AI in support of Plant Disease Management

Issue title: Binding Environmental Sciences and AI

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Perini, Anna | Susi, Angelo

Affiliations: ITC-IRST, Via Sommarive 18, I-38050, Povo, Trento, Italy E-mail: {perini,susi}@itc.it

Abstract: We describe a Decision Support System for plant disease management used by technicians of the Advisory Service of Trentino region, Italy, and by the researchers in disease management techniques. We present the Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods and techniques that have been exploited during the development of the system. In particular, we discuss the role of an Agent Oriented analysis of the application domain, for requirements elicitation and system design, where AI supported the developers of the systems. In addition, Machine Learning techniques have been used to develop decision procedures to support the domain stakeholders in planning and executing actions for managing a plant disease. We illustrate results of the Machine Learning techniques application with reference to a critical apple pest. Notice that in this case AI techniques are part of the system itself. We also describe the system architecture and the main user functions.

Keywords: Environmental Decision Support Systems, Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, Machine Learning

Journal: AI Communications, vol. 18, no. 4, pp. 281-291, 2005