Building agricultural information system in An Giang province

An Giang is one of the leading provinces in agricultural production in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. However, in recent years, the effects of climate change and water security in the Mekong River have been major challenges for An Giang''s agriculture. Building an information system for agriculture based on GIS is a suitable direction.

BUILDING AGRICULTURAL INFORMATION SYSTEM

IN AN GIANG PROVINCE

Tran Thai Binh1, Pham Duy Tien2, Ho Lam Truong1

Nguyen Ngoc Phuong Thanh1, Do Thanh Long1

1 Ho Chi Minh City Space Technology Application Center, Vietnam National Space Center

2 An Giang University

Information:

Received: 05/09/2018

Accepted: 02/12/2018

Published: 03/2019

Keywords:

Agricultural information system,

An Giang, Open source

WebGIS, Interactive map

ABSTRACT

An Giang is one of the leading provinces in agricultural production in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam However, in recent years, the effects of climate change and water security in the Mekong River have been major challenges for An Giang's agriculture Building an information system for agriculture based on GIS is a suitable direction These systems include applications using WebGIS technology, providing online data management and updating functions Display function on WebGIS allows showing information with interactive maps and interactive time-series chart In addition, a mobile application was developed to monitor the disease situation Applications are built into an agricultural portal that helps to share useful information with managers, businesses, and farmers

1 INTRODUCTION

An Giang is a province with the highest potential

for agricultural production in the Mekong Delta

and one of the “key national food producing

provinces” (Southwest Steering Committee,

2016) However, climate change and water

security in the Mekong Basin are challenges for

An Giang’s agriculture Therefore, “the

modernization of agriculture” and “restructuring

of the agricultural sector” are the priority policies

for sustainable development of An Giang’s

agriculture Changes in agriculture in recent years

have increased the need for data management

However, there are some limitations on storage

and management of agricultural data Agricultural

data are stored by paper or digital files on a

personal computer that is not optimal for managing, sharing and publishing Especially, during the "restructuring of the agricultural sector", leaders and managers need to know spatial-temporal changes in agriculture to make quick and reasonable decisions

With the development of information technology and geographic information systems (GIS), especially open source WebGIS technology has allowed building an online and flexible application that supports for data collection, data management, and data mining The development

of sustainable agriculture is not only a plan of developing countries but of the whole world as well At present, many countries have focused on the development of an agricultural information

system that provides useful information to the

public as well as a decision support system

Thereby, the agricultural information system

contributes to the increase in agricultural

productivity in the context of climate change (Le

et al., 2013; ESRI, 2009; ESRI, 2013)

Based on the open source platform, this paper

presents an approach to building an agriculture

information system The system consists of components: WebGIS application base on an interactive map and interactive time-series chart technology; data management application for editing or updating data on the client computer; a mobile application for collecting data such as diseases, water quality, salinity intrusion (Figure 1)

Figure 1 An Giang agricultural information system

The agricultural production information and

related information such as meteorology,

hydrology, soil and especially information on the

agricultural disease are provided by WebGIS

interface An agricultural information system is

an indispensable tool for management, planning

and agricultural structural reform

2 MATERIALS AND METHODS

2.1 Materials

The database includes data on agriculture, natural,

socio-economic and base map (Figure 2):

- Data on agriculture: cultivation data, livestock data, and aquaculture data

- Data on natural conditions: meteorological data, hydrographic data; soil map; agriculture disease data

- Data on socio-economic: land use map; the location of agricultural production units (cooperatives), agricultural market information

- Base map: data on administrative boundaries, traffic, hydrography, topography, satellite images

Figure 2 Database catalog

2.2 Methods

a) Method of data collection

Secondary data was collected from a variety of

sources to build a database for agricultural

management Agricultural data from 2010 to

2016 was collected directly from An Giang

Department of Agriculture and Rural

Development In addition, soil map was collected

from An Giang University, hydro-meteorological

data collected from the An Giang

Hydrometeorological Station, base map and

current land use map collected from the An Giang

Department of Natural Resources and

Environment

b) Methods of transformation, standardization

and editing data

Spatial data is collected in various formats such

as AutoCAD, MapInfo, MicroStation, Shapefile These data are converted into the unified format and coordinate system by QGIS software QGIS

is an open-source geographic information system application that supports viewing, editing, and analysis of spatial data In this study, data use Vietnam Coordinate System for An Giang province (VN2000 - central meridian 104°45') Data is stored based on the relational model in PostgreSQL Spatial data was imported to PostgreSQL by PostGIS extension and QGIS software

c) WebGIS technology

This system uses WebGIS open source technology It consists of three levels (Figure 3):

the database, the application server, and the user

interface

At the database level, this WebGIS used

PostgreSQL as database management system

PostgreSQL is an open source object-relational

database system that provides the full

functionality of a database management system,

including concurrency, integrity, security,

backup, and recovery, especially supporting

spatial data (Nair et al., 2015; Shukla et al.,

2016)

At the application server level, this research used

Web Servers as Apache and TomCat to handle

Web-related tasks on the server This system also

used the open source map server - GeoServer to

provide Web Map Service (WMS) (Giuliani et al

2013; Loechel & Schmid, 2012)

At the user interface level, web browsers (Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, etc.)

on the client computer can run WebGIS applications This application uses the PHP and JavaScript programming language to combine the SQL language that helps to query the data The JavaScript language and open source “Mapbox

GL JS” library are used to build user interface functions such as chart display, map display, zoom in – zoom out, view object information,…(map functions)

Figure 3 WebGIS architecture in this study

In addition to the WebGIS application, this study

also developed a mobile application that supports

the collection of diseases data on plant and animal

species in the field This application is

programmed based on Mobile website technology

(also known as Web Apps) These data are linked

and stored directly on the server to assist decision

makers when an outbreak occurs

3 RESULTS 3.1 WebGIS application

The system provides interactive maps and time-series charts based on WebGIS interface The statistics data on agriculture are presented visually and highly interactive This is a new way

of expressing geographical information (Taylor & Plewe, 2006) This technology has the advantage

of linking spatial data and statistical data to

represent different types of charts (Andrienko et

al., 2002; Nagel et al., 2013) When interacting

with any component, the other of the components

will be customized accordingly, so that the

information displayed on the user's request

(Figure 4)

The chart is a graphical representation of data

Visual information from the chart helps users

analyze data better However, each type of information has different graphical representations The WebGIS application is designed to display charts in flexible ways Bar charts or column charts are good for comparisons, while line charts work better for trends In the pie chart, the arc length of each slice is proportional

to the magnitude of the quantity

Figure 2 Interactive maps and time-series charts based on WebGIS interface

Data is stored in a time series Therefore, the

“chart function” in the WebGIS application

provides a time bar at the bottom of some charts

Users can choose the time period for analyzing the information (Figure 5)

Figure 5 The time bar is used to analyze the information

The WebGIS application is based on Open GIS

Consortium (OGC) standards Some of the

common standards for geographic data distributed

over the web environment are Web Map Service

(WMS) or Web Feature Service (WFS)

Therefore, WebGIS applications can provide

functions such as displaying and querying geographic data in various forms, such as maps, charts, tables from raster data or vector data Thematic maps are integrated into the WebGIS application, such as land use map, soil map, satellite imagery… (Figure 6)

Figure 6 WebGIS application provides a variety of thematic maps

3.2 Data management application

The data management functions is designed using

web interface (Figure 7) Based on this function,

the administrator can manage and update data

quickly and conveniently The data is updated by the user and stored directly to the server, including spatial and non-spatial data

Figure 7 Data management function

The users are defined into several groups Each group can access data at different levels (Figure 8)

Figure 8 User management function

3.3 Mobile application to collect disease data

To collect data on site, a mobile application is

built It runs on Android system The location,

information, and pictures can be gathered at the

same time The collected data is quickly updated

in the system and widely disseminated to the management staff as well as farmers to plan timely prevention (Figure 9)

Figure 9 Mobile application to collected disease data

3.4 Agricultural information portal

All applications of the agricultural information system are integrated into a portal Information on agriculture will be provided to various users such as administrator, local government office, businessman, farmer (Figure 10)

Figure 10 The main interface of An Giang - Agriculture portal

This site also publishes agricultural news, disaster

information, agricultural market information

Useful information will help farmers develop

effective production plans Besides, research

institutions and universities can also access

reliable sources of data for research and training

4 CONCLUSION

Today, with the development of information

technology, especially in the field of geographic

information systems, the requirements of a

database management system not only have the

function of managing the attribute data but also

must have spatial data management functions In

this paper, all parts of the system use the open

source software PostgreSQL and PostGIS can

provide the requirements of a database

management system and a large library of spatial

functions

Our research results show that storing agricultural

data into a centralized and unified database

facilitates the management of agriculture as well

as building an agricultural information system

Based on spatial data, agricultural information is

displayed in a browser with multi-temporal interactive maps Users can access data with a friendly interface

Agriculture is an important economic sector in Vietnam, so the modernization of agricultural management is one of the urgent requirements Research on building an agricultural information system based on open source WebGIS technology shows that this technology provides the full functionality of a WebGIS application in agriculture This system promises to be an effective tool to support the management of local officials In addition, farmer and businesses can also look up useful information about agricultural production

Acknowledgments

This study was part of “Research on building agricultural information systems for agricultural restructuring in An Giang Province”- 372.2016.14 funded by An Giang Department of Science and Technology

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