. The user interface provides an easy and friendlyspace where the interaction between users and the application oc-curs and provides access to the system. The business layer includesfunctional modules and business logic and includes the necessarymodules to access devices such as a GPS or a camera.

110 F.J. Mesas-Carrascosa et al. / Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 85 (2012) 109–111

3. Results

3.1. Operation of the application

The product developed was called GeoFoto. A GeoFoto sessionbegins by starting the program from the application menu(Fig. 1a). The first step is to select the main menu or the settingsmenu (Fig. 1b). In the settings menu (Fig. 1c), user can select be-tween storing coordinates in geodesic or UTM projection mode,time interval between epochs and the number of epochs. If the useris working indoors, inside a building, for example, he/she shouldselect ‘‘working without connection’’. In this case, the photographwill be taken without GPS information. Finally, the user can decidehow the information is stored. Data can be sent by e-mail or storedin an SD card. When the user starts to take photographs, a newwindow appears, showing the image recorded by the camera in fullscreen (Fig. 1d). Four buttons are shown at the bottom of thescreen. The first one on the left shows or conceals the coordinates

Fig. 1. GeoFoto screenshots: (a) access to the application, (b) initial screen access

on the screen. The second button is the compass and shows the ori-entation of the Smartphone. The right button shows a new screenwhere the user can enter additional data (Fig. 1e). This informationis later printed on the image and included in a text file and in ane-mail. The camera button is used to take photographs. This buttonis only enabled once the GPS coordinates have been obtained. If theuser selects the settings menu to work indoors, this button isenabled immediately.

Each camera shot generates two files; an image and a text file.Files are named using the concatenation of date and time values.The e-mail subject is also generated using this rule, which pre-vents any confusion when managing the data. All the recordeddata are processed and automatically e-mailed in real time tothe office or laboratory, where the information is received andanalyzed. This makes it possible to verify that the user has visitedthe correct plot or that the number of samples collected isenough. Thus, if something goes wrong the problem can be cor-rected in real time.

ed by the user (c) settings menu, (d) main menu and (e) digital blackboard.

Fig. 2. Comparison between materials developed using (a) conventional method-ology and (b) mobile methodology.

F.J. Mesas-Carrascosa et al. / Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 85 (2012) 109–111 111

3.2. Practical experiences

The application was used to support technical staff in land plotidentification. These tasks focus on monitoring European Unionagricultural subsidies. The technical staff has to manage variousdevices such as a GPS, camera, mobile or blackboard to record datasuch as the plot code, photograph identification or date (Fig. 2a).GeoFoto reduces the number of devices needed and also managesthe information (Fig. 2b). Compared to other methods, fieldworkwas made easier because all the information was integrated intoone single tool. Feedback from the users was very positive. Some-times the staff had problems due to poor mobile network coverage.Today, this problem often affects many applications when work isperformed in rural areas. Rafoss et al. (2010) had the same problemtesting their research. In such situations, GeoFoto stores the infor-mation in a SD card so that it can be downloaded later.

4. Discussion

The technological progress made in telecommunications andmobile devices suggests that new research and applications thatare presently unthinkable will be available in the future. Thereare a wealth of possibilities to build new applications integrating

many sensors into Smartphones. Such sensors can be internal orexternal. Internal sensors are used in GPS, accelerometers andcameras and can provide associated services. For example, GPSsensors provide coordinates that are used in location services.Several internal sensors can be combined to offer new services,such as georeferenced images taken by a Smartphone. Smart-phones have communication ports such as USB ports, for example.This increases the potential of these devices, broadening the possi-bility of developing new applications. Sensors such as thermome-ters, carbon dioxide meters and others can be connected to aSmartphone. The role played by Smartphones in this context is tofacilitate information transmission.

Acknowledgements

This research was financially supported by the Andalusian Re-gional Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (Consejería de Agricul-tura y Pesca, Junta de Andalucía).

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