Composting as a Service: A Real-World IoT Implementation

Yannis Nikoloudakis,Spyridon Panagiotakis,Thrasivoulos Manios,Evangelos Pallis,Evangelos Markakis

doi:10.3390/fi10110107

Yannis Nikoloudakis, Spyridon Panagiotakis + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/fi10110107

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Journal: Future Internet	Publication Date: Nov 5, 2018
Citations: 7	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Hellenic Mediterranean University

Abstract

Composting is the delicate procedure of supervised decomposition of organic waste, which gradually transforms waste to nutrient-rich manure. It requires deep knowledge and constant attention by experts to achieve a quality outcome in a timely fashion. Nevertheless, due to the bizarre nature of the materials and the overall procedure, along with the space required and emitted odors, it is required that composting infrastructures and machinery are installed away from residential areas, rendering supervision a very tedious task. Automatic composting machinery is a promising new idea, but still cannot substitute the insightfulness of a human supervisor. In this paper, we introduce COMPosting as a Service (COMPaaS). COMPaaS is a novel cloud service in composition with specialized Internet of Things (IoT)-based composting machinery that allows for unsupervised composting. The focus of this work is on the tiered IT approach that is adopted following the edge-computing paradigm. More specifically, composting machinery, enriched with several sensors and actuators, performs a set of basic routine tasks locally and sends sensor values to a cloud service which performs real-time data analysis and instructs the composting machinery to perform the appropriate actions based on the outcome of the analysis. The overall composting procedure is performed in a completely unsupervised manner, and field evaluation has shown an up to 30% faster outcome in comparison to traditional supervised composting.

Highlights

It can be estimated that one person produces an average of 300 g of waste in a daily basis
The approach we introduce here is an extension of our work presented in Reference [11] so it includes an edge-based computing approach similar to the one we presented in Reference [12]
To evaluate the efficiency of the proposed architecture, we implemented a completely supervised composting procedure and the unsupervised composting procedure provided by the presented system, and compared the produced results

Summary

Introduction

It can be estimated that one person produces an average of 300 g of waste in a daily basis. A residential complex with 100 residents can produce up to 10 tons of organic waste within a year This kind of waste, organic, is treated as regular garbage, disposed in municipal garbage dumpsters, until garbage collectors collect them and transfer them to the designated municipal garbage-disposal areas. As cities and their population become larger, residential areas become denser, producing larger volumes of waste, big part of which is organic. The disposal of such kind of waste in dumpsters poses several health risks for the community and its residents as it attracts insects and rodents that are potential disease carriers

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