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com

INFORMATION PROCESSING IN AGRICULTURE 6 (2019) 375–385

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

Enhancing aquaponics management with

IoT-based Predictive Analytics for efficient
information utilization

Divas Karimanzira *, Thomas Rauschenbach

Dept of Surface and Maritime Systems, Fraunhofer I0SB-AST, Ilmenau, Am Vogelherd 50, 98689 Ilmenau, Germany

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Article history: Modern aquaponic systems can be highly successful, but they require intensive monitoring,
Available online 11 January 2019 control and management. Consequently, the Automation Pyramid (AP) with its layers of
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Keywords: and Manufacturing Execution System (MES) is applied for process control. With cloud-
Aquaponics based IoT-based Predictive Analytics at the fore marsh, it is worth finding out if IoTwill make
Automation pyramid these technologies obsolete, or they can work together to gain more beneficial results. In
IoT this paper, we will discuss the enhancement of SCADA, ERP and MES with IoT in aquaponics
Predictive analytics and likewise how IoT-based Predictive Analytics can help to get more out of it. An example
Big Data use case of an aquaponics project with five demonstration sites in different geographical
locations will be presented to show the benefits of IoT on example Predictive Analytics ser-
vices. Innovative is the collection of data from the five demonstration sites over IoT to make
the models of fish, tomatoes, technical components such as filters used for remote monitor-
ing, predictive remote maintenance and economical optimization of the individual plants
robust. Robustness of the various models, fish and crop growth models, models for econo-
metric optimization were evaluated using Monte Carlo Simulations revealing as expected
the superiority of the IoT-based models. Our analysis suggest that the models are generally
tolerant to the temperature coefficient variations of up to 15% and the econometric models
tolerated a variation of for example feed ration size for fish of up to 4% and by the energy
optimization models a tolerance of up to 14% by variations of solar radiation could be
noticed. Furthermore, from the analysis made, it can be concluded that MES has several
capabilities which cannot be replaced by IoT such as responsiveness to trigger changes on
anomalies. It act as proxy when there is no case for sensors and reliably ensure correct exe-
cution in the aquaponics plants. IoT systems can produce unprecedented improvements in
many areas but need MES to leverage their true potential and benefits.
Ó 2019 China Agricultural University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of
KeAi. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.
org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: divas.karimanzira@iosb-ast.fraunhofer.de Consider the problem in Fig. 1 for example, where the red dots
(D. Karimanzira).
represent aquaponic sites owned by an enterprise or a
Peer review under responsibility of China Agricultural University.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inpa.2018.12.003
2214-3173 Ó 2019 China Agricultural University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
376 Information Processing in Agriculture
Fig. 1 – Problem illustration.
consortium with its own Automation Pyramid (AP). It is obvi-
ous that the classical automation pyramid does not suffice to
intelligently and efficiently manage the complete system.
Therefore, it is worth exploring how Cloud-based IoT-based
Predictive Analytics affiliates in the in classical automation
pyramid for efficient information utilization. This is in agree-
ment with the late 2017 H2020 innovation action call which
refers to 4.0 industry, that includes Internet of Things, cloud
computing and data exchange [1].
Today’s double recirculation aquaponics is a complex inte-
grated production operation that encompasses recirculating
aquaculture systems and hydroponics to produce fish and
plants in a closed-loop system [2]. The fish produce
nutrient-rich effluent that is used as fertilizer for the plants.
Fish waste is broken down by bacteria into dissolved nutri-
ents that plants then utilize to grow in the hydroponic com-
ponent. This nutrient removal not only improves water
quality for the fish but also decreases overall water consump-
tion by limiting the amount released as effluent. Several pro-
cesses mechanical and biological filtering, pumping, heating
etc. are involved in the system. Evaporated water from the
plant sector is regained via cooling traps and reintegrated into
the fish tanks. The double recirculation aquaponics technol-
ogy allows the setting up of optimum conditions both in the
fish and in the plant units, thus ensuring high productivity
and enhancing resource efficiency.
Besides the technical, socio-ecological and economic chal-
lenges in aquaponics discussed in [3], other challenges with
respect to information and data have been identified [4].
These include the lack of quantitative research to support
the development of economically feasible aquaponics sys-
tems, insufficient system for production of a product of the
same quality poor knowledge of the target market and not
going beyond primary production and looking at the supply
food chain as whole. Additionally, aquaponics can be scaled
from mini unit for hobbyists to commercial production
6 ( 2 0 1 9 ) 3 7 5 –3 8 5
facilities. Further, some aquaponics site includes a fish and
fruit manufacture and the market increasingly demands indi-
vidualized products. Product life cycles are getting shorter
and average lot sizes are getting smaller. Considering this,
cost-efficient production in a globalized and resource limited
environment requires a highly flexible (IT-) infrastructure that
also works well in cross-enterprise networks. All these fea-
tures require new capabilities in system control, diagnosis
for maintenance and management. Once stabilized, the sys-
tem should be able to run day and night with less human
intervention. For the installation companies, flexible adapta-
tion to special aquaponics configurations as well as specific
parameterization of the individual modules is a prerequisite.
The diagnosis and maintenance of such systems requires an
extensive knowledge of the aquaponics. Therefore, a direct
support for the aquaponics operator is indispensable, espe-
cially in the case of errors, a rapid and targeted assistance will
play a big role to the satisfaction of the customer. In most
cases the direct support is not at site.
Traditionally, such systems as the aquaponics are man-
aged using the automation pyramid as shown in Fig. 2 [5].
The automation pyramid has five layers which can be divided
into two distinct sections: production process at the bottom
(i.e. sensors, actuators, hardware, Programmable Logic Con-
trols (PLCs) etc.), while the enterprise resource planning sys-
tems for business management (i.e. the Supervisory Control
and Data Acquisition (SCADA) network, Manufacturing Exe-
cution System (MES) and Enterprise Resources Planning
(ERP)) build the top-level.
The pyramid shape reflects the characteristics of the infor-
mation on the different levels, such as package size of data,
requirements for real-time, frequency of transmission, avail-
ability requirements and so on. The least amount of data is
featured at the top and as one goes down the amount of data
increases, as the amount of information increases. At the bot-
tom, where the sensors and actuators are, information is sent
 Information Processing in Agriculture
Fig. 2 – The automation system pyramid.
to the control level where they control the production pro-
cess. The only data sent between the control level to the
HMI level is that which the operator needs to be transferred,
as such it is less frequently transferred and in bigger packets.
At the top of the pyramid, only orders from the business tech-
nology infrastructure are transferred to the control level,
whereas shift protocols as well as production metrics and
key performance indicators are transferred to the business IT.
By analyzing the features of the individual layers the
enhancement which can be created by IoT can be seen. The
IoT can be defined as the connecting of physical things to
the internet which makes it possible to access remote sensor
data and control the physical world from a distance. The clas-
sical automation pyramid paradigm is due to its strict well-
defined hierarchic separation in such a way that information
flows upwards from devices to enterprise via levels of control,
supervision and management outdated [6–8]. The different
data models and functional requirements of each layer offer
little compatibility between the layers and need to intermesh
more seamless than in the past and at the same time, the
interoperability needs to consider new processes with regard
to interaction with customers, suppliers, service providers
and utilization of information and data from other aquapon-
ics site for more insights. Furthermore, it would be reckless of
the aquaponics industry not to use the technologies being
developed that pull in data, from smart sensors to satellites
6 ( 2 0 1 9 ) 3 7 5 –3 8 5 377
that can be crunched using various cloud-based analytic soft-
ware tools, including artificial intelligence, to make aquapon-
ics operations more efficient and even eco-friendly.
2. Methodology
The main objective of the cloud-based IoT-based Predictive
Analytics enabled Aquaponics is to bring the world of busi-
ness data and the world of automation data much closer
together in order to reduce the number of media breaks and
the number of isolated aquaponics applications. In addition
to that, the combined data will be the basis for completely
new insights. After analyzing the classical automation pyra-
mid in Fig. 1, a new structure is obtained as in Fig. 3 based
on [6,9] as follows:
SCADA is eminently a tool for supervisors which is meant
to help to make decisions for the production line, but it does
not give a holistic view of the production floor to make top
decisions [10]. The inability of SCADA systems to connect to
legacy computing systems, computer techniques with dis-
parate communication protocols has generated the demand
for a federated data storage of different data sets. Cloud-
based IoT-based Predictive Analytics can enhance SCADA by
providing real-time as well as analysis for available historical
data which is the foundation for predictive analytics and
informed decision-making. Historical data collected across
378 Information Processing in Agriculture
Fig. 3 – The future for aquaponics process automation systems with IoT.
the plant(s) is required for benchmarking, building compara-
tive and robust models, and drive strategic decisions. IoT also
predestinated to enable connectivity of heterogeneous hard-
ware (legacy to avant-garde) which is connected with diverse
protocols across different platforms [6].
For an enterprise to really flourish, its personal, data and
processes should be connected in a smart way [11]. ERP pro-
vides a back office for all data within an enterprise as well
as an integrated and continuously update-to-date view of
key business activities. However, without data analytics and
the adaptability provided by cloud-based IoT, ERP is only a
large chunk of transaction data. While ERP give a view of
the current situation, IoT can provide insights into the root
causes and ground for actions to proceed forward. In short,
cloud-based IoT provides ERP with real-time agility, flexibility,
and predictability [12]. Large part of activities and processes
can be automated to reduce trivial and repeatedly accom-
plished manual work such as manual sensor reading done
in most aquaponics.
MES provides a view of the production floor activity to the
higher level decision makers, e.g., managers and provide a
strong foundation for IoT application. One important feature
of MES has always been that it uses external smart devices
to collect data and processes the data to the system and con-
trollers that MES can communicate with. With cloud-based
IoT and the vast amount of data IoT pulls in the ecosystem,
MES can become more flexible, easily tailored to suit different
requirements of an enterprise. MES are accompanied by long
deployment times, large costs, and limitation in processing
data at real-time. The non-cloud nature of MES without IoT
makes it very difficult for aquaponics operators to benchmark
the efficiency and productivity across different plants of the
same group or other competitors. Therefore, it is obvious that
6 ( 2 0 1 9 ) 3 7 5 –3 8 5
MES systems lack many features which are expected of man-
agement tools of today [12]. Cloud-based IoT is bringing in
data federation, analytics and machine learning capabilities
[13]. With IoT in the scene, aquaponics management systems
can step from pure reporting of production floor parameters
to conducting analytics-driven applications such as predictive
analytics, flexible dashboards with visualizations that provide
insights for all decision levels. Connected to cloud-based IoT,
the aquaponics management system will be able to commu-
nicate and work with different types of media devices such
as mobile phones.
For clarity and better understanding, Fig. 3 shows the case
of one aquaponics site connected to the system. In the whole
the architecture is a network where several aquaponics sites
can be connected as will be seen in the case study. Each
aquaponics site has its machine and operations cloud and
only insensitive information is provided to the public cloud.
The deployment of such a system as illustrated in Fig. 3 has
been discussed in several papers for other applications
[6,9,10]. Several commercial IoT platforms exists such as
Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud IoT, IoT Service Button, SAP
Industry 4.0 and so. Therefore, it is assumed that the struc-
ture uses a commercial IoT Platform in the project and now
our focus is on the cloud-based predictive analytic services.
Two important predictive analytic services will be shown in
the next section.
3. Use case
Consider the aquaponics systems from the INAPRO project
[14]. The INAPRO partners have realized four INAPRO demon-
stration sites in Europe and one in China (Fig. 4).
 Information Processing in Agriculture
Fig. 4 – Map INAPRO aquaponics demonstration sites (Source: www.inapro.eu).
The different geographical locations were selected to
prove that the INAPRO system is adaptable and economically
viable under different climatic conditions and scale. Due to
this fact it is obvious that the system described in this paper
is necessary.
In general, the demonstration sites consists of a fish farm
with the recirculating aquaculture system (RAS), a broad-
ship greenhouse, Different hybrid energy systems can be uti-
lized according to the geological location, e.g. combined heat
and power plant (CHP), Photovoltaic etc. The aquaponics are
of different scale, e.g. one has a total area of 573 m2 and the
site is expected to produce around 24 tons of African Catfish
and 11 tons of tomatoes per year. Further, there is a fish and
tomato manufacture at only one site. A control and manage-
ment platform has been implemented at all the site accord-
ing to architecture of the classical automation pyramid in
Fig. 5.
Furthermore, the systems are IoT enabled as described in
the new architecture, but at the moment mainly due to the
fact that the consortial partner responsible for the hardware
and software installation is still getting all data online for
testing purposes and the consortium is using the data for
study purpose. For this platform several IoT services can be
provided which include energy management (described in
[15]), monitoring based on GrowWatch [16], diagnostics and
maintenance assistance, econometric services (described in
[17]) and a for the manufacturing part, a logistics tracking ser-
vice to understand how the production is moving and being
stored and visualize in real-time the cold chain process, the
warehouses temperature, the packaging process and the
boxes life cycle. The system is vertically integrated, from cus-
tom hardware all the way up through the server system
6 ( 2 0 1 9 ) 3 7 5 –3 8 5 379
(Fig. 3). Through an API made with MongoDB, the system
tracks the status of various sensors and relays, e.g., water
level in both aquaculture and hydroponic tanks, pH of water
temperature of water, turbidity/TDS of water, flow rate,
Greenhouse ambient conditions. The remote user can access
the data being generated from this system using an interface.
Like other distributed systems, this requires mapping each
signal in the database once it has been connected. This is
then visualized using a web front end which has a similar
visualization as the physical system. This can also be sent
to a broadcast-like service such as Twitter for example to
inform customers about the harvest dates.
3.1. Enterprise: economic analysis service
As an example, the econometric service will be elaborated
briefly here. For this module the platform collects data on fish
size, water quality, feeding patterns, energy use and supply
source and weather conditions using mobile devices, sensors
and automated feeders. Combined with other data, the algo-
rithms go to work to provide recommendations such as
remote maintenance, feeding management strategies and
optimal harvest dates [17].
The current situation is that the aquaponics sites in con-
sideration has SCADA, MES and ERP together in operation,
but what has been happening is as follows:
(1) Supervisors have been collecting sample data from the
heterogeneous hardware and made basic control
actions such as increase feeding rate, etc. However,
the most data is streamed in real-time and partly stored
for historical analysis.
380 Information Processing in Agriculture 6 ( 2 0 1 9 ) 3 7 5 –3 8 5

Fig. 5 – Control and aquaponic system material flow.

(2) The ERP is used by the aquaponics managers for plan-
ning, and making strategic decisions. Often, the data
is read from meters and manually entered. Therefore,
delays and human caused inaccuracies and data incon-
sistency that make the data unusable are unavoidable.
(3) The MES connects the ERP and the SCADA systems and
is responsible for analyzing specific parameters from
the production floor. However, the MES systems are cur-
rently deployed and used separately for each aquapon-
ics site.
Now going a step further, with cloud-based IoT, all data
collected online in real-time from SCADA coupled with real-
time analytics and ML capabilities of IoT can help recalibrate
the MES and also provide dynamic planning in ERP of the all
the aquaponics systems of the consortium. Using the econo-
metric and dynamic models described in our previous papers
[17] and [18], respectively, predictive software platform for
maintenance and estimating optimal harvest date can be
easily accomplished as follows: With all the information
entering the operation cloud from the SCADA, and other
sources, the models in [18] are adaptively used to predict
the growth of the fish and the plants, food ration size, fresh
water required as well as the yield and estimating the harvest
dates. Information from other aquaponics site is used to
make the models robust. For example, the mechanical (MF)
and the biological filter efficiency (BF) as well as the initial
stocking density S0 can be varied and every time the system

Table 1 – Scenario specification and analysis results.

Scenario BF MF Stocking Density [g/liter] Net Return [cents/liter/day] Days to Harvest [days]

Base 1 1 0.13 0.034 265

1 0.95 1.0 0.13
12% +14
2 0.95 0.5 0.13 +44% +20
3 0.80 1.0 0.13
80% +86
4 0.85 0.5 0.07
44% +55
5 0.85 0.5 0.13
70% +77
The base scenario in bold represent the ideal situation of the aquaponics system.
 Information Processing in Agriculture
re-optimized to get a 700 g tilapia. With changes in the biolog-
ical filter efficiency more or less Ammonia is nitrified which
leads to another growth rate. Thus, with a better filtering
technique larger ration sizes and higher protein content of
the feed are possible, the raising period is thus shorter and
the profit greater as can be seen in the scenario analysis
Table 1.
Table 1 shows that a 700 g tilapia can be produced in
265 days with net return of 0.034 cents/liter/day using a 20
percent dietary protein. Scenarios 1–4 show the increase in
days to harvest and declination in net return if the efficiency
of the wastewater treatment units decreases with effects of
the biological filter being predominant. For example, the
returns fall by over 80 percent from optimal levels for BF
below 80%, irrespective of the MF efficiency level. For exam-
ple, a decrease in BF from 1.0 to 0.95 leads to an approximate
20 day increase in the time to harvest for all levels of stocking.
However, decreasing BF to 0.85 causes a 55 day harvest time
increase for a density of 0.07 fish/liter and increases 77 days
for the densities of 0.13. The drop due to the MF is caused
by the solids removal inefficiency and the need for increased
aeration. In further scenarios, the sensitivity of the system to
stocking density was analyzed. Hereby, the experiments were
repeated, but fixing the MF at 50%, and allowing a range of
stocking densities and biofilter efficiency levels. The results
show that increases in stocking density produce no additional
Fig. 6 – Fish growth in different tanks, stocking density and control parameters.
6 ( 2 0 1 9 ) 3 7 5 –3 8 5 381
increases in the optimal 267 days required to produce a 700 g
tilapia. We expected this result, because the relative absence
of metabolic feedbacks in the biological filter and the little
biochemical oxygen demand in the mechanical filter allows
returns to increase as stocking density (So) increases, up to
a maximum of 0.061 cents/liter/day for an initial density of
0.13 fish/liter, which is the recommended maximum on the
stocking density in real systems [19].
In the simulation attempt, tilapia production was stag-
gered in five rearing tanks so that one rearing tank is har-
vested every 6 weeks after a year. Fish are moved from
one rearing to the next after a certain period. Figs. 6 and
7 show as an example a detailed description of the
optimization for which the biological Filter and mechanical
filter efficiencies of the system were set to 0.95 and 0.5,
respectively. The maximum ammonia concentration
UANmax = 0.2 mg/l. For optimal control, both the ration size
R as well as the protein content D were always as high as
possible, but as soon as the ammonia concentration
approached the critical Limit of 0.2 mg/l, the values went
down again. This is attributed by the relatively expensive
water price of 2.27 Eur/l and the ammonia concentration
is determined significantly by the amount of the proteins
consumed by the fish. Growth will thus be retarded but
the profit is, however, greater than that of a high water
exchange rate.
382 Information Processing in Agriculture
Fig. 7 – Nutrient concentration/Fresh water supply.
3.2. Installer: monitoring and remote service assistance
Another example service for use of IoT in the system is a
monitoring and remote service assistance system. It uses his-
torical failure data in the system and expert knowledge to
remotely conduct a diagnosis of the system and produce
some recommendations for service or automatically inter-
vene for example in the case of aeration failure. Firstly, a list
of potential problem areas and water quality parameters are
compiled according to their relative importance and the
required response time each will require. Life support priori-
ties in aquaculture start with water, followed by adequate
levels of dissolved oxygen [20]. In response times parameters
which require fast response time – minutes include electrical
power, water level in tank, dissolved oxygen - aeration sys-
tem/ oxygen system, moderate response time –hours include
temperature, carbon dioxide and normally slowly changing –
days include pH, alkalinity, ammonia- nitrogen nitrite-
nitrogen, nitrate-nitrogen. A fuzzy system for diagnosis is
developed by rule extraction from collected data, i.e. data
from the public cloud and the demonstration sites.
Based on variation of the monitored parameters, alerts
and solution recommendations will be generated if the read-
ing goes beyond the system’s tolerances. Some selected rules
of the system are shown in Table 2.
The inference engine uses a forward-chaining strategy,
based on the previous production rules and the reasoning is
of deductive type, from the facts to the goal. Figs. 8 and 9
shows the results of this IoT service in automatic mode, rule
6 ( 2 0 1 9 ) 3 7 5 –3 8 5
5 and 2, respectively. Alarms and corrective measures are trig-
gered as can be seen in the Figures, for example on 04.11. in
Fig. 8 were nitrate issues in this case a controller outage
was simulated, and in Fig. 9, the fish growth is predicted to
be slower than expected.
Thus, with IoT in place, the assets and the resources of the
aquaponics can be utilized much better, problems can be
detected early, vast sources of information can be utilized in
the analytics, less manpower is required and can be more
productive, monitoring, diagnostics, business, processes can
be more efficient, leading to a direct improvement in through-
put and thus revenue. For example for the INAPRO demon-
stration system it could be shown already that information
sharing between site can help to detect operational problems
quite early. Specifically one of the newly built site was show-
ing high turbidity in the RAS system which was never a prob-
lem in the other systems even though all the sites had the
same make of filtering systems Further analysis of the data
at the site showed that the system was wrongly operated.
At another site the fish growth rate was quite low and diagno-
sis taking account data from other sites showed that there
was some noise source which was stressing the fish.
4. Robustness analysis of the IoT-based
models
Robustness analysis was performed for all the models to
show the advantages of the IoT aided system. The robustness
of the various models, fish and crop growth models, models
 Information Processing in Agriculture 6 ( 2 0 1 9 ) 3 7 5 –3 8 5 383

Table 2 – Remote assist rules.

Nr. Condition Conclusion Priority Recommended action

1 O2cM–O2cBi > 2 The O2 sensor from the tank i is High Switch emergency aerator;
faulty or the tank aeration is Check and eventually calibrate
damaged the sensor. Where O2cM is the
maximum value of the oxygen
concentration, O2cBi is the
current value of the oxygen
concentration.
2 NO3c > 100 mg/l Fish tank i Nutrient controller Check controller
failure
3 NH4cC–NH4mFB < 0.5 & NH4cC–NH4mFB > 0 Faulty evolution of the High
Check the biofilter operation (if
nitrification process the liquid flux is uniformly
distributed on the biofilter
section), where NH4cC is the
current value of the ammonium
concentration, NH4mFB is the
ammonium concentration
measured in the last hour inside
the biological filter.
4 pHc  6,5 The pH is less than the Normal Check if there is alkaline agent
admissible limit in the control loop AND increase
the water recirculating flow OR
increase the water refresh flow,
where pHc is the current value of
pH.
5 {GMIi 2 (50–700 g)} AND {SGR < 3%} The fish biomass in the tank i is Normal Check the technological
not developing normal conditions AND/OR the food rate
should be adapted, where GMIi
is the average weight of the
individual in the tank i, SGR is
the specific growth rate,
SGRk = 100 (lnBk – lnBk–1)/t,
where t is the time between the
last two weighing.
The base scenario in bold represent the ideal situation of the aquaponics system.

for econometric optimization were evaluated using Monte
Carlo Simulations revealing the superiority of the IoT-based
models. Hereby, on one hand, the parameters of the models
such as the temperature coefficient of the fish models were
adapted using data from one site and on the other hand with
data from all the five sites. For example, after finding the opti-
mal solution of the hybrid energy optimization model [15]
using the mean meteorological conditions scenario from all
sites (mean wind and solar irradiation), analysis was con-
ducted to study what happens in case of deviation from this
scenario. The parameters (solar radiation, wind speed, power
grid energy price) have huge impact on the cost analysis of
the system as the efficiency of the renewable components
of the hybrid system hugely depends upon these parameters,
i.e., the system becomes more feasible if the wind speed is
higher, amount of solar radiation is higher and primary
energy price is lower and vice versa. Sensitivity analysis stud-
ied in [15] showed that the optimization model is tolerant to
variations of wind speed, solar radiation and primary energy
price of up to 15%, 11% and 5%, respectively.
In the other models of the aquaponics system, our analy-
sis suggest that the fish growth models adapted with IoT-
based data are generally tolerant to the temperature coeffi-
cient variations of up to 15% compared to 2% of the previous
models and the econometric models tolerated for example a
variation of feed ration size for fish of up to 4% compared to
the old non-IoT based models.
5. Challenges
The benefits of deploying cloud-based IoT for flexible
aquaponics have been shown but there exists some chal-
lenges which should not be neglected and need to be
addressed. The first challenge ‘‘connectivity” has been
already mentioned in the text. The lack of IoT standards
causes less interoperability and all sorts of automation
devices from different brands or even from one single brand
with diverse protocols are being used which are incompatible
at the data layer.
Another important element that should not be underesti-
mated is the cost of implementing the IoT solutions (initial
costs, cost of IoT enabled sensors is relatively high, buying
mobile data for real-time monitoring and storage to the cloud
or remote centers for analysis). As and additional cost to
already existing running system it is often perceived as over-
whelming. Therefore, the choice of IoT platform should be
based on the determinants such as ease of use and training
and readily adoptability etc.
384 Information Processing in Agriculture 6 ( 2 0 1 9 ) 3 7 5 –3 8 5

Fig. 8 – Alarm nitrate concentration.

Fig. 9 – Alarm fish growth rate.

The other issue is the lack of adequate know-how: More serious is also that in many places there is not
Most aquaponic owners or operators are not IT educated. enough skilled man power to deploy the IoT technology
They can have all the information but cannot utilize it. at its fullest.
 Information Processing in Agriculture
Another important factor is that the availability of reliable
electricity and mobile internet to the aquaponics is required.
Last but not least, the well-known security issues. IoT
devices communicate automatically with each other. In the
absence of a secure and properly encrypted network, the
adoption of IoT could lead to brand new security challenges
and vulnerabilities [21–23]. On the other hand cloud based
IoT can be introduced at different stages, such as distributing
alerts, collecting data in a centralized database and doing the
plant control using cloud based computation.
6. Conclusions
An enhancement of the automation pyramid for an aquapon-
ics system with cloud-based IoT Predictive analytics was pre-
sented. It helps to automate real-time data collection and
analysis, i.e., continually monitor and analyze the conditions
of fish and plants at different sites, take automated corrective
measures to balance the deviation based on ideal data from
experts to increase revenue and reduce risks of data false data
and reduce manual human interactions. Various parameters
can be viewed in real time and collected from system (Tem-
perature, pH, soil moisture, O2 content etc.). The operator
connected to the operations cloud can control the various
systems of the aquaponics such as heaters, lights and fish
feeders or change parameters of filtering equipment accord-
ing to his system intervention rights, remotely. All the col-
lected data can be analyzed to get an insight into the
growth as well as the energy/systems utilizations and can
be used to make the models for Predictive analytics robust.
IoT systems can produce unprecedented improvements in
many areas of the aquaponics system but need MES, ERP
and SCADA to leverage their true potential and benefits.
In the future, the services need to be integrated in to the
online system for testing and we shall investigate the mone-
tary benefits of IoT in aquaponics (installation and running
costs) and issues of system/data security and sovereignty.
Conflict of interest
Divas Karimanzira declares that he has no conflict of interest.
Thomas Rauschenbach declares that he has no conflict of
interest.
Acknowledgements
The research leading to these results has received funding
from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme
FP7-ENV-2013-WATER-INNO-DEMO under Grant agreement
N° 619137. We thank the anonymous reviewers and the edi-
tors for their valuable comments which are helpful to greatly
improve the quality of this manuscript.
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