Designing and evaluating a smart cow monitoring
system from a techno-economic perspective
Frederic Vannieuwenborg, Sofie Verbrugge, Didier Colle
Internet technology and Data science Lab (IDLab) - Department of Information Technology
imec - Ghent University
Technologiepark-Zwijnaarde 15, 9052 Gent, Belgium
Frederic.Vannieuwenborg@ugent.be
Abstract—Currently, precision dairy-monitoring technologies
(PDMT) are gaining interest. These systems allow to monitor cow
health, the time for insemination, and the birthing process. Doing
so, they have the potential to reduce labor and management costs
whilst increasing milk yield. Continuous innovations in the field
of Internet of Things (IoT) have opened many new opportunities
for monitoring animals and have been speeding up the
development of PDMT systems. When designing an IoT-system,
often various technological alternatives are available (e.g.
communication technologies, types of sensors). Although this
choice set can be narrowed down by mapping the functional and
technical requirements on the technical specifications of the
technologies, chances are that even after this step multiple
alternatives are still feasible. In this work, we describe an IoT-
system design methodology that also takes into account strategic
and economic considerations. As a result, the choice set of
feasible technologies can be limited to feasible alternatives that
are also the most economic and strategic choices. In addition we
describe how the total added value of such a PDMT can be
quantified from the perspective of a dairy farmer. Applying this
quantification methodology on the described PDMT system
indicates an annual reduction of 250 EUR per cow for dairy
management costs.
Keywords— techno-economic evaluation, smart cow monitoring
technology, impact quantification, IoT in agriculture
I. INTRODUCTION AND PROBLEM STATEMENT
Improvements in nutrition, management processes and
animal welfare in general could lead to increased performance
of dairy cows. However various factors such as diseases, low
detection rates of insemination moments, and reproductive
health problems still have a negative impact on overall
economic performance of the dairy industry. These problems
reflect in reduced milk production, early removal of potentially
useful cows and long calving intervals resulting in fewer calves
[1].
Driven by the innovations in the field of Internet of Things
(IoT), such as new low power communication networks and the
further miniaturization of sensors, precision dairy-monitoring
technologies (PDMT) to overcome the mentioned problems are
gaining interest. Sensors which continuously and automatically
monitor animal behavior and other parameters can provide
information about nutrition, reproduction, health, and overall
well-being of dairy cows. Because traditional monitoring
methods often translate into subjective visual inspections,
which are labor intensive, time consuming and require
continuous presence of skilled personnel, PDMTs are also
expected to reduce labor costs [2]. Several studies indicate the
added value of PDMT [3-4] such as an improvement in the
cow’s reproductive efficiency, neonatal viability and their
value in detecting the insemination moment. However, these
cases often focus on only one aspect of dairy management such
as better detection of the insemination moment and monitoring
cow health.
Designing an IoT-based PDMT system requires multiple trade-
offs between the functional requirements and the technological
specifications of different IoT aspects. The wide choice set of
available protocols, sensors, processing and communication
technologies often shift the focus of the design process to a
pure technical perspective. However including also strategic
and economic considerations in the design process of an IoT-
system have an important impact on the outcome and help
further narrowing down the technological choice set.
Therefor the goal of this paper is to present a methodology to
design a smart PDMT system based on functional, technical
and economic requirements, as well as to evaluate the
economic impact of such a system from a farmer’s perspective.
II. METHODOLOGY
The Monicow system is a PDMT developed within the
Monicow project [5], with the aim to improve the various
aspects of dairy management such as detecting signs of
diseases at an early stage, cow identification, predicting the
calving moment and knowing when to inseminate the cows.
In order to design and evaluate this IoT-based PDMT system, a
structured approach is required.
The first step of the methodology focusses on the design funnel
process starting from use case definition and ending in a high-
level technical layout of system whilst including functional,
strategic and economic considerations. Four use cases have
been identified and describe different aspects the PDMT
system should be able to deliver or execute:
• Early detection of signs of disease
• Detecting the moment to inseminate
• Predicting the calving moment
 • In-& outdoor localization and identification of dairy
cows
From these use case, user, functional and technical
requirements are derived and discussed with various experts
within the consortium. These strategic and economic
considerations are taken into account to propose a first iteration
of the technological layout. This technological layout will in a
later phase be used as source for the cost model.
Next, for each use case a quantitative model has been set up to
determine the expected added value of the PDMT system from
the perspective of dairy farmer. These benefits will be
quantified by comparing the costs of all use cases in current
practices, without the use of PDMT (AS IS situation) with the
expected costs of all use cases when a PDTM is installed (TO
BE situation). The total difference in costs between the AS IS
and TO BE situations are defined as impact or benefits of
PDMT.
In a later phase, both the expected costs and benefits serve as
input for the cost benefit analysis. But since the system is still
in development and testing phase, many costs cannot be
communicated yet. Therefor this paper focusses only on a
methodology to design an IoT-based PDMT from a techno-
economic perspective and determine its total added value for a
dairy farmer.
III. REQUIREMENT ANALYSIS
A. Functional requirements
Within this work, focus is on three different factors which
affect the overall economic performance of the dairy cows.
These are: 1) Early detection of signs of disease, 2) Detection
of heat in order to know when to inseminate, and 3) Predicting
the calving moment, since presence of a dairy farmer during
labor reduces the risk of complications. A fourth use case is
about improving the time-intensive process of locating
animals in the barn or in the meadow.
1) Use case 1 (UC1): Early detection of signs of disease
Various common dairy diseases such as mastitis, lameness,
ketosis and metritis are large contributors to economic losses
due to both their prevalence and their direct impact on milk
production and removal or culling rate. Other costs resulting
from these diseases are: discarded milk due to drug residues,
veterinarian and medication costs, and additional labor. In
addition, these diseases impact the fertility rate of the animals
which could lead to less calves and therefore longer calving
intervals.
Monitoring of physiological or behavioral parameters such as
temperature, activity level derived from acceleration data, and
animal position allow automatic analyses and interpretation of
these data. Doing so a PDMT can be able to detect
abnormalities on an individual cow level [6]. Examples of
disease indicators are changes in behavior, increased
temperature, lower activity level, lower drinking frequency
and changes in rumination behavior. Since no biochemical
validation will be included in the PDMT system, the system
will not be able to exactly pinpoint what disease the cow is
suffering from.
Design Requirements for UC1
• Activity monitoring must include following metrics:
Travelled distance per day, social behavior, lying time per
day, eating and drinking time. All these metrics can be
derived from mapping the absolute position of the cow
onto a floorplan and combing that data with other sensor
data such as accelerometers and barometers. This position
measurement should be updated every 30s and have an
accuracy of 50cm.
• Temperature monitoring is required to detect fever.
Temperature will be monitored at the ear and at the neck.
Ear temperature should be corrected for ambient
temperature changes. A measurement frequency of 30
min. will suffice. But at least once every three hours the
data should be updated in the central backend system. The
required accuracy of the sensor (measured vs. real
temperature) must be 0.3 degrees Celsius, the required
precision (∆measured vs. ∆real temperature) must be
within 0.1 degrees Celsius.
• A central backend system will combine and analyze the
data, resulting from the various sources, in order to detect
anomalies and irregularities in the daily activity and
health patterns of the animals.
• The dairy farmer will be noticed of these anomalies via a
web based dashboard.
• The monitoring units of the animals send their data at
default intervals to a backend system. The default update
rate can be dynamically adjusted by the backend itself in
case of anomalies or expected events. Therefor
communication should be bidirectional and should cover
not only the barn, but also surrounding meadows.
2) Use case 2: Detecting the moment for insemination
a.k.a.heat detection
Heat detection is key to good reproductive performance
since it directly impacts the total amount of calves born
annually and the total milk yield. Detecting these events is a
challenging and time intensive task. It requires detailed
observation of the physical behavior of the animals (e.g.
standing behavior, mounting, and sniffing other cows). In
addition, many of these events can easily be missed because
they occur during night and can only be witnessed during a
limited time window of 6 to 36 hours [7]. Currently, several
techniques and tools are widely used for more precise heat
detection (e.g. keeping cow journals, using tail paint markers),
but only have an average success rate of 50% [8]. Therefore, a
PDMT system that is able to improve the heat detection rate
while reducing the labor requirements will be beneficial for
the overall economic performance of the dairy farm.
Design Requirements for UC2
• To detect heat, the behavior of the animal and its position
relative to group is important. A measuring frequency of
30s and a data upload frequency of 30min is sufficient.
 • Movement and mounting activity will be monitored via an
accelerometer.
• The measured data will be correlated with data from a
cow calendar. This calendar or journal is already in place
in all dairy farms, but it needs to be integrated in the
PDMT system.
• The PDMT system will alert the farmer in case of a heat
event is detected.
3) Use case 3: Predicting the calving moment
Complications during labor increase the risk for stillbirth,
mortality and culling, and increases overall risk for diseases.
Depending on the severity of the complication, research
indicates a cost of 150 - 600 euro per case [9]. With a
prevalence of 25 to 30%, this results in a significant additional
pressure on overall economic performance of dairy farms.
Frequent monitoring and assistance before, during and after
labor reduces the chance on complications [3]. Therefore, the
exact moment of calving has to be known. Previous research
projects [10], have indicated that calving moments could be
detected by on-cow sensor systems that combine activity,
behavior, temperature, and tail position.
Design Requirements for UC3
• When the expected calving time approaches, the
temperature will be monitored at a higher frequency than
is required for UC1. Instead of measuring every 30min,
now every 10min the temperature will be monitored.
• In order to know when the newborn calf is expected, data
from the cow journal or calendar must be integrated.
• Prior to parturition, the cow will be very restless and will
seek a more isolated space. This will be monitored via the
localization technology.
• The dairy farmer will be noticed by the system as soon as
the calving is detectable.
4) Use case 4: In-& outdoor localization and
identification of dairy cows
An additional application of the system is localization and
identification of animals. Since this is currently a time
intensive task, certainly in larger herds, PDMTs have the
potential to decrease the time required to locate a specific
animal. Via a mobile app the farmer can get near real time info
of the position of an animal. Via the same app, he can scan the
cow wirelessly in order to get all the information of the animal
and the cow calendar. Except for the mobile application, no
additional system components are required because this use
case is enabled by technology required for the first use case.
Design Requirements for UC4
• A dairy farmer must be able to scan and identify an
animal via the mobile application. This will allow him to
get all relevant information of the animal and see the data
history.
All these high level functional requirements have been
translated into technical requirements such as required update
frequency, sensor accuracy, possible communications
technologies, different localization systems and charging
technologies. Based on these technical requirements various
approaches to design an IoT-Based PDMT system are feasible.
One piece of the system, the smart ear tag which will measure
ear temperature and communicate the measurements to a smart
collar which each dairy cow will wear, poses additional
constraints. These constraints and requirements include
maximum weight of the ear tag, material strength, fungus
resistance, maximum dimensions and animal friendly design.
B. Strategic design considerations
Next to requirements resulting from the use cases and the
design constraints for the ear tag also some strategical choices
have to be considered in the design process. These strategic
considerations will affect some of the technological design
aspects. The most important strategic aspects that have been
taken into account are:
• Network provider independency: because network
availability is not always certain (e.g. 3G-4G and
LPWANs such as Lora, Sigfox, NB-IoT) in terms of
coverage in both a national and international setting,
preference is given to a private network deployment that
covers at least a couple of km around the farm.
Complying with this constraint would exclude 3G/4G
technologies as well as public LPWAN providers such as
Lora and Sigfox.
• If possible, the system should be backwards compatible
with existing installations in a dairy farm. This means that
the collar and ear tag should contain or be made
modularly to include the low frequency RF tags that are
currently widespread.
• If possible the design of the ear tag meets the
requirements the European Commission will impose and
is ISO 11784/85 compliant. Doing so, only one ear tag per
animal is required instead of the combination of the
legally required ear tag and a separate PDMT ear tag.
• Database formats and data exchange format should
comply with industry standards to facilitate data exchange
with regulators, control agencies, and other interested
parties such as inseminators and dairy manufacturers.
• This IoT-based PDMT system will not monitor
biochemical parameters. On top of that, no parts of the
system should be swallowed or implanted in the animals.
C. Economic design considerations
In addition to strategic design considerations also
economic aspects have a direct influence on the design of the
system. Focusing on the initial investment (form a farmer’s
perspective) alone is too shortsighted. Operational
expenditures (OpEx) over the expected life time of the system
should be taken into account when designing the PDMT.
These OpEx include: the long term effects of e.g. subscription
fees to public network providers, the cost of maintenance and
installation, the impact on current business processes, etc.
Therefor following economic considerations have been taken
into account and have further reduced the available
technological choice set:
 • Battery lifetime of the ear tag must be at least 7 years. In
this way there is no need to replace the ear tag during the
lifetime of the dairy cow. This stresses the need for
careful usage of the available energy budget.
• No battery replacements are required for the collar
throughout the complete lifetime of it.
• Ear tag and collar setup and maintenance activities should
be minimized or avoided.
IV. TECHNICAL SETUP OF THE PRECISION DAIRY-MONITORING
SYSTEM
Based on the high level requirements that have been
derived from the use cases and the strategic and economic
considerations an initial design for the complete PDMT
system has been proposed (Fig. 1).
Sensor data will be collected via non-intrusive on cow sensor
systems integrated in a smart collar and smart ear tag. This
will be combined with on-farm installed charging points,
positioning anchors and a network base station. A central
cloud based backend system will interpret and analyze the raw
data via dedicated algorithms. Data not only consist of sensory
data such as location, movement, behavior and ear
temperature, but also include data derived from the cow
journals. When anomalies or alarming/interesting trends (e.g.
calving moment, heat or early signs of diseases) are detected
by these algorithms, the back-end system will alert the dairy
farmer in time. An online management platform and
dashboard will also present the data and deduced information.
Ultimately the goal is to provide decision support towards the
farmer. The complete system consists of following
components:
A. Smart collar
Communication between the collars and the base station is
based on the LoraWAN protocol and technology [11]. This
choice results from several requirements: compared to
2G/3G/4G cellular technologies, the LPWAN technology has a
much lower energy consumption for a similar range, and
therefore is well suited for this application. Also in contrast
with 2G/3G/4G cellular based systems LoraWan operates in a
license free part of the radio-spectrum, hereby reducing the
subscription fees for tele-communication. Although there is a
public LoraWan network available, a private LoraWan network
will be set up. This eliminates the need to buy network
subscriptions from LoraWan network providers, which
simplifies internationalization of this PDMT system. Secondly
it gives more control to perform for instance over-the-air
(OTA) firmware updates of the collars. Although Sigfox has
similar characteristics as LoraWan, it is does not allow private
network deployment, and currently is not capable of
performing OTA updates due to technical limitations.
Other communication technologies and protocols encapsulated
in the smart collar are: A) Near Field Magnetic Induction
(NFMI) to communicate with the smart ear tag, B) Bluetooth
Low Energy (BLE) to communicate with other devices (e.g.
smartphones), and C) the 13.56 MHz based near field
communication (NFC) (ISO 14443) for system initialization
and setup purposes (e.g. pairing with an ear tag). Both NFC
and Bluetooth have been chosen because of the widespread
availability via smartphones.
Temperature, barometer and acceleration sensors as well as an
Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) based location tag are integrated in
the collar. In order to achieve a desired lifetime of eight years,
charging circuitry and power management systems to recharge
the super capacitators are in place as well. The wireless
charging system is based on magnetic induction and will also
be used to transfer data from the collar to the backend. Doing
so, no manual operations are required to charge the batteries.
B. Smart ear tag
Ear temperature is measured periodically and
communicated via MI to the collar. At least two temperature
sensors will be included in order to correct the measured ear
temperature to the ambient temperature. Additionally NFC is
integrated for setup, pairing and scanning processes. Ear tags
have a battery lifetime of seven years. In addition the goal is to
include the low frequency RFID tag in the ear tag as well since
these tags will be required by EU-regulation in the upcoming
years.
C. Localization system
Since GPS-based localization systems are energy hungry,
do not perform well indoor and have an accuracy which does
not meet the requirements, an Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) based
system will be used. Depending on the barn layout and
construction materials, a number of localization anchors need
to be installed which will communicate with the UWB tag
integrated in the collar. This technology allows
D. Charging points
Inductive charging points installed on drinkers, milking
robots or concentrate feeding systems eliminate the need for
battery replacement of the collars [12]. Via magnetic induction
the super capacitators in the collar will frequently be
recharged. This MI coupling will also be used to communicate
sensor data to the backend.
E. Base station
A LoraWAN base station will be installed at the farm. This
enables communication with the LoraWAN modules in the
collars. The base station will also act as modem and send the
LoraWan messages to the cloud server.
F. Management platform and mobile application
Via a management platform farmers are able to monitor the
data of their cows and to keep cow journals. If specific
parameter thresholds are exceeded, the platform will alert the
farmer. Also animals can be located exactly within the farm
area via the platform. This comes in handy whenever a farmer
must look for a specific animal. The mobile application
allows to scan the ear tags in order to identify a specific
animal. Data history and the cow journal can be accessed via
the app. The app can also be used to locate animals.
G. Cloud server
A cloud server will serve as main data repository and will
analyze all data such as the temperature, activity behavior,
location and will incorporate data from the cow journals. The
server allows management of the system components and
makes data and data adjustments accessible via a variety of
interfaces such as the management platform, the mobile
application, and touchscreens.
Once current process costs are quantified, the impact of PDMT
and how they will affect the use cases can be modelled. Since
no actual system performance data (such as sensitivity and
specificity) is available yet, the impact of the PDMT is derived
from literature and the complete simulation model has been
validated via semi structured interviews with famers, field-
experts, research teams and user groups involved in the
Monicow ICON-project [5].
Although the parametric model allows farm-specific use, the
presented results are valid for an average Flemish dairy farm
with 77 dairy cows which each have an annual milk yield of
8838 kg/dairy cow [18].

Fig. 1. Schematic representation of the Monicow PDMT-system

Per use case the costs have been modelled (AS IS costs)
V. QUANTIFICATION OF THE ADDED VALUE OF PDMT FOR A together with expected costs resulting from the PDMT
DAIRY FARMER integration.
As described in the introduction, IoT-based precision dairy-
TABLE I. OVERVIEW OF COST PARAMETERS RELATED TO A
monitoring systems will affect current main sources of SPECIFIC USE CASE
economic losses. This impact of PDMT will be quantified by Use case Cost parameters
comparing the costs of all use cases in current practices,
• milk production losses
without the use of PDMT (AS IS situation) with the expected UC 1: Detecting early signs
• discarded milk
costs of all use cases when a PDTM is installed (TO BE of diseases: 1) Mastitis, 2)
• cost veterinarian
situation). The total difference in costs between the AS IS and Lameness, 3) Ketosis, 4)
Metritis • cost medication
TO BE situations are then defined as impact or benefits of • culled & destructed animals
PDMT from the perspective of a dairy farmer. • labor costs
• prolonged calving interval
For each use case a separate calculation model is developed in
• value of milk yield
Excel® to quantify costs for a dairy farmer. The models and • cost of inseminations
inputs for calculating the total costs of diseases are based on UC 2: Heat detection • culled animals
the work of [13-16]. To calculate the costs of suboptimal heat • total cost or value of newborn calves
detection, the models presented in [8] and [17] are applied. • labor cost
UC 3: Predicting calving • labor cost
The overall evaluation methodology quantifies the milk yield, moment • costs of dystocia
the average amount of inseminations, number of calves and UC 4: Animal localization
culled animals with respect to the heat detection rate. Table 1 and adjusting cow • labor cost
management data
presents an overview of all costs taken into account per use
case. The impact of the PDMT is assumed since the system is still in
development phase and no final results are there yet.
Impact of a PDMT is represented as prevalence decrease due to
faster detection, decrease in labor time to locate animals,
decrease in culling or removal rate and increase in heat
detection rate. Also the additional costs of false alerts have
been taken into account.
A. UC 1: early detection of signs of diseases
Since the PDMT doesn’t include biochemical analyses,
specific distinction between different diseases will be difficult,
expect for lameness which is a locomotive disorder. On the
other hand fever will be monitored. This is an indicator of
many diseases thus therefor we have quantified the expected
impact of a PDMT on the most prevalent diseases for dairy
cows. These diseases are: 1) mastitis, 2) lameness, 3) ketosis
and 4) metritis.
For each disease, the costs have been modelled separately but
they all rely on the same cost parameters: 1) cost of milk
production loss, 2) costs for veterinarian visits, medication
therapy and its resulting milk withdrawal period, 3) costs for
culling and destruction animals, 4) labor costs of the farmer or
hoof trimmers, and 5) costs due prolonged calving intervals.
It is not the goal of this paper to explain in detail how all costs
have been calculated, therefor we refer to [19]. The overall
expected impact per cost parameter per disease is presented in
Fig. 2.
€180
€160
€140
€120
€100
€80
€60
€40
€20
€-
MAST-ASIS
LAME-ASIS
KETO-ASIS
MAST-TOBE
LAME-TOBE
KETO-TOBE
Mastitis Lameness Ketosis
Fig. 2. Overall annual costs per disease [ASIS vs. TOBE] per cost category
Major cost components are the decreased milk output and the
costs for culling or removal. The costs per case are 394 EUR
for mastitis, 167 EUR for lameness, 363 EUR for ketosis and
107 EUR for metritis. Except for the cost per case of ketosis
these are all in line with the estimations of [20]. However
these results indicate higher average costs for culling and
destruction, probably due to higher culling rates used in this
research.
Due to PDMT-integration a decrease in overall disease
prevalence of 15% is assumed. On top of that, also culling and
destruction rates are likely to decrease due to less severity of
the diseases. As a result, the total annual cost for common
dairy diseases is expected to decrease to 339.49 EUR/cow on
average. This results indicates a potential decrease of 61.74
EUR in the annual costs due to disease management per cow.
B. UC 2: increased heat detection rate and insemination
succes rate
Heat detection directly affects economic performance of the
dairy farm. Not being able to detect heat properly results in
less calves per year and less cost-efficient milk production due
to the decreasing lactation output of dairy cows after calving.
It is expected that the PDMT system will decrease the amount
of labor time whilst increasing the heat detection rate up to
80% due to PDMT-integration. This is in line with literature
[21], maybe even somewhat conservative.
A stochastic simulation model was used [17], based on the
work of [8], to calculate the impact of better heat detection on
the 1) annual milk yield, 2) the amount and revenue of new
born calves, 3) the total insemination cost, 4) the cost of culled
or removed animals due to low fertility, and 5) the cost of
labor of the farmer for visual inspection and inseminations.
In total, an annual saving of 125 EUR per cow can be noted
for the scenario in which the farmer checks the cows if the
system alerts him to inseminate those animals. In the case of
blind insemination or in other words, inseminating for every
alert including false positives would lead to an annual saving
of 138 EUR per cow. Although blind inseminations lead to
additional costs for labor and insemination samples, reduction
in time for visual inspection outweighs.
C. UC 3: more precise prediction of the calving moment
Monitoring of the calving moment, observation and eventual
Costs of discarded milk
assistance during the calving process could reduce the
prevalence and consequences of a difficult birth. But in order
Costs of treatment to observe, a farmer must have an idea on the calving moment.
Costs of labour The PDMT system is expected to alert the farmer in case of a
calving moment. This will decrease the number of
Milk production losses unnecessary checkups and thereby saving labor. In addition
METR-ASIS
METR-TOBE
the chance on complications will decrease as well, which will
Costs of culling and reduce the total costs for veterinary assistance and culling
destruction
whilst increasing milk output and reproduction rate.
Metritis Based on the input provided by literature and validated by
consortium members, an annual saving of 15 EUR/cow could
be realized. Although a significant decreases in cost for check-
ups can be noted, the total impact of PDMT on dystocia
remains low.
D. Use case 4: Animal localization and identification
The model for the final use case calculates the potential
profit for a farmer in the case he can use the PDMT system to
locate animals in the farm environment. In addition it allows
animal identification and adjusting the cow and herd data via
an app instead of doing the adjustments on a fixed PC.
The total annual labor cost for localization and identification is
currently estimated at 42 EUR per cow (18 EUR/cow for
adjusting herd data, and 24 EUR/cow for animal localization).
After PDMT-integration this total annual cost decreases to 6
EUR/cow per year, a gain of 36 EUR/cow.
E. The total expected impact of PDMT
When all calculated benefits of the four different use cases
are combined, an expected impact of PDMT integration of 252
EUR/cow and 238 EUR/cow for respectively the ‘TOBEBLIND’
and the ‘TOBECHECK’ scenario (Fig. 3).
For an average Flemish farm with 77 dairy cows, the total
annual added value of a PDMT system is expected to be
around 18 - 19.5 kEUR/year.
Although a cost benefit and sensitivity analysis will be
performed in a later phase, it is clear that an IoT-based PDMT
system could be beneficial for the economic performance of
dairy farms.
UC2 UC1 UC4 UC3
€ 14.77
€ 36.50 € 14.77
€ 36.50
€ 61.75
€ 61.75
€ 252
€ 238
€ 138.64
€ 125.66
TO B E - B L I N D TO B E - C H EC K
Fig. 3 Estimated annual benefit per cow resulting from the Monicow PDMT-
system
VI. CONCLUSIONS
It’s common practice to start with defining the user,
functional and technical requirements when designing an IoT-
based system. But due to the wide variety of available
technologies to cover different IoT aspects such as sensors and
communication technologies, it is likely that many different
technological solutions are feasible. To further narrow down
the available technology choice set, the proposed methodology
also takes into account strategic and economic considerations.
Strategic considerations such as lock-in dependency of
hardware vendors or network providers and economic aspects
such as OpEx and total cost of ownership can provide essential
insights when comparing different technologies. The
methodology described in this paper, which includes both
strategic and economic aspects, can be applied at an early stage
of development and hereby reducing the chance on developing
IoT-systems that are not viable from an economic perspective.
The methodology proved to be useful when designing the
PDMT system discussed in this paper.
In addition, this paper presents the evaluation methodology and
results of the added value of a PDMT from a dairy farmer’s
perspective. The goal of the system is to reduce various costs
related to common dairy diseases, sub-optimal insemination,
complications during birth, and localization and identification
of animals. Our research indicates that a PDMT system such as
Monicow could potentially lead to an annual cost reduction of
about 250 EUR per dairy cow. Major drivers of this reduction
are increased milk output, reduced amount of discarded milk,
reduced cost for veterinarian assistance, reduced costs for
animal replacement and labor time reduction.
FUTURE WORK
It would be worthwhile to extend the model in the future with
other common dairy diseases such as rotation of the lumbar or
other use cases for PDMT such as customized feed distribution
or monitoring the animal welfare. Next it would be very
interesting to see what other livestock (e.g. meat cows, mules,
goats) could benefit from this precision monitoring system.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by the imec-MoniCow project,
co-funded by imec, a research institute founded by the Flemish
Government in 2004.
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