Acquisition of Field Data through Mobile-based Apps Dedicated to Soil Health Protection

Abstract

Mobile applications dedicated to soil resource protection are increasingly common among users worldwide. What makes them popular among them is the possibility they offer in the acquisition, respectively saving and storing data from the field. Regarding the possibility of acquiring soil resource data, we propose to make an analysis, to emphasize the malleable nature of specific mobile applications with what software development platforms allow; for the present paper, we examined an application created through the MIT App Inventor® platform. As a result of the research, three ways of data acquisition were determined - through the interface, internal sensors, and external sensors. The obtained results showed that the acquisition of soil-related data depends to a large extent on the specifics of mobile devices (especially the presence and access of sensors), but also on the implemented functionalities that the user wants to have access to at that time. Consequently, any application created through platforms such as MIT App Inventor® can and must have at least one of the data acquisition methods presented in the paper; the dynamics and specificity of the application must agree with the user requirements and the requirements imposed by the research context.