Application Scenarios of Digital Twins for Smart Crop Farming through Cloud–Fog–Edge Infrastructure

Abstract

In the last decade, digital twin (DT) technology has received considerable attention across various domains, such as manufacturing, smart healthcare, and smart cities. The digital twin represents a digital representation of a physical entity, object, system, or process. Although it is relatively new in the agricultural domain, it has gained increasing attention recently. Recent reviews of DTs show that this technology has the potential to revolutionise agriculture management and activities. It can also provide numerous benefits to all agricultural stakeholders, including farmers, agronomists, researchers, and others, in terms of making decisions on various agricultural processes. In smart crop farming, DTs help simulate various farming tasks like irrigation, fertilisation, nutrient management, and pest control, as well as access real-time data and guide farmers through ‘what-if’ scenarios. By utilising the latest technologies, such as cloud–fog–edge computing, multi-agent systems, and the semantic web, farmers can access real-time data and analytics. This enables them to make accurate decisions about optimising their processes and improving efficiency. This paper presents a proposed architectural framework for DTs, exploring various potential application scenarios that integrate this architecture. It also analyses the benefits and challenges of implementing this technology in agricultural environments. Additionally, we investigate how cloud–fog–edge computing contributes to developing decentralised, real-time systems essential for effective management and monitoring in agriculture.