A Precision Agriculture Management System Based
on Internet of Things and WebGIS
Jiuyan Ye1, Bin Chen2*, Qingfeng Liu2, Yu Fang1
1
Institute of Remote Sensing & Geographic Information System, Peking University, Beijing, China
2
The Third Terrain Metering Team of National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation, Harbin, China
2
*Corresponding author, e-mail: chbpku@gmail.com
Abstract—This thesis is based on the application of Internet of
Things (IoT) and WebGIS in precision agriculture. Through
analyzing the current development of precision agriculture in
China and considering its advantages and shortcomings, we
choose an ecology farm as an example to conduct a new precision
agriculture management system (PAMS) based on the above two
techniques. We designed the four architectures of PAMS: the
spatial information infrastructure platform, the IoT
infrastructure platform, the agriculture management platform
and the mobile client. Users can monitor and manage the
agriculture production by PAMS. What’s more, module
integration method and open source software can help us to
reduce the development cost and to improve the system efficiency.
Keywords-Precision Agriculture; Internet of Things; WebGIS;
LBS
I. THE DEVELOPMENT OF PRECISION AGRICULTURE
Precision agriculture is an agriculture management system
which is based on information technology. It uses sensors and
modern advanced monitoring techniques to get land and crop
data completely, correctly and timely. With the analysis by GIS
(Geography Information System), precision agriculture can
help people to make the correct decision. It is an important part
of digital agriculture and a good combination of the modern
agriculture production methods and the newest high-tech
techniques. Nowadays, the main techniques of precision
agriculture are GPS (Global Positioning System), RS (Remote
Sensing) and GIS. By these techniques, we can monitor the
distribution of crops production, the composition of soil and its
distribution, fertilize, seed, and spray reasonably, and reduce
the operation costs, so that we can raise the production and
economy benefit and reduce the environment pollution caused
by abusing agricultural chemicals.
Nowadays, precision agriculture is applied widely in
developed countries, while the integration technique is applied
in the precision agriculture. The American National Research
Institute, which is the birthplace of precision agriculture, has
proposed this technique into the national development
strategies since 1997. European countries have also carried out
the research on precision agriculture and had a lot of practice.
In Asia, the Japanese government launched the plan named
“Agricultural Machinery Emergency Development Project In
the 21st Century”. Then South Korea and Malaysia also have
conducted the same research. The main techniques are
information acquisition, positioning technique, the monitoring
Supported by Key Technologies R&D Program of China
funded by MOST (No. 2011BAH06B01) & Project 41101347
supported by NSFC.
of crops amount distribution and the logistics monitoring.
However, the technique is still in the stage of research and
perfecting. In addition, most of the application sites are large
farms that will have a positive economic benefit.
The start of research and application of precision
agriculture in China was later than in foreign countries. In 1991,
the Beijing government organized “the Research on the
Application of GPS Navigation in Protecting the Crops from
Flying Insects” project team with financial support. In 1992, 8
units including Beijing plant protection institute, the National
Academy of Sciences, Beijing University of Aeronautics and
Astronautics, Beijing University of Technology, and so on,
cooperated to research together on protecting the wheat from
aphids by satellite navigation plane. Through 3 years of hard
work, they succeeded in protecting the wheat from aphids in
the large area. In the late part of 1990’s, the spatial variation of
soil nutrients based on precision agriculture was successfully
applied in our country. In 2000, Tsinghua University and
Beijing Municipal Bureau of Agriculture had an experiment.
They divided the cropland in detail by using the GPS cropland
management system and the Beijing basic cropland
information management system, so they can achieve the goal
of accurate sampling and fertilization. Since 2006, China has
used Long-March 4D rocket to successfully launch the first
remote sensing satellite to the orbit at Jiuquan Satellite Launch
Center, Gansu, China. Until 2009, China has successfully
launched all seven remote sensing satellites into space. These
satellites are used for land resources exploration, environment
monitoring and protection, city planning, crop production
evaluation, disaster prevention and mitigation, experiment of
spatial scientific, and so on. All of these applications will help
the development of China’s economy. Many kinds of variable
input systems have been studied and have gotten a few
achievements, such as the management system of auto variable
fertilizing in precision agriculture designed by Shuhui Zhang
and Chenglin Ma, the GIS system of variable fertilizing in
precision agriculture designed by Xinzhong Wang and Xi
Wang, and the monitoring and decision maker system of
cropland water designed by Fuyu Ma.
In conclusion, our country has started the research on the
application of precision and informalization agriculture, but the
whole technique is still at a low level. By using the traditional
3S(GPS, RS, GIS) technique, we can only get the large scale
and non-real time data in the data gathering process, but the
more detail data, real time data and the environment data which
have big influence on the agriculture production still cannot be
collected. We can only use the system at a fixed working office,
but cannot do the work at the cropland and other non-fixed
place due to the lack of mobile devices. In summary, precision
agriculture in our country cannot be turned from fuzzy
processing to accurate perception.
Therefore, we introduced Internet of Things, which is born
with accurate perception, and WebGIS, which is convenient to
process the network geography information, to solve the above
problems. Internet of Things can help us collect the
temperature, humidity, wind, atmospheric, rainfall data in real
time, collect the water, compaction degree, electric
conductivity, pH value and nitrogen concentrations of soil with
its ubiquitous sensor network and well-developed
communication network. In addition, we can process these data
according to their geography distribution with Internet in real
time and at different places by WebGIS to predict scientifically
and help farmers to protect and reduce agriculture disaster, and
to plant scientifically so that we can realize a production profit
and make the smart agriculture dream become true. For these
reasons, it is worthwhile to have a try on the conduction of the
precision agriculture based on Internet of Things and WebGIS
techniques for its great significance.
II. THE ARCHITECTURE AND KEY TECHNIQUES OF PAMS
A. The System Framework of PAMS
PAMS uses 3S, Internet of Things, network and
communication techniques as its system support, to collect the
data of multi-source, multi-kind and multi-level. It is based on
the unified spatial information infrastructure platform with
Internet and WebGIS. PAMS will achieve the function of
information management and decision making of the
agriculture production process. PAMS should also include the
spatial information infrastructure platform, Internet of Things
infrastructure platform and agriculture production management
platform.
B. Key Techniques of PAMS
1) Internet of Things(IoT)
Internet of Things is called the third wave of world
information production after the computer and Internet. It will
be one of the most important productivity tools to promote the
fast development of the world and bring huge economy profits.
The concept of Internet of Things was first proposed in 1999. It
uses information sensing equipment such as RFID (Radio
Frequency Identification), SmartSense, global positioning
system, laser scanners, and so on. According to the agreed
protocol, IoT connects everything to Internet, changes the
information, and communicates with each other so that it can
recognize, position, follow, monitor, and manage things
intelligently.
Internet of Things has three characters. The first is total
perception that receives data in real time and in any place by
using RFID, sensor and two-dimension code technique; the
second is reliable transfer of transferring data accurately in real
time with the combination of telecommunications network and
Internet; the third is smart processing that analyzes and
processes the mass data and information to smart control things
by using smart computing techniques such as cloud computing,
fuzzy recognition ,and so on [4].
According to the above characteristics, Internet of Things is
recognized as three levels in the industry (Figure 1). The
bottom is the perceptual layer to perceived data; the second is
the transfer layer to transfer data; the top is the application
layer [6].
2) WebGIS
WebGIS is a very important milestone of GIS that marks its
shift toward professional application to social application. It
makes GIS no longer be limited to the desktop application but
provides the ability for people – no matter who he is or what he
does – to use GIS in real time and at any place. It has a very
potential development future. WebGIS is a geography
information system in a special environment based on the
Internet technique, which is used to store, process, analyze,
display and apply spatial data [10]. In the Internet environment,
the spatial data from every field and department of the society
can be shared by GIS. What’s more, WebGIS can efficiently
get, store, process, analyze and display all kinds of geographic
and spatial data to combine graphics and data well and display
the corporation result of the research and analyze of spatial
things in a direct and accurate way. It can better improve the
efficiency of management, publication and research of spatial
information [13].
WebGIS uses the Client/Server concept to complete the
analyzed work of GIS. It divides the work into the server side
and client side. Client can request data, analyze tools, and
modules from server side. Server can complete the request and
transfer the result back to the client by the Internet, or transfer
the data and analyze tools to the client. Figure 2 is the basic
framework of WebGIS.
In PAMS, WebGIS has three main functions; the first is to
provide a basic geography information platform for Internet of
Things; the second is to provide a positioning platform for
Internet of Things; the last is to provide a mobile calculation
platform for Internet of Things.
3) Internet and Communication Technique
With the development of the new generation of
communication, the techniques of Internet and mobile
communication have had great progress. What’s more, with the
increasing construction of basic infrastructure, the increase of
bandwidth and the speed of the transfer, all of the above
guarantee the stability and efficiency of the Internet platform.
In addition, the fourth generation communication technique
based on WCDMA, CDMA2000, TD-SCDMA and WLAN
can provide a broadband multi-media communication network
platform, which provides the technique support and guarantee
for the construction and completion of PAMS’s infrastructure.
4) Location Based Service(LBS)
LBS is an information service for mobile objects, which is
based on space geographic position by using GIS technique,
mobile location technique and network communication
technique in the mobile computing environment. Nowadays,
the application of LBS has been rapidly developed and
changed from the professional field to the social and
commercial field. Many merchants started to use LBS to have a
marketing campaign. It has a bright future. In PAMS, LBS is used to monitor the poultry and analyze their habits by position

Logistics Pollution Intelligent Telemedicine Digital Intelligent

Application

Monitoring Monitoring Monitoring Agriculture Transportation

Layer

Cloud Computing Platform

Transport
Layer

Internet Mobile Cable Satellite Information &

Communication Television Communication Webmaster
Network Network Network Center

RFID Reader-Writer Sensor Gateway Access Gateway

Perception
Layer

FRID Tags Sensor Node Smart Terminal

Figure1. The architecture of IoT

and communicate network combine the work flow of

agricultural production process to realize the high
Web informatization of agricultural process. PAMS has six parts:
Web WWW Web Database
Browser Server the information infrastructure, database, local system, WebGIS,
production management system and mobile client (figure 3).
1) Information Infrastructure
GIS Web GIS Meta GIS Meta Information Infrastructure is the construction and running
Plugin Data
Active Server Broker Data Server foundation of PAMS. It includes computer network system,
Database communication system, video surveillance and display system,
JavaApplet
Javascript image transmission system, sensor network system, and the
device such as power source and machine room.
GIS GIS
Web Server Database 2) The Database Establishment
The database establishment is aimed to support the storage
and management of spatial data. There are three databases: the
Application Server Data Server local database, the GIS database, and the center database. We
Figure2. The frame of WebGIS use data synchronism technique to sync the multi-source and
heterogeneous data from the local system and network system.
information to provide the decision support for the farm staff.
3) WebGIS Module
III. THE DESIGN OF PAMS WebGIS provides the function to collect, process, analyze
and display farmland spatial data. Through WebGIS, we can
PAMS is designed for the large-scale agricultural manage the farmland spatial data and have the decision support.
production farm, which has a high information degree. We
chose an ecology farm, which is situated in Huaihua, Hunan, 4) The Local System
China, as an example. We designed the system composition, The local system establishment is centered on IoT. It
function, operation flow, platform, user interface and technique collects the detail agricultural production data by many kinds
route. The goal of building PAMS is to provide a professional of sensors and image collection devices. The data includes
management system, which can provide functions including environment data, positioning data, and image data. We store
data collecting, data searching, data analyzing, production the data in the local database by the local area network and
monitoring and managing, production process remote operating transfer them to the center database by the synchronization
and production decision supporting by using advanced method. Users can make different production plans
technique such as IoT technique, WebGIS technique, and individually to customize different areas. PAMS can reduce the
communication technique as the integration support platform cost of production by improving the utilization of chemical
and integrating the multisource and heterogeneous data. fertilizers and pesticides and improve the crop yield and quality
by reducing the amount of crop residues of toxic substances.
A. The Composition of PAMS
The system integrates and uses many advanced techniques Additionally, the local system also includes remote
such as data collecting, transferring and publishing. Internet monitoring and operation system so that the manager can
remotely control farmland facilities in real-time and do the
basic operation such as watering and adjusting the temperature.
We then can realize the automation of agricultural production.
5) The Mobile Client
With the improvement of tablet PC performance and
mobile phone client and the increase of their operation
functions, the mobile client of PAMS can help users to view
the farmland information and deal with problems more
conveniently. There are four mobile application types on the
different mobile OS platforms (these operation systems are
iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile and Symbian) so that
different users who have different mobile phones can choose
the right applications. The mobile client can provide the such
as user management, farmland information view, submit and
post information, and so on.

Management System
Farmland User Sensor Video
Monitor Managem Network View
ent Managem
ent
Farmland Plant Cultivation
Swipe Management Management Management
Card Card Upload Web
To Server synchronous Server
broker Information Bulletin Message Reminding
Photograp
h
Poultry
Monitor
WebGIS
Local Center GIS
Field Database Database Database Map Management Spatial Data Process
Syn Syn
Checking c c
In
Mobile Client
Support
User Management Farmland Information
management

Farmland Infrastructure

Computer Communication Image Sensor Power & Machine

Network System System Transfer System Network System Room

Figure3. The Composition of PAMS

B. PAMS Functions D. The Technique Route of PAMS

The main function of PAMS is monitoring and
management, including: a) Data collecting and processing. To
collect the real-time data of image and environment at
agricultural production process through IoT, to store them at
the local database and to sync them to the center database on
time. b) Video monitoring and display. Monitor and display the
farmland video through IoT. c) Production management. This
function can introduce informatization to the agricultural
production flow and management. The administrator can make
the plan according the farmland information and specify a
production person in charge. d) Remote operation. The user
can remotely operate the farm device by PAMS to water and
fertilize the farmland. e) Information publishing and feedback.
PAMS can publish the production information and news in
real-time and users can view different information under
different permissions.
C. The Work Flow of PAMS
The work flow of PAMS to process the precision
agriculture production is: data collection-monitoring-
management-remote operation-information feedback.
The development of PAMS should not only be practicality,
efficiency, reliability but also be good compatibility and
openness. The technique resources are all from the open source
community. PAMS uses a combination of modules. Its Internet
platform uses the new technique LAMP (Linux, Apache,
MySQL, Python).The Python web framework is Django. Its
local system is based on C# Windows Forms. Its hardware
control is based on the Linux CGI programming approach. Its
mobile client is based Appcan Application Engine, which
supports cross-platform operation. It shares the service by Web
Service and XML RPC technique. It chooses Openlayers as the
WebGIS browser client development lib and uses PostgreSQL
as the spatial database to store and manage spatial data. PAMS
is based on the TCP/IP Internet protocol. It uses Eclipse and
Visual studio as the integrated development environment. Its
server uses Ali cloud virtual host as the hard service, Ubuntu
Server as operation system, and Apache as its back-end server,
and Nginx as its front-end server and static resource server.
E. The Application of PAMS at the Study Site
PAMS was applied to the ecology farm, which is located at
Huaihua, Hunan, China. The staff can use the mobile client of
PAMS to post the real-time data of the daily work and the
important growing data of the plants. Then PAMS analyzes the
data and gives suggestion to the staff about what to do at the
next stage. PAMS has helped the farm monitor reduce a lot of
time monitoring the staff worker and the plant growing
information. Furthermore, due to the right planting methods,
the plants grew better than before. PAMS is an efficient way to
promote the level of management on the farm.
IV. CONCLUSION
China's agriculture is in a transition stage that the
traditional agriculture is developing to the modern agriculture.
Internet and IoT will play an important role in realizing this
new technique change and providing a very unprecedented
opportunity for the development of modern agriculture. PAMS
is a complex system involving multiple processes and multiple
systems. It needs support from both software and hardware.
In addition, there is a big conduction gap between China
and the developed country, including the information
infrastructure establishment, the design and conduction of
system and the employees' quality. It needs the government's
great attention and concern because the agriculture is the
fundamental guarantee for China's bright future. Only by
learning the experience of precision agriculture conduction in
developed countries, playing to existing strengths, considering
the specific situation of China's agriculture, and constantly
improving the system structure and implementation of
programs, can we maximize the effectiveness of precision
agriculture and benefit our country.
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