Transfer of manure from livestock farms to crop fields as fertilizer using an ant inspired approach
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Author
Kamilaris, A.
Engelbrecht, A.
Pitsillides, A.
Prenafeta-Boldú, Francesc X.
Publication date
2020-08-03ISSN
2194-9042
Abstract
Intensive livestock production might have a negative environmental impact, by producing large amounts of animal excrements,
which, if not properly managed, can contaminate nearby water bodies with nutrient excess. However, if animal manure is exported
to distant crop fields, to be used as organic fertilizer, pollution can be mitigated. It is a single-objective optimization problem, in
regards to finding the best solution for the logistics process of satisfying nutrient crops needs by means of livestock manure. This
paper proposes a dynamic approach to solve the problem, based on a decentralized nature-inspired cooperative technique, inspired
by the foraging behavior of ants (AIA). Results provide important insights for policy-makers over the potential of using animal
manure as fertilizer for crop fields, while AIA solves the problem effectively, in a fair way to the farmers and well balanced in terms
of average transportation distances that need to be covered by each livestock farmer. Our work constitutes the first application of a
decentralized AIA to this interesting real-world problem, in a domain where swarm intelligence methods are still under-exploited.
Document Type
Article
Document version
Published version
Language
English
Subject (CDU)
636 - Animal husbandry and breeding in general. Livestock rearing. Breeding of domestic animals
Pages
8
Publisher
Copernicus Publications
Is part of
ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences
Citation
Kamilaris, A., A. Engelbrecht, A. Pitsillides, and Francesc X. Prenafeta-Bold. 2020. "Transfer of manure from livestock farms to crop fields as fertilizer using an ant inspired approach". ISPRS Annals Of Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing And Spatial Information Sciences V-4-2020: 139-146. doi:10.5194/isprs-annals-v-4-2020-139-2020.
Grant agreement number
EC/H2020/739578/EU/Research Center on Interactive Media, Smart System and Emerging Technologies/RISE
Program
Sostenibilitat en Biosistemes
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- ARTICLES CIENTÍFICS [2811]
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/