Identifying and Categorizing Data Analytics Applications of Internet of Things (IoT) Technology in the Field of Smart Agriculture by Using Meta Synthesis Method

The agricultural sector needs to produce more food, both in terms of quantity and quality, on a planet that face enormous challenges like scarce resources and changing climate. The advancement of digital technologies, Internet of Things and analytics offers new solutions to these complex challenges. Hence, the purpose of this research is to identify the applications of IoT in smart agriculture. With the help of meta-synthesis approach, we have examined 480 academic documents written in English and published over a period of 8 years (2010-2017), among which only 168 have been selected for the final analysis. Selected documents were categorized into eight areas of agriculture (including “farming,” “greenhouse,” “urban agriculture,” “horticulture,” “livestock” and “supply and distribution network of agriculture”) and then clustered into six analytics domains corresponding to: “monitoring,” “control,” “tracing,” “diagnosis” and “descriptive planning”. Finally, by using the Shannon entropy method, the effect coefficient of the elements was determined in selected documents and technical uses of internet of things in each agriculture sector have been addressed.