Intelligent Farm Relaxation for Smart City based on Internet of

Things: Management System and Service Model

Lina Yu, Sha Tao, Wanlin Gao, Ganghong Zhang and Kequan Lin

Key Laboratory of Modern Precision Agriculture System Integration Research, Ministry of Education,

China Agriculture University, No.17 Qinghua East Road, Haidian District, 100083, Beijing, China

Keywords: Internet of Things (IoT), Intelligent Farm Relaxation, Management System, Service Model.

Abstract: Farm relaxation is a type of city tourism. Currently, this type of tourism has demonstrated a series of

problems, including blind spots in the service channel, simple one-sided service content and passive service

delivery. To address these issues, here the concept of “intelligent farm relaxation” was proposed. In

addition, an intelligent farm management system IEFMS was developed based on key techniques from the

Internet of Things (IoT) as well as a related service model. This system has five layers, which are, from top

to bottom: the presentation layer, the application layer, the application support layer, the data layer, and the

infrastructure layer. Based on this, the intelligent farm was divided into four sections and a service model

proposed: planting areas, a management services centre, a logistics distribution centre and a data centre.

This service model is characterized by digital dynamic management and customized whole-process

proactive services. The results of this study will help improve intelligent farm management services for

smart city, likewise providing technical and application support for the intelligentization, automation and

diversification of intelligent farm relaxation service management, and also to promote adding cultural,

ecological, technological and service value to intelligent farm relaxation.

1 INTRODUCTION

In recent years, because of traffic congestion, air

pollution, accelerated pace of living, and fierce

competition, urbanites have strong demand for rural

travel, in rural communities one can breathe cleaner

atmosphere, feel closeness to nature, relax oneself,

observe ecology and grow experience (Frochot I.,

2005; Devesa M. et al., 2009; Vaugeois N. et al,

2015). Rural tourism plays an increasingly important

role in cultural protection, economic development,

increasing farmers' income and rural sustainable

development (Jepson D. et al., 2015; Farmaki A. et

al., 2012; Blezentis T. et al., 2012; Claire H.T. et al.,

2012).

However, the applications of information

technology in the aspect of rural tourism were far

less than tourism industry or agriculture. There are

still many problems in the following aspects:

 Service channels are not enough. On the face

that farms are usually very large, it is difficult

and time-consuming when providing service by

traditional methods. Sometimes, it even has

blind spots.

 Service contents are hard to get. There are a

great many kinds of information in a farm,

such as vegetables names, planting methods,

edible methods, growth environment and so on.

Generally, the above information is concerned

but hard to get. Even asking the service staffs,

the answer is usually simple, one-sided and

lack of reasonable scientific reliability.

 Services are only provided in the passive

methods. The service in farm comes from

consumers’ demands, such as information,

purchase and entertainment. That means no

demands, no service. This kind of service

methods are passive, single, and lack of

individuality and initiative service.

Therefore, how to provide personalized service

more effectively and improve experience and degree

of satisfaction becomes a key competitive point

(Marzo-Navarro M. et al., 2015; Leask A., 2010;

McBoyle G. et al., 2008). With high-speed

inosculation and development of information

technology, agriculture and tourism industry for

smart city, it provides a feasible solution to offer

accurate and convenient service by using the IoT

technology and portable terminal devices. In this

study, based on the IoT technologies, the

Yu, L., Tao, S., Gao, W., Zhang, G. and Lin, K.

Intelligent Farm Relaxation for Smart City based on Internet of Things: Management System and Service Model.

DOI: 10.5220/0005874001590166

In Proceedings of the International Conference on Internet of Things and Big Data (IoTBD 2016), pages 159-166

ISBN: 978-989-758-183-0

159

management system and service mode is discussed,

which organic combined agricultural and sideline

products, agricultural technology, agricultural

activities, arts and culture and consumer demand. It

formed a benign interaction management and service

system and created a new space for the development

of leisure farm.

2 RELATED WORDS

‘Intelligent farm relaxation’ is a new solution to

promote rural tourism development. It refers to

integrating farm information resource, promoting

information sharing and tourist services business

collaboration, improving farm service efficiency and

quality through the application of a new generation

information technology. To be simple, it means the

intellectualization for rural tourism industry.

Information technology was applied in the

tourism industry started in 1952. At that time,

tourists took shortwave radio receiver listening to

the speech from the city museum (McCabe S. et al.,

2012). In 2012, Lathia N., et al. presented that

visitors could make better decisions by fast

accessing and evaluating information according to

their own needs if they got more information. And

they established an Advanced Traveller Information

Systems (ATIS) which provided user preferences

analysis, schedule planning, environmental

awareness, etc. using a variety of sensors through

mobile phones. McCabe S., et al. (2012) studied the

application of SBD (scenario-based design)

technology in tourism, which provided a good tool

for establishing communication among tourism

stakeholders. Facing to the lacking of process

management and information system as well as the

ignoring of culture and ecological of Taiwan ocean

tourism, Chen T.C. et al. (2012) implemented a

marine tourism information system using process

management, object-oriented analysis tools and the

virtual reality panorama technology. And it

improved the tourism industry profits and reduced

the damage to the Marine environment.

In the field of agriculture production,

information technology also played a huge role. For

example, agricultural expert systems, knowledge

systems, monitor systems, irrigation systems,

elaborating systems, etc. And the IoT technology has

a great potential in transportation, logistics, medical,

environmental, personal and social areas. Based on

this technology, planting environment monitoring

(Zuo X.M. et al., 2011), management of supply

chain for agricultural products (Verdouw C.N. et al.,

2015), water-saving automation control (Dionisio

Perez-Blanco C. et al., 2015; Zhang F., 2011), data

management (Yu L.N. et al., 2011) and other related

research has also been studied in agriculture field.

Yet, compared to agriculture and tourist industry,

the researches and applications of information

technologies in rural tourism have more deficiencies.

With the integration of the development of

agriculture and tourist industry, IoT based smart

service will be the developing trends.

3 MATERIALS AND

METHODOLOGY

In this study, the IoT technology was used to contact.

Figure 1: The IEFMS schematic diagram.

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environment, facilities, roads, farm produce,

vehicles and tourist in farms and an Intelligent

Entertaining Farm Management System (IEFMS)

was developed which realized the intelligence and

active service. The IEFMS is showed in Figure 1

In production phase, a lot of sensors of

temperature, humidity, PH and light intensity etc.

are deployed in farmland and greenhouses for

environment monitoring. When farm products are in

the areas of storage, transportation and sale, the

RFIDs are used to information traceability. Staffs

and customers could acquire information by

computers, mobile phone and other mobile

communication terminals, especially during the

journey.

3.1 IoT Technologies

IoT is a kind of emerging communication

technology (Miorandi D. et al., 2012; Lee I. et al.,

2015). It means making anything connected to the

Internet though information sensing devices (such as

RFID, infrared sensors, global positioning system

(GPS), laser scanner and so on) with ubiquitous

devices and facilities based on agreement protocol

for information exchange and communication in

order to realize intelligent identification,

localization, tracking, monitoring and management.

It includes sensors, mobile terminals, industrial

system, control system, intelligent building

equipment, video monitoring system, etc. with

inherent intelligence. And it also has external

enabled, such as Assets attaching RFID (Radio

Frequency Identification) tags.

3.2 IEFMS Management System

Implementation

3.2.1 Overall Architecture Design

The overall architecture of IEFMS summed up as

“five layers and two systems”, which showed in

Figure 2. From top to bottom, the five layers

respectively are show layer, application layer,

application support layer, data layer and

infrastructure layer. And two systems are security

supporting system and application standard system.

Presentation layer: This layer is IEFMS

integrated services web site, which is an important

part. This layer achieved interoperability between

client and server systems by HTTP/HTTPS, Web

services, and mobile phone APP.

Application layer: This layer contained four

application subsystems, which are Intelligent Farm

Monitoring and Control System, Intelligent Farm

Figure 2: The overall architecture of IEFMS.

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Special Product Logistics Management System,

Intelligent Farm Resource Management and

Publishing System and Intelligent Farm Experience

Management and Service System

Application support layer: This layer between

application layer and data layer provided the public

function to facilitate the realization of the function

of application using components and application

systems. It mainly included a full-text search engine,

a workflow engine, a message middleware, a report

middleware, a clearing middleware and IoT

middleware, etc.

Data layer: This layer stored farm people, things

and money information to set up database for farm

management and service including basic data, image

data, environmental data, location data, operational

data, customer data, order data and logistics data.

Infrastructure layer: This layer included system

software, host hardware, network infrastructures, as

well as farm IoT devices. And according to the

requirements, the hardware and software

procurement, installation and alignment was

considerable.

Security supporting system: This system which

ensured the safety and stability of IEFMS provided

unified identity authentication service for network

equipment, security equipment, application and

service system by identity authentication mechanism.

Application standard system: The above layers

and supporting system construction were based on

the existing standards and standardize management

of IEFMS, such as interface specification, standard

data access, operation specification, etc.

3.2.2 IoT Devices of IEFMS

IoT devices of IEFMS showed in Figure 3. It

includes five kinds of devices described below.

Figure 3: IoT devices of IEFMS.

Multimedia projectors: It was used to show video,

audio, images, text and video of farm plant areas for

publicity and promotion of agricultural science and

technology knowledge.

Mobile tour-guide machines: It integrated GPS

location services, RFID identification services, video

service, audio service, image, text and other service

functions. Combining with the farm planting zone

distribution, it showed farm characteristics and let

the tourists extend agriculture connotation in the

process of visit through professional audio and video

editing software by using digital coding and digital

modulation, wireless digital signal transmitting,

terrestrial digital receiving. This kind of device

could be used in tourists’ position. The RFID tags

integrated on mobile guide device was used for

identification and customer information collection

when visitors enter the plantation.

Fixed information equipment: Fixed information

equipment integrated touching LED display screen

and computer. Using this equipment, visitors can

directly query and access to information in the hall

and also can self-help order characteristic farm

products.

Surveillance cameras: Surveillance cameras

mainly included high definition camera which were

used to monitor farm environment and random

sampling tourists’ image information.

Monitoring sensing devices: Monitoring sensors

collected plantation area environment, such as

temperature, moisture, N, P, K content, pH value,

organic matter content, crop's, weed distribution, etc.

Through scientific configuration, real-time

monitoring of environment was realized, and tourists’

information was collected by integrating RFID

reader.

3.2.3 Functional Design of IEFMS

Functional design of IEFMS showed in Figure 4.

Monitoring and Control System: Management

and monitoring of planting zone basic information,

environmental automatic gathering information and

remote video information was implemented for farm

management staff.

Special Product Logistics Management System:

This system was used to characteristic product

logistics management activities according to order

situation for visitors and farm staff.

Resource Management and Publishing System:

To manage all the resources, and provide in the form

of SMS, mobile news to release the function of farm

related information.

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Figure 4: Functional designs of IEFMS.

Experience Management and Service System:

This system provided processed, personalized,

diversified experience services. It could define

unique personalized experience processes according

to the tourists’ requirements, and offer visitors the

farm access service, tour service, location service

and other services.

One-stop IEFMS integrated services web site: As

a showcase, the web site provided publicity

materials showing, information querying, booking,

farm tourism BBS, product ordering, virtual farms

and other functions

3.3 Service Model

The Intelligent Entertaining Farm showed in Figure5

is divided into four parts, Planting Areas,

Management Service Centre, Logistics Distribution

Centre and Data Centre.

 Planting Areas

Surveillance cameras, monitoring sensing

devices and multimedia projections are installed in

Planting Areas which already configured the

wireless network. Among them, the surveillance

cameras are widely used for environmental

monitoring and tourist capturing. And, on the one

hand monitoring sensing devices are used to gather

condition data, such as temperature and humidity.

On the other hand they collect visitors’ route and

order information. The multimedia projections may

play publicity materials to better understand farm.

 Management Service Centre

The Management Service Centre is a place for

the management of cash flow, information flow,

people flow and goods flow. It includes workspace

and service counters. Farm staffs access IEFMS via

computers with Internet connections and use IoT

devices of IEFMS for Monitoring, registration,

tracking and other business in word space. And

tourists enjoy services from service counters.

 Logistics Distribution Centre

Logistics Distribution Centre is responsible for

inventory management, order management,

distribution management. The farm staffs distributed

agricultural products according to the tourists’ order.

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Figure 5: Service Model of IEFMS.

 Data Centre

The Data Centre is a room with a shelf of data

servers and web application servers from a variety of

vendors. IEFMS has been deployed in this center.

The Service Model of IEFMS including four steps.

(1) The Tourists came to farm and went into the

Management Service Centre to register and get the

mobile tour-guide device.

(2) The tourists took a mobile tour-guide device

as entrance guard to visit and learned knowledge,

entertainment through the mobile tour-guide device

and multimedia projectors.

(3) After the tourists, returned mobile tour-guide

device to the Management Service Centre and

choose to enjoy the tour in the automatic acquisition

of individualized information service, such as

printed collected photo, ordering products, etc.

(4) Agricultural products were distributed in

Logistics Distribution Centre according to the order

situation.

4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The IEFMS and its service model presented in this

paper contents the following characteristics.

(1) Digital Dynamic Management

Based on a variety application of IoT technology,

the real-time monitoring of farms environment was

achieved. It promotes agricultural technology

innovation management from point, line, surface and

3D. Point means achieving meticulous management

objectives by collecting planting environment

information through sensors, RFID and GPS

technology. Line means getting precise planting

experience according to the monitoring of the

changes in agricultural cultivation, which realized

the depth excavation. And analysed tours

preferences according to collected tourist track

action data, which implemented the horizontal

excavation. Surface means relying on points and

lines, the corresponding analysis and statistics were

achieved, which provided dynamic management and

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decision-making supports. 3D means providing

traceability and management support of farm

operating conditions for any point in time.

(2) Active and Customized Services

Around the needs of individual users, a

personalized experience tailored processes and

monitoring were achieved by using personal

identification technology and access admission

policy. On this basis, information resources

exhibition services, text messages and mobile

newspaper active push services were provided

according to user customization process by using

IoT devices. At the same time, IEFMS provided a

wide range of user experience services based on

personalized information such as location

information, visit track, visiting hours, stay time,

browse operations, product ordering, video images,

etc. which automatically collected.

(3) Multidimensional Experience Mode

Based on multimedia information service and

traces of location service, this paper proposes a

multidimensional experience mode. The main body

of that is large amount of information resources,

such as video, audio, images, text, tourist location,

tour track and so on. Relying on IEFMS services and

IoT equipment, it created a variety of creative

atmosphere for farm visitors, and provided different

feelings of the tour. This mode further tap the

customer experience value, and enhance tourist

approbate degree and brand loyalty, All in all, it

created a unique multi dimensions farm experience

mode.

In summary, the countryside with vast and

beautiful rural scenery are not only the agriculture

products supply bases for cities, but expand an

intelligent space for smart city. IEFMS is a new

management and service model for farm

development with the benefits of enhancing the

agricultural increase, the rural income and the

harmonic prosperity of urban and rural. And it will

play an important role in the technology upgrades of

traditional farmhouse and farm tours. The

application of IEFMS can improve the quality of

farm experience and value-added products, the core

competitiveness, and the development increased like

a "snowball" type virtuous circle.

5 CONCLUSIONS

Facing to the technical requirements of growing

farm recreation on the intelligent management

system and service model, the IEFMS and Service

Model were studied combining with the technology

of IoT. The results of this study will help improve

intelligent farm management services, likewise

providing technical and application support for the

intelligentization, automation and diversification of

intelligent farm relaxation service management, and

also to promote adding cultural, ecological,

technological and service value to intelligent farm

relaxation.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work was supported by the National Key

Technology R&D Program (2015BAK04B01) and

Chinese Universities Scientific Fund (2016XD002).

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