Transfer of Manure from Livestock Farms to Crop Fields as Fertilizer using an Ant Inspired Approach

Andreas Kamilaris, Andries Engelbrecht, Andreas Pitsillides, Francesc Prenafeta Boldu

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Abstract

Intensive livestock production might have a negative environmental impact, by producing large amounts of animal excrements, which, if not properly managed, can contaminate nearby water bodies with nutrient excess. However, if animal manure is exported to distant crop fields, to be used as organic fertilizer, pollution can be mitigated. It is a single-objective optimization problem, in regards to finding the best solution for the logistics process of satisfying nutrient crops needs by means of livestock manure. This paper proposes a dynamic approach to solve the problem, based on a decentralized nature-inspired cooperative technique, inspired by the foraging behavior of ants (AIA). Results provide important insights for policy-makers over the potential of using animal
manure as fertilizer for crop fields, while AIA solves the problem effectively, in a fair way to the farmers and well balanced in terms of average transportation distances that need to be covered by each livestock farmer. Our work constitutes the first application of a decentralized AIA to this interesting real-world problem, in a domain where swarm intelligence methods are still under-exploited.
Original languageEnglish
Pages139-146
Number of pages8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 3 Aug 2020
EventXXIVth ISPRS Congress 2020 - Virtual Event, Nice, France
Duration: 4 Jul 202010 Jul 2020
Conference number: 24
http://www.isprs2020-nice.com

Conference

ConferenceXXIVth ISPRS Congress 2020
Abbreviated titleISPRS 2020
Country/TerritoryFrance
CityNice
Period4/07/2010/07/20
Internet address

Keywords

  • Animal Manure
  • Ant Behavior
  • Environmental Impact
  • Livestock farming
  • Logistic Problem
  • Nature-Inspired Approach
  • Nitrogen Management
  • Optimization

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