# Precision Agriculture: A Remote Sensing Monitoring System Architecture +
## 8 Use Case Study: The DIAS Architecture
### Benefits and Costs  
Greece is the second largest saffron producing country, with an average output of 4 tons of p.a. during the last four decades, most of which is directed in export markets. The establishment of the 'Kozani Saffron Producers Cooperative' marked the beginning of a good decade for this product with production reaching its height record of more than 12 tons in 1982 [53]. Nevertheless, in the period following Greece's accession to the European Community, farmers began abandoning saffron cultivation. This fact resulted in a significant decrease in yield with an average yield of 800 g per stremma (1 ha = 10 strommas = 1000 m\({}^{2}\) ). However, this trend seems to be reversed since 2010 and currently yields vary around 1 ton per stremma. Currently, Greek saffron price is about 1200 euros per Kg. Nearly 5000 spots are needed to produce 100 g of red saffron. The average produce per acre is 6 kg of dried stigmas (red product). The lower production of the plant is on the first year of the plantation, while the highest on the third and the fourth.  
In the year of 2015, a study in Greek saffron cultivation resulted that farm managers need to address the efficiency of input use and raise capital and labor productivities to maintain competitiveness [53]. The saffron quality is determined by the color, flavor and size of the stigmas. The DIAS platform aims to upgrade profit earnings by the adoption of new technologies, ensuring flower picking at appropriate time in a proper collection material at an appropriate age. Animal intrusions in the fields, causing a huge loss in production, will be prevented and crops diseases will be detected in time. The overall equipment cost is considered to be a safe investment for farmers since most of the technologies involved are open source and the initial cost of the related hardware and software can be shared across producers. Currently, the DIAS initiative is under construction and no experimental results are available to confirm the proposed objectives. However, in Table 6 we present the production rate of Greek Saffron as recorded in [53], while in Table 7 an average estimation is provided regarding the increase in cultivation operations by adopting the DIAS platform. These percentages are the estimations provided by two of the producers whose fields participate in the pilot study. The estimations show that on average the farmers calculate an increase of around 20% in production, this percentage is in accordance to other types of cultivations such as olives and potatoes [54].  
The use of the DIAS project can offer a significant increase in saffron production. Nevertheless, since no pilots have been implemented yet in the project, _the Return on Investment (ROI)_ is difficult to be estimated. An investment of time and money from the DIAS consortium is required to investigate how the data gathered from UAVs can connect to and affect other things that are happening on the fields. Saffron growers need that information to provide context and create a correlation regarding causes and effects. At that point ROI becomes significant promoting UAVs as a part of the desired solution and not as the solution itself. Furthermore, due to shared costs between project partners, ROI becomes a collective performance measure that can be estimated only when each member has acquired the according technological benefits. A complex profitability study is required to specify the precision service offerings, as presented in [55; 56]. Each partner in the DIAS project owns and offers different assets in this endeavor, thus calculating the overall ROI of UAV usage from the side of farmers is not yet possible.  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c} \hline \hline Average production results & 2200 euros \\ \hline Average produced yield & 1.8 Kgs \\ \hline Average labor cost of annual working hours & 145 euros per 1000 m\({}^{2}\) \\ \hline Average cultivated land & 15,000 m\({}^{2}\) \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 6: Greek saffron cultivation economic estimation in one year.