IAA Phase 2

Project Dates: From August 2016 to March 2017

Project Leader: Dr. Thomas Ploetz

Staff: Dr. Stephen Matthews, Mr. Curtis Connelly, Prof. Ilias Kyriazakis (Agriculture, Food & Rural Development)

Sponsors: EPSRC

There is an exponential increase in capturing data from livestock systems through the use of sensors. This is the reflection of the move towards larger animal units that rely less heavily on contact between animal and keeper for health and welfare monitoring. On-farm monitoring using a variety of sensors and the Internet of Things (IoT) allows the capture of new sources of data. However, there is potential for unknown risks of new applications of IoT on farms to be compromised and used for criminal activity, by animal activists, quality assurance or authenticity fraud. For monitoring health of humans, there is an increasing number of applications using accelerometers in phones and watches that integrate with the the cloud to measure activity, such as steps, sleep quality and activity identification. In a similar manner, this technology is increasingly being used in livestock systems for routine health recording and performance. This project seeks to prototype a secure IoT system that monitors farm animals and automatically control the volume of data sent to the cloud.