Applications of Communication and Decision Support Systems in Sustainable Farming

Dear Colleagues,

The growing demand for agricultural products (crops, animal, etc.) has led to an increase in the number and size of farms across the world. In this context, the farming industry faces the challenge of integrating high complexity processes while ensuring that sustainability standards are met. Therefore, decision support systems in the farming sector have the potential to help farmers assess the impact of different strategies before putting them into practice.

Farms  are  characterized  by  a  very diverse  production  structure,  as  well  as  by  insufficient  and inadequate  technical  equipment,  which  hinders  productivity. Farmers are faced with a multitude of challenges in order to  properly  manage  their  business,  as  they  have  to  consider increasingly  complex  factors  within  their  decisions,  such  as more  diverse  and larger numbers of agricultural produce to manage, more demanding production requirements, complex business models to choose from, environmental restrictions, etc. Thus, the transition  from  conventional  agricultural  practices  to  more technology-based approaches cannot be avoided.

To date, numerous indicator-based sustainability assessment methods for agri-food systems have been described, with farm-level assessment methods being of increased interest due to the fact that they facilitate decision-making at the farm level (e.g., handling of animal capital; monitoring zootechnical parameters; handling of agricultural machinery operations, fertilization, irrigation, and plant protection). In particular, farm-level sustainability assessment methods, including automated web-, excel-, or software-based calculation models, have started gaining increasing popularity because of their user-friendly and more generally oriented design. Modern decision-making is expected to increasingly require ICT tools that will need to involve new data sources, new analytical approaches for handling large data volumes, and new technologies in order to address the economic, environmental, and social sustainability of farm products beyond the farm-level, i.e., at the supply chain level.

In this context, in this Special Issue, we would like to pose the question of how communication and decision support systems can enable sustainable farming and what the challenges and opportunities of implementing them are. Communication and Decision Support Systems are likely to have a major economic, environmental, and social impact on the way farms conduct their daily operations. Successful farms will be built on efficient and innovative communication and decision support systems.

This Special Issue seeks to bring together the work of scientists, practicians, innovators, and entrepreneurs who are in a position to offer valuable perspectives on the particular research area of communication and decision support systems in sustainable farming.

Topics of interest include, but are not restricted to:

• Energy efficiency in communications for sustainable farming;
• Gamification for sustainable farming applications;
• Blockchain and distributed ledger technology in sustainable farming;
• Cognitive computing, natural language processing, and neural networks in sustainable farming;
• Decision support systems based on virtual reality and augmented reality in sustainable farming;
• Internet-of-Things and cyber–physical systems in sustainable farming;
• 5G and beyond 5G communications in sustainable farming;
• Security, privacy, and trust in decision support systems for sustainable farming;
• AI/ML-based decision support systems for sustainable farming applications;
• Reliability and resilience of communication in sustainable farming;
• Data science and data curation for sustainable farming;
• Data analytics-based decision support systems  for sustainable farming;
• Information and knowledge co-creation for decision support systems  in sustainable farming;
• Ethical and legal aspects in communications and decision support systems for sustainable farming;
• Economic impact of deploying decision support systems in sustainable farming;
• Social impact of decision support systems in sustainable farming;
• Techniques for assessing the impact of deploying decision support systems  in sustainable farming;
• Entrepreneurship in sustainable farming.

For this Special Issue, we will consider research papers of scientific, practical, and conceptual natures based on modern methodological approaches, as well as reviews.

We believe that this Special Issue may help bridge the gap between the desire for sustainability and the disruptive technologies used in smart systems.

Thank you for your contribution.

Dr. Alexandru Vulpe
Dr. Vasileios Anestis
Guest Editors

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• decision support
• disruptive technologies
• sustainable farming
• socio-economic impact
• data analytics
• communication