Supporting integrated pest management using open data networks and information technology through the World Wide Web

In this work we present the way in which information technology can be used to support Integrated Pest Management (IPM). In particular we have developed a simple software that crawls through the www and performs weather data mining and storage. In an second stage we extend the already developed software and propose an algorithm to perform real time pest forecast through the www. At the current stage of development the software performs predictions for a test-key pest in 100 distinct geographical regions distributed all over the Greece. The software and the relate forecast system can virtually extend its functionality for any pest of interest given its species specific temperature thresholds for development. The software and the related web forecasting application is lunched on January 2012 and its prediction performance passes currently an evaluation phase. Moreover functionality of the software can potentially extended and mine weather data at any location globally through the www and furter store them for any use of (i.e. crop, pest and disease modeling and forecasting). Additionally, since functionality is based on weather data mining through the www, the major advantage of the software is that it runs without remote sensing and virtually can be extended at any location and collect all type of agricultural open data which are available through the www.