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

对可持续动物生产的需求是由于公民对动物福利和环境可持续性的担忧，而由于市场的变化增加了投入价格，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如何齐头并进的，推动了该行业对奶牛福利的兴趣，因为提高奶牛寿命被认为是解决奶牛业经济、社会和环境可持续性问题的答案。我们的倡议基于遥感和人工智能(AI)的使用，这可以增强我们在可见结果开始之前发现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住房制度、管理做法和动物处理方式的修改对奶牛福利和寿命的影响。该倡议将被构建为一个以动物和最终用户需求为中心的数字生活实验室。数据来源将包括(1)两个研究农场(研究结果对农场系统来说是可重复和可信的)；(2)扩大的商业农场网络(针对需要进行纵向分析的目标)；(3)最终用户的反馈(以支持建议的可行性)。一个拥有遥感和人工智能的生态系统将被应用于预测动物一生中的福利、寿命和盈利指标。来自摄像头和传感器的数据将与人工智能集成，以捕获有意义的见解并自动化机器学习预测器。我们的项目将允许评估对奶牛物理环境的修改如何影响福利和长寿结果，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，同时为乳制品行业提供确保其可持续性的新钥匙。

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.