| Based on the achievements in the field of IT and the increasing progress in the rural informationization, the Chinese government has put forwarded a new strategy for the development of agricultural informationization in the rural parts of this country. Inspired by the relative policy, we have started this systematic research on the setting up of theoretical and technical parameters in order to construct a Cloud Computing-based system to serve agriculture. Reasons that account for a lag behind in this field has also been carefully examined as follows:(1) a lack of systematic plans and designs due to limited technology and industry segmentation;(2) a failure to share agricultural information because of decentralized information resources from independent platforms;(3) poor practicability and low efficiency resulted from bad operation management, lack of maintenance, and sluggish updating.The purpose of this study is to, based on the current situation of informationization in China’s rural area and the achievements by foreign countries, use Chongqing as a particular example to analyze the feasibility of systemically establishing informational service system for all farmers in Chongqing rural area, and to set up theoretical and technical parameters in order to construct a Cloud Computing-based system as service platform for farmers. The implementation of these infrastructure would also have the following advantages:(1) enriching the protocols on how to establish informationization service system,(2) further understanding integrity of informationization development in China’s rural area,(3) searching a model sustainable for development of informationization in China’s rural area, and (4) looking for possible novel models or new ideas for fast development of informational service system in China’s rural area, which therefore could eventually speed up the development of informationization among individual farmers across the country and provide a strong support for industrialization in agriculture.After comprehensive studies and statistical analysis, the conclusions can be summarized as below:1. A strong demanding for Such a System from Enterprises in Agriculture, Farmers Specialized in Cultivation And Animal Husbandry, Local Government Officials and Individual Farmers.Various sites of agricultural enterprises, farmers specialized in cultivation and animal husbandry, local government officials and individual farmers had been visited for this investigation. The collected data and information had been analyzed by statistical analysis software SPSS and Excel.The questionnaire was designed in the way that the persons interviewed should provide their answers by the degree of importance from1to5to the given questions. The result helps us to clearly understand the need for informational services and technologies in Chongqing rural area and the problems in obtaining such services.In category of farmers and farmers specialized in cultivation and animal husbandry, the highest marks were given to the needs for the information on fertilizer, seeds, pesticides, taxes, subsidy payment, education, medical and legal services. The demand in second place goes to the information for government policy and regulations; and agricultural production technologies. Their average points are3.72and3.21, respectively.Farmers are not satisfied with the information obtained from various types of media; they feel especially questionable for their practicability, validity, intelligibility and accessibility on information. The network users, in particular, had given the lowest points to intelligibility and accessibility. Majority of farmers and local government officials know nothing about the hot lines and networks of "12316","12396" and "12582"(which are supposed to offer them professional help), the average point for this is only1.65.For the agricultural enterprises, the mostly needed information includes production statistics and production cost; the collective and shareable information among enterprise, such as E-commerce, logistics of agricultural products, product quality traceability and customer relation management (CRM). The average score for such needs is between4.0to4.5points. Followed by means of production (or raw materials), product market, and production technology which scored at3.89,3.89and4.11, respectively. Obviously, enterprises pay great deal of attention to production technology information. In addition, almost without any exception,83%of the agricultural enterprises are willing and17%urgently needing to contract out their informational services.The local Party officials have been paying a high attention to the involvement of IT enterprises which help to build up the informationization system for E-partying and E-governing; and therefore provide the improved competitiveness for rural towns and villages and assist the expansion of rural market. Their average scores for these deeds are4.47,4.34and3.79, respectively. The result also indicates that rural-area governments highly care about the difficulty encountered by the farmers when they are making MMS information subscription. The average point for such a care reaches4.06.When it comes to the infrastructure for informationization system in rural area; the current conditions are fair for the office hardware and internet accesses, they were scored for3.25and3.70 points, respectively. But the supporting equipments and the investment used to purchase these equipments are severely lacking, which only obtained points of1.43and1.32, respectively. The local officials think the ordinary people in rural area have poor ability in using computer (2.75points), the current system is not user-friendly for them (2.61points), and logically, on other hand there is a large demand for well-trained technologists in the area (4.18points).When taking into the consideration of agricultural experts’opinions on development of rural informational system, the ranking of the importance for them are:(1) the need of unification in standard, scored for4.18;(2) recognition of improved quality of life in rural area due to the application of E-partying and E-governing at town and village level, scored for3.48. However, these experts think that there are still rooms for improvement and perfection for establishing rural informational system, its supporting equipments and services. This point scored for3.02.2. Analysis of the Need for an Integrated Cloud Computing System in Rural Areas and the Feasibility StudyField study, investigation talks and questionnaires have shown clearly three urgent needs for information in practical rural life. The first need lies in the integration of agricultural information platforms and resources. The building of a Cloud Computing system will enable an overall planning and integrating of various information resources to be greatly shared so that the lags or setbacks mentioned before will be avoided. Questionnaires have led us to realize the second need for more individual and local information. Farmers who have handed back the questionnaires are not satisfied with the practicability and intelligibility of the related agricultural information. A better service system with a mature technology will basically support the rural information to be more individual and local. In spite of the various websites and platforms, the present information service is still run at low efficiency due to operational and management reasons. Therefore here comes the last need for a service that is fast, convenient, honest and timely with proper updating.Achievements in the theoretical study in the Cloud Computing Theory has resulted from a fast theory research, and resulted in a great number of fruits, which has made possible the application of the Cloud Computing System in rural use. The sophisticated technology in computing has offered strong basis for the building up of the Cloud Computing system for farmers, because this is actually a new web technology that is being put into use, with a combination of these technologies such as distributed processing, grid computing parallel processing. Another important factor for the practicability of the system is the government policy. The speedy economic growth of the country has witnessed policy-makers issuing new development-friendly rules, so that the strong and reliable financial foundation is now ready for the establishment of the infonnationization for agriculture. Backed up by the government policy, and confronted with the fact that the countryside is still under-developed, the Cloud Computing service will be a powerful drive for the construction of a rural informationization platform thanks to its high efficiency, low cost, and great flexibility.3. The Key Technology of Cloud Service Platform of Agricultural and Rural Informalization Centering on the general target and construction contents of cloud service platform of agricultural and rural informalization, using the architecture patterns of IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, this research designs the software architecture of cloud service platform of agricultural and rural informalization and puts forwards classification criterion system according to the classification method that classifies the agricultural and rural information into four categories:before production, during production, after production and the rural common people’s livelihood. Meanwhile, the research applies semantic technology and ontology to design agricultural and rural ontology base and knowledge base and to analyze the relationship between agricultural and rural notology base and knowledge base and its construction methods and strategies. Also it uses semantic expressive technology based on RDF, semantic inference technology to systematically design agricultural and rural intelligent information service and detailedly designs semantic inference machine, semantic knowledge integration an information push system.4. The key technology design and implementation of cloud service platform of citrus industry informalizationIn China, there still is no such a complete collection of laws to ensure the information being factual, effective and in timely fashion, leaving room for scandals that hurt farmers frequently and leave them in financial losses. Therefore, passing and completing relative laws cannot be waited any longer. Everything, from the collection to the publication of information, has to follow the laws. By law, all agricultural enterprises and farmers receiving government subsidies are obligated to provide the information on the production and sales of agricultural products. The monopoly on, as well as blocking, the information will be prohibited. The laws should protect the interests of the users, and promote the information sharing. The regulators should also oversee and make sure no laws are violated. In particular, those involved in the scandals to purposely cheat farmers should be brought to the justice. Together, the legislations and law enforcement will ensure the healthy development of the agricultural and rural informationization service system.To summarize, in this thesis I have thoroughly studied and analyzed the literature, both from abroad and the Chinese sources, regarding the agriculture and rural informationization. I have proposed that the Cloud Computing can serve as a platform to build the agriculture and rural information service system and also performed the feasibility studies. In addition, I have put forth a model to establish a centralized and comprehensive informationization service system that is commercially sustainable. I used Chongqing rural area as an example to demonstrate the platform or system design using the Cloud Computing, the service system layout and execution on building such a system. |
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