A Cloud-Based Drones’ Model for Detection and Tracking of Stationary and Motion-Based Snakes in Farms in Marginalized Rural Areas: A Preliminary Study
摘要
Marginalized Rural Areas (MRAs) practice farming as their main source of food, employment, and income, yet in most cases, they lack the basic resources and skills to improve their yields and farming techniques. Due to the lack of information and resources, farmers experience snake bites. Others even get killed without help due to the long distance they travel to obtain help from healthcare facilities. Farmers being killed by snakes lead to a reduction in produc-tivity (since some productive & knowledgeable farmers die), and it also leads to the loss of livestock. With more frequent snake bites in MRAs, farmers surrender farms to snakes leading to fewer farms to grace in. Hence there is a need to design and develop a swarm cloud-based drone model for tracking and detection of sta-tionary motion-based snakes in farms for better safety of both farmers and snakes. We collected data through close-ended questionnaires given to farmers from the Zululand district in South Africa. The preliminary study results show that 97% of farmers encounter snakes on their farms, and 70% of the crops are synonymous with snakes. Farmers eliminate 73% of these snakes, and 67% of the snakes fight back, which may result in hospitalization or fatality. While these snakes are elim-inated, 54% of the rodents impact their agricultural products. The most common strategy or method used by farmers in farms to get rid of snakes is cats, which is at 65%.