IoT-digital twin-inspired smart irrigation approach for optimal water utilization

Agriculture industry faces the challenge of increasing productivity by 50% from 2012 to 2050 while reducing water usage, given that it currently consumes 69% of the world’s freshwater. To achieve this goal, smart technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Digital Twins (DT), and Internet of Things (IoT) are being increasingly utilized. However, the use of DT in agriculture is still in its early stages. This study proposes a smart irrigation framework inspired by digital twins in an application domain. The irrigation framework’s sensors and actuators are linked to their virtual counterparts to create a digital twin. The IoT platform collects, aggregates, and processes data to determine daily irrigation requirements, and the behavior of the irrigation system is simulated. The proposed framework has two main advantages: evaluating the behavior of the digital twin and IoT platform in the context of agriculture before integrating them into the field and comparing various irrigation methods with current farming methods. By providing farmers with information about soil, weather, and crops, the system has the potential to improve farm operations and reduce water consumption.