IOT ASSISTED DIGITAL TWINS IN SMART AGRICULTURE

The rapid world population growth dramatically increases the requirements for an equally rapid increase of food production to feed the human community. This requirement has recently been covered through smart agriculture that can assist in increasing production efficiency. The farming sector faces new problems such as labor shortages, pressure for feeding populations increasing in size, and environmental degradation, as well as agricultural products and plants, which reduces the production of crops. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic made the situation even worse putting global production at risk for an unknown time period. Digital twinning is a significant concept that to explore the relationship between real/physical and digital/virtual objects and can greatly assist towards improving several sectors of the digital economy including smart agriculture. Digital twins can be a primary method to control farming and can revolutionize agriculture with the assistance of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to improve the production of crops. This removes otherwise necessary constraints on place, time, and human observation based on the Physical proximity to farming operations to enable remote monitoring, control, and coordination of farms. The digital twins may be enriched with precise detection of physical and virtual objects using sensors as well as satellite data.

The growth of the Internet of Things in digital twins is pushing its way into all fields, including smart agriculture. It provides a better understanding of the situation in farms and areas based on process-related agriculture, such as irrigation, use of fertilizers and pestisides etc. for obtaining a more comprehensive view of the overall value chain in food production with strategic decisions. The significance of the IoT unplugs data collection and uses standard and low-cost worldwide Internet and Cloud Computing technologies as a core part of data transfer to resolve the challenges in smart farming.

The use of digital twins with IoT in smart agriculture ensures several benefits such as productivity growth, food quality and pverall procuction efficiency improvement. Besides, this issue considers the utilization of unmanned aerial vehicles for crop monitoring and optimization and their contribution towards developing digital twins of agricultural processes. This topic illustrates the state-of-the-art Internet of Things based frameworks and architectures used in smart agriculture.

This Special Issue invites reports on high quality research with innovative approaches and solutions for digital twins with IoT assisted smart agriculture management.

The topics of interest for the special issue include:

• Digital twins integrated with IoT for smart farming
• Data-driven scenarios based on Digital twin leveraging AI;
• Cloud, edge, and fog computing for smart agriculture;
• Security for Digital twin in smart farming
• Cyberphysical systems (CPS) and modelling for smart agriculture;

• Data protection by user authentication and data encryption in smart agriculture.

• Metrics and modeling for sensing in smart agriculture;
• Farm services, applications and processes oriented towards agri-food systems;
• IoT Platforms for applications in smart agriculture;
• Remote sensing from satellites or crewless aerial vehicles;
• Artificial intelligence and machine learning for smart agriculture

• Implementation and prototypes of connected farms and farming in the cloud

• Data-aware networking in smart agriculture;
• Big data techniques for IoT-based smart agriculture
• Management of IoT-based smart agriculture applications and services.
• Increasing environmental awareness in agriculture;

IMPORTANT DATES:

Submission Deadline for Full-Paper : 30/04/2021

First Reviews Decisions : 01/07/2021

Last Date for Revised Manuscripts : 06/09/2021

Final Manuscript : 30/11/2021

Publication of Special Issue : 20/12/2021

GUEST EDITORS

Dr.MAMOUN ALAZAB

Associate Professor,

IT and Environment,

Charles Darwin University,

Australia.

Official Email: m.alazab@icsl.com.au

Official Web-link: https://www.cdu.edu.au/research-and-innovation/higher-degree-research/engineering-and-technology/mamoun-alazab

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=rzMB5uoAAAAJ&hl=th

Dr.Mamoun Alazab is an Associate Professor at the College of Engineering, IT and Environment at Charles Darwin University, Australia. He received his PhD degree in Computer Science from the Federation University of Australia, School of Science, Information Technology and Engineering. He is a cyber security researcher and practitioner with industry and academic experience. Alazab’s research is multidisciplinary that focuses on cyber security and digital forensics of computer systems with a focus on cybercrime detection and prevention. He has more than 150 research papers in many international journals and conferences, such as IEEE transactions on Industrial Informatics, IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, IEEE Transactions on Big Data, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, Computers & Security, and Future Generation Computing Systems. He delivered many invited and keynote speeches, 24 events in 2019 alone. He convened and chaired more than 50 conferences and workshops. He works closely with government and industry on many projects, including Northern Territory (NT) Department of Information and Corporate Services, IBM, Trend Micro, the Australian Federal Police (AFP), the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), Westpac, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and the Attorney General’s Department. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE. He is the Founding chair of the IEEE Northern Territory (NT) Subsection.

Dr. AMEER AL-NEMRAT

Faculty in School of Architecture Computing and Engineering,

University of East London,

London.

Official Email: a.al-nemrat@uel.ac.uk

Official Web-link: https://www.uel.ac.uk/staff/a/ameer-al-nemrat

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=cLgLluYAAAAJ&hl=en

Dr. Ameer Al-Nemrat is working as a Senior Lecturer in School of Architecture, Computing and Engineering, University of East London (UEL), he is a Director of Professional Doctorate in Information Security & the MSc Information Security and Digital Forensics programmes. He is a founder and director of the Electronic Evidence Laboratory. In addition, he is a co-editor of the book “Issues in Cybercrime, Security, and Digital Forensics”. He worked in the project of Cybercrime Programme Project with a German Institution. He was nominated as a Best-Lecturer for Student Led Teaching Awards in 2015. His working experience in designing and leading information security projects and programmes, His research areas also include the cybercrime and digital forensics, cyber criminal network analysis using data mining techniques.

Dr.MOHAMMAD SHOJAFAR

Associate Professor,

Institute for Communication Systems,

University of Surrey,

United Kingdom.

Official Email: m.shojafar@surrey.edu.uk

Official Web-link: https://www.surrey.ac.uk/people/mohammad-shojafar

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=DIEJuwoAAAAJ&hl=en

Dr.Mohammad Shojafar is an Associate Professor in the Institute for Communication Systems (ICS) at the University of Surrey, United Kingdom. He received a Ph.D. in ICT from Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. He received the honored B.Sc. in CS at Iran University Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran in 2006. He was a programmer/analyzer at the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and Tidewater Limited in Iran from 2008-2013, respectively. He published over 100 refereed top-tier articles in prestigious venues such as IEEE TCC, IEEE TNSM, IEEE Network, Computer Networks, and FGCS. He is an Associate Editor in IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, IET Communications, Cluster Computing, and Ad Hoc & Sensor Wireless Networks Journals. He published a book entitled “Cybersecurity and Privacy in Cyber Physical Systems” which is appeared in CRC Taylor and Francis, recently. He is also an Intel Innovator and a IEEE Senior Member. His research interests are Network Security, Cryptography algorithms, Green Networking, Cloud and Fog Networks, Distributed and Networked Systems.

Dr. THEOFANIS ORPHANOUDAKIS

Associate Professor,

University of Peloponnese

Greece

Official Email: fanis@eap.gr

Official Web-link: https://dsmc2.eap.gr/?page_id=2899

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=2tuyTBkAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate

Dr. Theofanis G. Orphanoudakis received his Dipl-Ing. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1995 and the Ph.D. in Telecommunications in 1998, both from the National Technical University of Athens. Since 2013 he has been with the Department of Sciences & Technology of the Hellenic Open University, currently at the rank of Associate Professor, and serves as a director of the e-Comet (Educational Content, Methodology and Technology Laboratory) and DSMC Lab (Digital Systems & Media Computing Laboratory) serving as well as a research associate and consultant to several academic and research institutes, public organizations and private companies. From 2005 to 2015 he has been involved in several R&D activities as a member of the Optical Networking Group at the Department of Telecommunications Science and Technology, University of Peloponnese. From 1999 to 2005 he led R&D activities in the area of broadband networking components as a Technical Manager of Ellemedia Technologies. From 1996 to 1999, he was a research associate at the Telecommunications Laboratory of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). He has participated in several national and EU research programs and has led projects in the areas of broadband networking components, broadband access and optical networksFrom 2005 to 2010 he has been an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Peloponnese. From 1999 to 2006 he has been an adjunct instructor at the University of Applied Science (TEI) of Piraeus. His research interests include embedded network system design, edge cloud computing, smart systems and services, converged wireless/wired access network architectures, shared broadband access systems, traffic engineering, resource management, design & implementation of high-speed networking systems and network processor architectures. He has over 80 publications in international journals and conferences in the above-mentioned areas. Dr. Orphanoudakis is a senior member of the IEEE and member of the Technical Chamber of Greece.