How IoT can be used to save Human and Animal lives in Nepal?

7:00 am September 26, 2020. As usual, the first thing I do when I wake up is to check my Facebook wall. There was no exciting news to wake up to, rather sad news with a heartbreaking featured image. 

Fig 1: Some results of Human-Animal conflicts

A man near my village was killed by a Tiger while he was cutting grass near the forest. This was the 3rd Tiger attack in the last 30 days. I was shocked to read the news and more shocked to see similar statistics every year. The forests of Chitwan are home to many species of mammals and Chitwan National park is especially famous for Tigers, Rhinos, and Elephants. But little do the people from outside know about the misery that is brought upon by those animals to the locals.

After the widespread introduction of community forests in Nepal, many locals have got a chance to fetch timber, firewoods, grasses, etc. from the forests while also preserving it. But apparently, this comes with heavy costs too. Every year few tens of people are killed either inside the jungle or in human settlement areas by wild animals in Chitwan alone. But none has come up with a solid plan to resolve this huge problem, let alone address it. Some people suggest that those wild animals should be killed when they try to enter human settlement or try to attack humans. What I would say is that killing definitely is not the solution. Animals play a great role in our ecosystem. And especially those animals which are now alive only a few hundred in numbers, they are also our identity. People from all over the world come to Chitwan just to see those Tigers, Rhinos, and Elephants in their natural habitat. Hence, it is our duty to save them so that our future generation can also see them. Due to great efforts from citizens, the poaching of these animals has almost reduced to zero in the last few years in Chitwan. The only news we hear of these animals being dead are either due to natural causes, being old, fighting with each other or due to natural calamities like flood. 

Can we come up with a solution to reduce and resolve the Animal-Human conflict by saving both lives? 

During my master’s studies, I had done a project on Wireless sensor networks which could help reduce casualties during traffic accidents. A similar system  based on IoT, can be implemented for Human-Animal conflict resolution. In simple terms, IoT refers to a system of interrelated, internet-connected objects that are able to collect and transfer data over a wireless network without human intervention. In developed countries, IoT is used in many applications like smart metering, smart parking, asset tracking, etc. The core idea behind IoT is that the things which generate data are connected wirelessly to the internet. The data collected in such a way can be used in different applications as mentioned above.

In the same context, IoT can also be used to reduce human-animal conflict in the affected areas. The system contains neck or leg collars for wild animals that contain end nodes of the IoT system. The end nodes contain location and health monitoring sensors. These nodes communicate with the IoT gateways within their reach and send periodic data about location and health sensors to the gateways. The gateway will be connected to the internet either via Wifi or mobile network. The gateways work in a similar fashion as the Wifi routers in our homes. The gateway sends the sensor data to the central server and from there it can be sent to the local monitoring stations inside national parks. Based on the location data, we can determine the current location of the wild animals and after applying Geo-Fence around the boundaries of National parks, an alarm can be raised if the animal’s location is detected near human settlements. This helps warn locals from going to the jungle and potentially avoiding mishaps. These sensor nodes are low powered devices and transmit data periodically only. The nodes will be switched off automatically when not in use and also wake up automatically during transmission. Hence, the batteries can last up to 10 years. Also, they are low cost devices and the whole IoT system operates in a license free ISM band. This helps bring down the cost of the whole system. In addition, the data received from health sensors can be used to identify the health conditions of the animals and help forest staff take necessary action if any health hazards are detected. For example: If the location data of a Rhino shows that it is in the same location for more than a day and if the health sensor shows increased temperature, we can interpret that the Rhino is not moving because it has some illness. Based on the location data, the rescue workers can reach the location and rescue the Rhino immediately. This is just an example of how the data can be used. The possibilities are endless. A simple system architecture of the proposed solution is shown below.

Fig 2: System architecture of IoT based Human-Animal conflict resolution system

Such IoT based animal tracking systems are implemented in many countries across the globe. A Dutch company named Smart parks (www.smartparks.org) has implemented the same IoT based system for tracking animals in national parks in India, Rwanda, Malawi, and Tanzania. We can also implement similar systems in affected parts of Nepal. The respective government body, local citizens, and the involved organizations should show some interest in the implementation of such technology. After all, it is a matter of many human and animal lives and also pride for our country. Let’s raise our voices for such developments and help maintain harmony between humans, animals, and our precious nature. 

For more details about the idea and implementation details, contact me directly at sbastola@techmannsolutions.com. 

• Sandeep Bastola
  M.Sc Communication Engineering (TUM)
  Currently working as Software Engineer in Germany