WELL-E: Enhancing Animal Welfare & Longevity through Remote Sensing and Artificial Intelligence Dedicated to Dairy Farming

公民对动物福利和环境可持续性的关注主导了对可持续动物生产的需求，而由于市场变化导致投入价格上涨，而产出销售价格几乎没有变化，农民面临的经济压力增加。科学证据表明，动物福利和奶牛寿命是密切相关的，推动了奶牛行业对奶牛福利的兴趣，因为提高奶牛寿命被认为是奶牛养殖中经济、社会和环境可持续性问题的答案。我们的倡议是基于遥感和人工智能（AI）的使用，这可以提高我们在出现可见结果之前检测福利和寿命变化的能力，并生成预测以帮助农场决策，确保努力集中在最有可能长期成功的动物身上。因此，我们的研究计划旨在捕捉改造住房系统、管理实践和动物处理对奶牛福利和寿命的影响。该计划将以动物和最终用户的需求为中心，建立一个数字生活实验室。数据来源将包括：(i)两个研究农场（对于农场系统可重复和可信的结果）；（ii）不断扩大的商业农场网络（对于需要纵向分析的目标）；（iii）最终用户的反馈（以支持建议的可行性）。利用遥感和人工智能（AI）构筑生态系统，预测动物一生的福利、寿命、收益等指标。来自摄像头和传感器的数据将与人工智能集成，以获取有意义的见解，并自动化机器学习预测。我们的项目将评估奶牛物理环境的变化如何影响福利和寿命结果，以及数字环境如何增强最终用户改善奶牛身体和心理体验的能力，同时为乳制品行业确保其可持续性提供新的关键。

Demand for sustainable animal production is led by citizen concerns regarding animal welfare and environmental sustainability, while economic pressure on farmers increases due to changes in markets increasing input prices with little to no changes in output sale prices. Scientific evidence shows how animal welfare and cow longevity go hand in hand, driving the industry's interest in cow welfare, as improving longevity is considered an answer to issues of economic, social, and environmental sustainability in dairy farming. Our initiative is based on the use of remote sensing and artificial intelligence (AI), which could enhance our ability to detect changes in welfare and longevity before the onset of visible outcomes and to generate predictions to aid in on-farm decision-making, ensuring that efforts are focused on animals most likely to succeed in the long-term. Thus, our research initiative aims to capture the impact of modifications to housing systems, management practices and animal handling on the welfare and the longevity of dairy cows. The initiative will be constituted as a Digital Living Lab centered on animals' and end users' needs. Data sources will include (i) two research farms (for results that are reproducible and credible to farm systems); (ii) an expanding network of commercial farms (for objectives that require a longitudinal analysis); and (iii) feedback from end users (to support feasibility of recommendations). An ecosystem empowered with remote sensing and AI will be applied to predict indicators of welfare, longevity, and profitability thorough the animal's life. Data from cameras and sensors will be integrated with AI to capture meaningful insights and automate machine-learning predictors. Our project will allow to assess how modifications to the cow's physical environment impact welfare and longevity outcomes, and how the digital environment enhances end users' ability to improve the cow's physical and psychological experience, while giving new keys to the dairy industry for ensuring its sustainability.