Harmonious environment

Elephants are the largest land mammals that roam on the face of Earth and have distinctively enormous bodies, ears and long trunks. In Sri Lanka, my motherland, elephants hold symbolic, cultural and economic importance and have special significance in religious events. Sadly, a number of issues are threatening the elephant population. According to WWF, the greatest threat to African elephants is wild crime whereas the greatest threat to Asian elephants is habitat loss, leading to Elephant - Human conflict. Due to their shrinking habitats, Asian elephants are now listed as 'Endangered' by IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature). The African Wildlife Foundation, an international conservation nonprofit, estimates that as many as 35, 000 elephants are killed each year in Africa

Elephant - Human conflict is one of the issues which poses a threat to the diminishing elephant population and the main reason behind this is due to lack of resources and competition for them between humans and elephants.

Some species of elephant, such as the African elephant, will eat up to 300 kilograms of food every day to sustain themselves. In comparison, a human adult will eat around 1.5–2 kilograms of food per day. Elephants usually gather around a watering hole to bathe and drink water in places where there is lack of water.

Elephant - Human conflict is also one of the biggest environmental and socio - economic crises of rural Sri Lanka. This is rising as more and more elephants come into close contact with humans. This often leads to elephants destroying crops and properties, as well as occasional human casualties. These negative interactions can result in the retaliatory attack/killing of elephants.

In the first 10 months of 2019, 93 humans and 293 elephants have already been killed in this conflict, compared to the death of 96 humans and 319 elephants for the whole of 2018. This is increasing and the government is working on different types of solutions to prevent this problem.

What can we do to prevent this problem?

We can demarcate the elephants' habitat from communal and high risk poaching areas, by geofencing, to protect the elephants from both human-elephant conflicts and poaching.

What is Geofencing?

The term “geofencing” refers to a technology that uses GPS coordinates or RFID signals to draw a virtual boundary in space and to trigger certain actions on the basis of this boundary. This virtual border is called a geofence, which is a portmanteau word made up of geographic and fence. The actions that are triggered by the user when a geofence is crossed can result in the sending of push messages, emails, SMS or in more complex applications, which sometimes include programming instructions.

Both objects and persons can be located within a geofence. If a receiver device such as a smartphone or a microchip in a car is within the range of a predefined geofence, subsequent actions are triggered by the exchange of signals between the receiver and the transmitter. The receiver receives a message, for example, that special offers are submitted to him or that the car with the microchip is not allowed to cross the national boundaries. [source]

Avnet IoTConnect

IoTConnect is a full-fledged platform as a Service (PaaS). This horizontal IoT platform allows for device communication and management, data storage, app creation as well as enablement and robust security protocols.

IoTConnect is the only IoT platform available in the market that comes with a powerful device management system and built-in analytics that allows you to connect and manage devices with little to no coding. Its powerful yet easy-to-use interface enables enterprises to create applications faster than laborious coding saving a lot of time and money.

IoTConnect provides businesses with the infrastructure required to connect their assets, collect data and analyze it to improve decision-making practices. This is achieved by facilitating device communication and management while adhering to industry-grade security protocols. [source]

• One platform with myriad capabilities
• Simple and easy-to-use device management console
• Little to manual coding
• Built-in analytics
• Multi-layer security

We can use the Avnet IoTConnect dashboard to track the elephants and to get real-time notifications/ alerts when they are within a critical distance away from the geofence or when an unauthorised human is detected near the elephant.

RFID technology (Geofencing)

As already mentioned above, we can set up a geofence with RFID technology and to make things more interesting and effective, an RFID microchip (passive) could be fitted to the elephant collar or a passive RFID tag could be attached to the elephant's ear. Each elephant will have a unique ID and with the help of Ultra High frequency antennas and Sparkfun's simultaneous RFID readers, we would be able to detect when the elephant is within a critical distance away from poaching risk areas or places where people reside.

GPS tracking

For this application, we shall use the Semtech LR110 long range RF transceiver which is an ultra-low power platform that integrates a long range LoRa® transceiver, multi-constellation scanner and passive Wi-Fi AP MAC address scanner targeting asset management applications.The LR1110 solution utilizes Semtech’s LoRa Cloud™ geolocation capabilities, to significantly reduce power consumption by determining asset location in a Cloud-based solver.Using this and LoraWAN, we can track each and every elephant living within a particular reserve. The tracking position will be displayed in the Avnet IoTConnect dashboard. This application can be utilised to enhance the Elephant protection system.[source]

Human Detection and Authorisation

We can tap onto the nearby radio modules to detect the presence of humans near the elephants. If any activity is detected, the Avnet IoTConnect service will send a push-notification/ alert to the park rangers and they can refer to the location of the authorised people who were granted access to check if the detected activity was theirs or the poachers'.

People going on Safari or the park rangers will be fitted with a passive RFID tag when they enter the reserve or the forest. Practising this will help us to detect if the detected human activity was a result of the authorised people or the poachers.

How does this work?

As already mentioned, simultaneous RFID readers are capable of reading multiple tags simultaneously. If the elephant is approaching, the RFID reader will be able to detect as it can calculate the distance between the certain RFID tag and the reader. If the elephant is within a critical distance from the boundary, a notification or alert will be sent to the park or forest rangers who would then take the appropriate actions and divert the elephant away.

The RFID readers can be connected to microcontrollers at around 1 or 2 km away from communal areas and places where poaching activity is high. If the system detects an approaching elephant, the microcontroller is programmed to automatically turn on a beacon light and alert the people residing in that area while also sending an alert or a push notification to the park rangers.

This would also be helpful if the Machine Learning model fails to recognize sounds from the audio recorded by the microphone in the collar or elephant collar's battery has run out of power or if it malfunctions.

References

1. World Wildlife Fund (WWF) - https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/asian-elephant

2. National Geographic - https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/06/elephants-poached-in-botswana/

3. Ryte Wiki - https://en.ryte.com/wiki/Geofencing

4. IoTConnect - https://www.iotconnect.io/

5. Semtech - https://www.semtech.com/products/wireless-rf/lora-transceivers/lr1110