A Digital Twin for Grassland Management

Abstract

Informed grassland management is essential for cost effective pasture based livestock farming, environmental sustainability and land use efficiency. To support these goals, this paper investigates the feasibility of a Digital Twin for grassland management, with the goal of providing improved decision-support through simulation based estimation and data availability. The Digital Twin provides a novel means to achieve digitization, with several examples found across a diverse range of agricultural enterprises. However, current examples of the Digital Twin have failed to outline a clear and coherent blueprint to aid the general development of the Digital Twin in agricultural applications. Therefore, this paper explores and presents a proof-of-concept modular service based architecture, utilizing a pre-existing technology stack and a reusable modular design to develop a Digital Twin for grassland, something which has been overlooked in state-of-the-art examples. Compared to existing Digital Twins in agriculture, this solution provides a simplistic approach to developing minimum-viable Digital Twins, supporting future applications of the concepts in the area of agriculture, while demonstrating a novel application in grassland.