Artificial intelligence plays a crucial role to enable the ability of machines to behaves like humans. The main advantages of using AI are learning (supervised or unsupervised), taking self-decisions based on the processing of complex data (organised or unorganised).
Some domains where applications of IoT and AI are very essential to improve the decision making are as follows:
- Environmental Sensing
- Manufacturing automation
- Security, facial recognition
- Agriculture
- Natural resources monitoring such as water resources, forest, cryospheric research and many more
- Education
- Healthcare
- Climate Change
- Driverless cars, automated fuelling station
The Fourth industrial revolution (4IR) has brought in an interesting confluence of the artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT). The science of where i.e. location also has a significant role in these revolutionary technologies. All devices and sensors must be having some location (static and or dynamic) and this ‘where’ part is highly important to understand, analyse and getting maximum information from the huge data generated by sensors.
The geospatial technologies are scanning the earth, (other planets also like mars, Jupiter and many more) with connected satellites through communication, sharing the abundance of data. This data can be accessed and analysed anywhere with the power of the cloud.
The autonomous vehicles equipped with different sensors fully utilizes the geospatial information to know about transport and facilities. Fuelling the gas through robots having IoT devices in the driverless cars can be seen everywhere very soon. IoT, Artificial Intelligence and Cloud technologies drive the geospatial industry, they also create a lot of opportunities bringing about a multitude of disruption in the processes as well.
What AI can do for us
The benefits of using AI in applications are many. Let us understand how AI helps by way of the following examples:
AI Modelling of Snow Wetness and Density using Hyperspectral Dataset
Snow properties such as snow wetness and density are highly important for avalanche and hydrological applications. These properties are mainly investigated in field-based surveys. The issues in a field-based survey are rugged terrain, difficult weather conditions and logistics issues. This problem can be solved using AI based on the airborne hyperspectral dataset.
AI for Glacier Ice-Thickness Estimation
Knowledge of glacier volume is very crucial for assessing the water reserves locked in the glaciers, predicting the impact of climate change on glaciers, glacier runoff, and forecasting sea level rise from ongoing glacier wastage. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) modelling technique can be effectively used for deriving glacier ice thickness and volume.
Groundwater level and quality analysis and forecasting using AI
AI can be used to understand the drastic fall in groundwater level. The water quality and associated parameters can be analysed for forecasting the water level and quality.For instance, there is an extinct river known as Sahibi river which flows from Jaipur to Delhi and once flooded Delhi in 1978. There is no flow of water in this river for the last 38 years. AI can be used to understand the reasons based on the geospatial and climatic dataset.
IoT in action
Internet of things (IoT) is a network of physical devices/sensors that contain embedded technology to communicate and interact with their measurements/sensing. The data from devices and sensors can be stored in the cloud and can be made available for real-time analytics. There are as many as 50 billion devices, ranging from smartphones, gadgets, drones, smart watches, vehicles etc which will be connected by 2020, according to a report by a global research organisation. One can imagine the amount of data acquired through these devices. This data can be used in a number of important applications for more efficient outcomes. Few of them could be:
- Pervasive agriculture
- Weather Station Monitoring
- Water Quality monitoring of Aquaculture and Fisheries
- Soil Moisture monitoring
- Home Automation
