The document proposes the Farmers' Integration Platform as a Service (FIPaaS) project, which aims to integrate existing technologies for precision and sustainable farming into a single, open-source, cloud-based solution to improve farmers' livelihoods. The project is funded by the EU-Egypt PRIMA initiative and involves partners from several Mediterranean countries. It will develop tools for satellite imaging, drone data collection, smart irrigation, and other functions. The project expects to reduce water usage, increase crop yields, and disseminate technologies to farmers through its unified platform.

1. Farmers’ Integration Platform as a Service
(FIPaaS)
‫سحابية‬ ‫كخدمة‬ ‫للمزارعين‬ ‫متكاملة‬ ‫منصة‬
Project PI: Prof. Dr. Mohamed Bahnassy
Soil and Water Sciences Deaprtment

2. Presentation Layout
• Overview of EU call for Proposals
• Introduction
• Overview of Cloud Computing
• Project Partners
• Budget
• Project Goal and Objectives
• Working Packages
• Expected Impacts
2

3. Overview of
EU call for
Proposals
3

4. Partnership for Research and
Innovation
in the Mediterranean Area
(PRIMA)
A joint program
focused on the
development and
application of
solutions for food
systems and water
resources in the
Mediterranean basin
4

5. PRIMA Overview
• In recent years, the agricultural sector in the
Mediterranean has been suffering from severe
water shortages and decreasing crop yields.
• Today, 180 million people in the Mediterranean
basin are considered 'water poor’.
• The lack of clean water and nutritious food has
adverse effects on the health and stability of the
populations.

6. Program Main Objective
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• PRIMA will develop solutions for a more sustainable
management of water and agro-food systems.
• The ten-year initiative (2018 – 2028), aims to devise
new R&I approaches to improve water availability and
sustainable agriculture production in a region heavily
distressed by climate change, urbanization and
population growth.

7. Funding
• The partnership will be financed through a
combination of funding from participating countries
(currently €274 million), and a €220 million
contribution from the EU through Horizon 2020, its
research and innovation funding program (2014 –
2020).
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8. 27 October 2017
EU-Egypt PRIMA signature
8
Mr Mohamed
SHINAWI,
Advisor to the
Minister of Higher
Education and
Scientific Research of
Egypt;
Mr Clyde KULL,
Deputy Permanent
Representative of
Estonia to the EU;
Ms Cristina RUSSO,
European
Commission's Director
for International
Cooperation

9. PRIMA Partners
19 participating countries
Algeria, Croatia, Cyprus, Egypt, France,
Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon,
Luxembourg, Malta, Morocco, Portugal,
Slovenia, Spain, Tunisia and Turkey.
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10. Description of the Project
FIPaaS
10

11. Cloud Computing
Overview

12. What is Cloud Computing?
Cloud computing is using the internet to
access someone else's software
(Application) running on someone else's
hardware (Infrastructure) in someone
else's data center (Platform).
- Lewis Cunningham

13. What is Cloud Computing?

14. IaaS
Infrastructure as a Service
‫التحتية‬ ‫البنية‬ ‫تاجير‬ ‫خدمة‬
PaaS
Platform as a Service
‫البيانات‬ ‫مراكز‬ ‫تاجير‬ ‫خدمة‬
SaaS
Software as a Service
‫البرمجيات‬ ‫تاجير‬ ‫خدمة‬

15. PaaS
Platform as a Service
‫البيانات‬ ‫مراكز‬ ‫تاجير‬ ‫خدمة‬

16. Popular services
• Storage
• Database
• Scalability
PaaS

17. The FIPaaS Project
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18. Project Information
Section: 2
Call: Section 2: Multi Topic 2018
Transnational call funded by Participating States;
Topic: Sustainable farming systems under
Mediterranean environmental constraints
Type of action: Research and Innovation Action (RIA)
Duration 36 months
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19. Project Partners
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Participant No* PI name Organisation Country
1 (Coordinator) Steve Zerafa Malta College of Arts Science
and Technology
Malta
2 Partner 1 Graziella Tabone Diversification and
Competitiveness Directorate, as
part of the Ministry for
Sustainable Development, the
Environment and Climate
Change
Malta
3 Partner 2 Fella Naouel Allouche Centre de Development des
Energies Renouvelables
Algeria
4 Partner 3 Ashraf Shaqadan Zarqa University Jordan
5 Partner 4 Ricardo Braga University of Lisbon Portugal
6 Partner 5 Burcu Uyusur Scientific and Technological
Research Council of Turkey
Turkey
7 Partner 6 Mohamed Bahnassy Alexandria University Egypt

20. Budget
• € 800,000
• Egypt Share € 100,000
• This amount is divided between Alexandria
University and AASTMT
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21. Introduction
• Agriculture is experiencing a technological
revolution through a range of farming
techniques, including satellite imagery,
precision irrigation, robotics, drones, water
management solutions and big data analysis.
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22. Introduction
• However, the farmers are still not using these
technologies, given their different approaches
and the lack of standard file type or data,
making it almost impossible for farmers to be
up to date on all the systems and choose their
best application.
• FIPAAS seeks exploring these systems and
integrate them into one open source system,
easily accessed from the Cloud.
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23. Project Objective
• The project aims to combine the existing
technologies in precision and sustainable farming,
into one, open source, user friendly, and cloud-based
solution.
• Furthermore, such a service could also be the next
generation software for the agriculture sector.
• Through FIPAAS, a farmer would be –for example-
able to use drones to collect specific data about
crops in his field and combines it with satellite
imagery which provides for different type of data.
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24. Project General Objective and Aims
Scientific objectives:
• FIPAAS seeks innovation to improve farmers’ livelihoods, by exploring these systems
and integrate them into one open source system, easily accessed from the Cloud.
• Provide for a free open source Farming IPAAS tool aiming to increase crop
production, and reduce water usage, thus improving efficiency and sustainability.
• FIPAAS’ innovativeness would allow for the transfer of data between all created
subsystems, and also have a simple user interface, thus making it easy to be used by
the farmers.
• Increase the awareness of various technologies amongst the farming community.
• Create a recognized platform for IT companies to promote their applications.
• Dissemination of information about new products by the means of articles, reaching
out to the farmers’ community within the partner countries, and scientific
publications.
• Establishing cooperation among consortium members, synergies between
multilateral research units as well as individual researchers.
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25. Project General Objective and Aims
Socio-economic objectives:
• Reduce water consumption in the agriculture sector.
• FIPAAS would serve as a one stop shop, giving free access to technologies to farmers
with low income and to start-ups in the agriculture industry, and the design of
sustainable and profitable farming systems for small-scale agriculture.
• FIPAAS, being made of the various current technologies, would be an adaptable tool
according to territory and site-specific requirements.
• FIPAAS’ decision support system assists farmers to improve their farm management
in a risky environment like the Mediterranean.
• FIPAAS enhances participatory approaches for integrating farmers’ knowledge in the
innovation process.
• The increase in quality of staff through opportunities, growth experience of each of
the project participants and farmers, by exchanging and knowledge.
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26. Project General Objective and Aims
Technological objectives:
• Automated Precise Irrigation for particular crop based on the following logged in
data: i) amount of rainfall for the particular season, ii) temperature, iii) soil humidity,
iv) crop type, v) crop cycle date.
• Precision Farming to users to log in plant, sensors and equipment GPS/GNSS/EGNOS
details which are highly used with precision farming. Standard mapping techniques
should also be included in the tool
• The use of satellites for soil and crop analysis.
• The use of drones for soil and crop analysis. Typical data should include 3D images,
Normalised Differentiation Vegetation Index (NDVI) readings, and Lidar readings.
• SCADA user interface for water recycling, hybrid and photo voltaic systems.
Moreover the API interface should cater for all the communication protocols which
are associated with such equipment including MODBUS and CANBUS. All the human
machine interface which is normally found with such system is to be included with
the open source library
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27. System Technologies
• A tool for Satellite imaging,
• A tool for Drone plotting,
• Smart Irrigation tool,
• SCADA (Supervisory control and data acquisition) system,
• A Cloud platform System,
• Water recycling system,
• Big data analysis system,
• Mapping system for localization,
• IoT applications with multiple sensor integration,
• A tool for soil and water parameters data.
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28. Work Packages
• WP1: Coordination: (Leader: MCAST)
• WP2: Create and deploy the FIPASS Tool: (Leader: MCAST,
Participants: all partners.)
• WP3: Geospatial Imaging: (Leader: Alexandria University,
Partner: Scientific and Technological Research Council of
Turkey)
• WP4: Drone Vegetation Inspection Tools: (Leader: Zarqa
University, Participants: Alexandria University and MCAST
• WP5: Smart Irrigation: (Leader: Lisbon University, Partner:
Zarqa University and Alexandria University)
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29. Work Packages
• WP6: Soil Analysis: (Leader: Diversification and
Competitiveness Directorate Malta, Partner; University of
Lisbon).
• WP7: Wastewater and water in Reservoir analysis. (Leader:
Centre de Development des Energies Renouvelables,
Participants Zarqa University and Scientific and
Technological Research Council of Turkey)
• WP8: Weather Station: (Leader: Scientific and Technological
Research Council of Turkey, participants: Centre de
Development des Energies Renouvelables, Zarqa University.)
• WP9: Dissemination: (Leader: MCAST, Participants: all
partners.)
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30. Novel concepts of FIPAAS
• A single tool which can be used for crops,
water and ambient monitoring,
• The integration of data from various sources,
• A centralized online tool which is able to
display and control various technologies,
• A state of the art cloud platform for
agriculture services.
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31. Technological innovations of FIPAAS
• Layers of manipulation for various data types,
• Creating a backbone structure to transfer
information from one layer to another,
• Taking Internet of Things (IoT) in Agriculture to
a whole new dimension,
• Plug and Play concept,
• A system which understands various
generations of equipment.
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32. Expected impacts
• Topic 1.2.3: Developing Farming Systems Able to
Generate Income
– Design of public policies aimed at enhancing adoption of
innovation suited to improve farmers’ livelihoods
– Implementation of tools that can assist farmers to improve
farm management in a risky and uncertain environment
– Delivery of participatory approaches for integrating
farmers’ knowledge in the innovation process;
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33. Expected impacts
• Topic 1.1.2: Sustainable, integrated water
management
– Development of innovative tools and decision support
systems for planning and adaptation to global change,
– Implementation of monitoring and forecasting systems to
support the water management under scarce conditions,;
– Development of innovative approaches for the proper
management of water infrastructures, including small and
multi-purpose reservoirs and water harvesting systems
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34. Expected impacts
• Topic 1.1.3: Irrigation technologies and practices
– Improving on-farm water use efficiency
– Upscaling the on-farm water use efficiency gain to the
irrigation district level
– To demonstrate irrigation scheduling models and tools.
– To determine irrigation protocols tailored to low-quality
water availability and, particularly, high salinity water,
– To reduce contamination of aquifers, mainly by nitrates,
thanks to the improved fertigation scheduling protocols
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