Bees Online, or the Green Future of M2M Applications

    The whole discussion around the phenomenon of the Internet of things usually comes down to those potential benefits for business and to those amenities for users who offer our smart devices and objects that surround us in everyday life. However, many analysts do not exclude the likelihood that we are on the verge of a second digital revolution.

    However, the recent Earth Day prompted us to consider the issue more broadly - it was an excellent occasion to study how the Internet of things, and even rather the industrial Internet of things (M2M - machine-to-machine), that is, the wireless transfer of data and information between devices and objects, can have a beneficial effect on our lives and will contribute to sustainable development and environmental protection on our interconnected planet.



    According to Gartner forecasts, by 2020 there will be about 25 billion smartphones, smart watches, wearable electronics, connected to the network of cars and other devices with network access on our planet. But what else, in addition to increasing business efficiency and many different benefits for health and living standards, carries the Internet of things? What role can it play in the ecological future of our planet and, for example, in protecting endangered species?

    According to experts, in the next few years, the cost of sensors will decrease sharply. In addition, new wireless technologies that are characterized by reduced power consumption and increased range, such as Long Range Radio (LoRa), will be widely used. All this means that thanks to the Internet of Things, environmental protection and environmental organizations are opening up many new opportunities, in particular, the ability to track changes in global development indicators and measure the goals of sustainable development (Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs) with high accuracy.

    Sustainability issues and M2M technologies: how new technologies help beekeepers overcome the crisis


    In the course of numerous discussions and disputes about the prospects of applications that use inter-machine interaction (M2M), it turns out that it is projects aimed at maintaining sustainable development and protecting the environment that are able to fully reveal the true potential of the IoT revolution - and use the opportunities that open to us opportunities to solve the most pressing and pressing problems in industry, agriculture and in the field of environmental protection.

    Given all of the above, it should be noted that today there are a number of very interesting ideas related to the application of IoT in the field of sustainable development, and projects already underway using M2M technology, which should be discussed separately. For example, at Gemalto we are working on a curious M2M project, which aims to help solve the global crisis in the beekeeping industry with the help of much-needed innovations for agriculture.

    The bee population in Europe and America has been declining rapidly in the last decade - beekeepers from around the world are reporting this sudden trend. For example, in the United States the number of bee colonies has decreased by 90% since 1962, which is due, among other reasons, to the use of pesticides, insufficient activity of bees in the wild, and the spread of diseases and parasites. In many ways, the disappearance of bees is associated with the spread of the Varroa destructor tick, which carries viruses that can instantly exterminate entire colonies of these insects.
    If the decline in the bee population continues at the same pace, by 2035 these insects may disappear from the face of the Earth. The disappearance of bees not only threatens the loss of honey, but also jeopardizes the harvest of fruits, vegetables, berries, nuts and some cereals. Pollination of many plants and, therefore, their productivity is completely dependent on the activity of bees. One bee family can pollinate about 3 million flowers per day.

    To help solve this problem, we started working with Eltopia, a company specializing in technologies for the agricultural industry. In particular, they have developed a non-drug technology using the Internet that helps destroy the Varroa destructor ticks in bee hives. The MiteNot project, led by Professor Marla Spivak of the University of Minnesota, uses Gemalto's machine-to-machine interface (M2M) module and software developed by Eltopia, a technology developer for the agricultural industry. This project is designed to prevent and stop the decline in the global bee population using the "intelligent framework for hives," which automatically control and regulate the temperature in the hive.

    The essence of the technology boils down to the fact that beekeepers place a flexible printed circuit board in the hive so that with its help they accurately track when the bees land on their honeycombs and begin to print honey. Formerly, at that moment, the female tick Varroa destructor laid eggs in the hive, but now, thanks to the wireless connection through our M2M module to the BeeSafe application developed by Eltopa, the temperature in the hives can automatically increase until the unfertilized eggs of the tick break, without causing any harm to the bees.
    The MiteNot Intelligent Beehive Frame is one of the prime examples of how the IoT and M2M innovations can be used to protect the environment. The new frame is made from renewable resources - from corn starch, coated with wax and, as conceived by the developers, is completely reminiscent of and fulfills the functions of a traditional framework. It’s enough for beekeepers to install MiteNot frames instead of the old frames in the hives, and with the help of the Eltopia BeeSafe application they will be able to track and change the parameters of 32 individual elements in the hive in detail.
    The MiteNot frame is biodegradable, non-toxic and pesticide free. “The MiteNot project promises to be one of the most successful and effective solutions to this problem in a very long time, perhaps even in the entire history of the fight against this tick,” says Professor Spivak.

    A reduction in the global bee population can fundamentally change the future of food safety on our planet: bees pollinate more than two-thirds of the hundred most important crops that are food for approximately 90% of the world's population. The disappearance of bees would have absolutely devastating consequences for all agriculture.

    The green future of IoT applications and an interconnected planet


    The Internet of things has great potential and is able to help humanity create a truly environmentally friendly, sustainable and interconnected planet. Numerous projects are already underway in the world to monitor the state of the environment and prevent all kinds of accidents and environmental disasters - including initiatives aimed at measuring water levels and preventing floods, monitoring the status of protected tropical forests to prevent illegal felling, as well as careful monitoring of the state of populations of endangered species in order to prevent their extinction.

    As you know, deforestation can be found by noise and flying chips. However, in Brazil, in the rain forests of the Amazon, they came up with a new, silent way to warn authorities about illegal logging - using a text message service.

    Rainforests spanning 5.5 million square kilometers are home to about 10% of all animal species in the world, however, since 1970, the Amazon rain forests have lost about a fifth of their area. Even in 2012, when the speed of deforestation reached its minimum value, more than 7,500 square kilometers of forest were still destroyed.

    Almost 63% of all Amazon rainforests are in Brazil, and the government of this country is actively investing in various projects aimed at minimizing illegal logging. One of these initiatives is to photograph the forest from space. This technique has worked well for identifying large-scale areas of illegal logging, but black loggers can easily circumvent this control by simply cutting down forests in many small areas.

    Today, as part of the pilot program, trees in the protected zone of Brazilian rain forests are equipped with devices with a cellular module, called Invisible Tracck. This device was developed by Cargo Tracck, a company specializing in the development of solutions for location and tracking, and uses Gemalto Cinterion technology for inter-machine (M2M) communications.

    The Invisible Tracck device is equipped with a BGS2 communication module (it is the smallest LGA-mounted GSM module in the world, designed for M2M solutions that require voice and high-speed GPRS). If illegal activity is detected, this module sends an alert to the Cargo Tracck emergency response center with information about its location. The module operates at a distance of up to 30 km from the base station. Upon receiving such a signal, Cargo Tracck specialists notify the Brazilian authorities, in particular, the Environmental Protection Agency, that one of the trees on which the device was installed is moving somewhere.

    The first difficulty was to design a device that would work without breakdowns in the most difficult conditions of the endless forests of the Amazon: on average 2.3 meters of rain fall here per year! Yes, you were not mistaken, meters!

    So, the task has been completed: a highly reliable device has been created that can work for more than a year without recharging, which uses the new Radiation Exchange Data technology, which allows you to increase the device’s reception area even with a weak signal.

    But most importantly, the Invisible Tracck is very compact. In its dimensions, it is no more than a deck of cards, and it is difficult to detect without a careful inspection of the tree. The creators of the device hope that it is this one that will stop the lumberjacks from trying to export illegally cut trees.

    Living ecosystems are inherently complex networks, and it is here that inexpensive wireless technologies and long-range IoT sensors come to the rescue to monitor these ecosystems, analyze their livelihoods and manage their development. M2M communications allow environmental organizations to recognize all kinds of risks and threats to the environment much earlier than was possible before, and take the necessary measures to avoid such threats.



    These types of initiatives are incontrovertible evidence that IoT is already actively used in a number of critical environmental projects. IoT provides enterprises, legislators, environmental organizations and other interested parties with enormous opportunities to create more intelligent and much more useful solutions from an environmental point of view.

    In other words, the upcoming boom in smart IoT devices and M2M networks, which is expected in the next few years, will have a significant impact on the environment and will contribute to the development of many more interesting, innovative and useful initiatives in the field of sustainable development - starting from networked houses and smart traffic management systems and water supply in a smart city, and ending with new large-scale environmental projects using M2M technologies. One way or another, the Internet of things will play an important role in the environmental future of our interconnected planet.

    We invite you to the next Gemalto webinar to evaluate the role of 2.5 quintillion bytes of data that we and our devices create every day:


    Also popular now: