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AUB Professors and Google AI grantees take irrigation technology to the next level

Feb 3, 2021 | 2020 ISSUE, TECHNOLOGY & TRENDS

AUB Professors and Google AI grantees take irrigation technology to the next level

2020 ISSUE, TECHNOLOGY & TRENDS

Written by Hovsep Touloujian

The irrigation field has lacked efficiency, technology, and organization for years in Lebanon and is finally moving toward great improvement thanks to AI and Machine Learning.

In the recent Google AI Impact Challenge, AUB was one of 20 organizations selected to share $25 million in grants from Google, consulting from Google Cloud, and coaching from Google’s AI experts in the developments of a groundbreaking project in both Agriculture and Machine Learning.

The Google AI Impact Challenge was an open call to nonprofits, social enterprises, and research institutions worldwide to submit promising ideas to aid in facing societal obstacles, and over 2600 organizations had applied.

In a Google press release announcing the Grant near the end of 2019, the recipient team from AUB will receive a $1 million grant to apply Machine Learning models to process data including multispectral and thermal satellite imagery, local weather data, and farmer-supplied agricultural data, thus estimating the exact amount of water needed to irrigate crops in a specific field, along with a suggested irrigation schedule, which would be communicated to farmers through a mobile application, or even directly to the irrigation system using a developed irrigation controller.

The proposed project aims to revolutionize contemporary irrigation practices by enabling

farmers to make accurate irrigation decisions and to conserve water. It will also make smart irrigation more accessible to small-scale farmers in Lebanon and other arid/semi-arid regions around the world. It is the first of its kind in the field of water and irrigation management.

The AUB team consists of Professors Fatima Abu Salem (Computer Science, Faculty of Arts and Sciences), leading the AI and Machine Learning component of the project, Hadi Jaafar (Agriculture, Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences), leading the overall project as well as the remote sensing and smart irrigation component, Samer Kharroubi

(Nutrition, Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences), working on the statistical modeling and analysis that the project highly depends on, and Mazen Saghir (Electrical and Computer Engineering, Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture), who will design the embedded systems and Internet of Things component.

Reacting to the reception of the grant, Dr. Fadlo Khuri, President of AUB, stated: “Obtaining this grant is an affirmation of the quality of our faculty members and of AUB. It also allows us to explore the positive impact of AI at a time when there is a great deal of negative press on AI and its impact on jobs, privacy, and other matters.”

“We received thousands of applications to the Google AI Impact Challenge and are excited that the American University of Beirut was selected to receive funding and expertise from Google. AI is at a nascent stage when it comes to the value it can have for the social impact sector, and we look forward to seeing the outcomes of this work and considering where there is potential for use to do even more,” said Jacquelline Fuller, president of Google.

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