As a leading player in IIoT (industrial IoT), Taiwan-based Blutech has established the world's first commercialized IIoT service platform and is applying its LoRa LPWAN system to work out a smart aquaculture monitoring solution to help fishing farmers boost fish survival rates, according to the firm's CEO WF Chen.
Chen said his company has helped farmers set up the first smart fishing farm in southern Taiwan with a space of up to 13 hectares, with its LoRa LPWAN (low power wide area network) system, which shows a 99.9% accuracy in data transmission following months of non-stop trial operation, significantly helping aquaculture operators reduce unnecessary losses.
Chen continued that the system allows users to monitor data of fishing farms via smartphones, saving significantly on management manpower and power consumption, and reducing waterwheel malfunction rate. Of course, he stressed, big data analysis is also needed to provide smart analysis to better improve aquaculture operations.
Fishing farmers usually have little knowledge about when and what fishes to raise because of the lack of data concerning weather, bacteria, and power supply interruption. As monitoring requirements vary with different fishes for farming, monitoring methods must be constantly adjusted in accordance with the requirements and all the data concerning water, power, air, temperature and vibration must be monitored, according to Chen.
Chen indicated that besides fish farming, horticulture and livestock farming sectors all require the support of IoT, big data analysis and AI to boost production efficiency, adding that AIoT is also a crucial application sector deserving great development efforts.
Statistics show that global smart aquaculture market scale reached US$500 million in 2016, and is expected to experience a CAGR of 160% in the coming years to reach US$1.2 billion by 2022. Over 40% of fishery products consumed by human beings are sourced from aquaculture farms.
