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American Journal of  
Geospatial Technology (AJGT)

Web-GIS and Artificial Intelligence A Panacean for Agriculture Advancement in Developing 
Countries - A Review

Ijaware Victor Ayodele1*

Volume 3 Issue 1, Year 2024
ISSN: 2833-8006 (Online)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.54536/ajgt.v3i1.2769
https://journals.e-palli.com/home/index.php/ajgt

Article Information ABSTRACT

Received: May 01, 2024

Accepted: May 31, 2024

Published: June 04, 2024

Agricultural contributions to the economies of  developing countries, including Nigeria, have 
been declining. This paper proposes leveraging Web-GIS and artificial intelligence (AI) to 
rejuvenate agriculture in these regions. It aims to dissect the components of  Web GIS, ex-
amine spatial data capture methods, delve into AI for image processing, and develop rev-
enue-generating strategies to boost Nigeria’s agricultural sector. Despite substantial capital 
investment, agricultural outputs remain below expectations, primarily due to informational 
gaps regarding land use, planting techniques, and storage. The bureaucratic management of  
public agricultural sectors further delays disseminating research findings to farmers. Adopt-
ing Web-GIS and AI offers a modern solution to these challenges, facilitating real-time anal-
ysis and communication of  vital information related to soil conditions, farmer challenges, 
and broader socio-economic and environmental concerns. This approach promises to ele-
vate agricultural practices by integrating technologies like the Internet of  Things, GIS, and 
extensive data-sharing capabilities across the web. The paper emphasizes the potential of  
ubiquitous smartphone use and widespread internet connectivity to transform agricultural 
information dissemination. It advocates for leveraging the digital infrastructure of  smart cit-
ies to enhance access to agricultural data, ultimately improving farming practices across Ni-
geria. The fusion of  Web-GIS and AI with existing telecommunications networks presents 
a viable path forward, enabling farmers to make informed decisions, improve productivity, 
and contribute more significantly to the national economy.

Keywords
Agriculture, Artificial 
Intelligence, Drone, Internet of  
Things, Web-GIS

1 Surveying And Geoinformatics Department Federal University of  Technology, Akure, Nigeria
* Corresponding author’s e-mail: vaijaware@futa.edu.ng

INTRODUCTION 
Access to information relating to good high-yield agrarian 
land, improved hybrid seedling, and crops by farmers will 
contribute positively to the growth of  the developing 
Country’s economy. It is not out of  place to emphasis 
that agriculture is practiced by the private sectors and 
not until recently when some State Governments 
collaborated with foreign partners to produce local 
home grown rice to alleviate the hardship faced by the 
citizenry. Specifically, Japanese Grant Assistance for 
Grassroots Human Security Projects gave a cheque of  
$148,209 to the New Initiative for Social Development to 
increase rice production potential in Ekiti State through 
the acquisition of  modern technology (NIPC, 2020). 
However, the role of  Government before now hinges on 
the provision of  farm tools, insecticides, fertilizers, and 
lands under rain-fed methods in the southern part of  the 
country, while a poor irrigation system is the other day in 
Northern Nigeria. Never has any farmer practiced a ‘dry 
irrigation’ system in the mangrove area of  the southern 
part of  Nigeria to convert the waterlogged areas to dry 
land in line with Konukcu et al. (2005)? The resultant 
effects of  shackles agriculture practice are low yields in 
farm products. The presence and impacts of  research 
institutes in Nigeria like IITA.org.  Ibadan,  Universities 
and colleges of  Agriculture, etc are not readily felt in the 
region where it domiciles and not to think of  other regions 
within the Federation.  More effort should be directed 

towards result oriented research that centered on the 
determination of  soil Physico-chemical properties across 
target area of  the country instead of  been generalized. 
 The production of  geoinformatics maps that will 
essentially depicts area that have propensity for large 
scale farming become imperative. Soil information and 
associated thematic map should reach the farmers before 
planting season commences. Agric extension worker 
and geoinformatics expert that will train and interprets 
specific soil characteristics and thematic maps should visit 
consortium of  farmers across Nigeria. These activities will 
be time consuming, cumbersome and involve huge capital 
outlay. The leeway from the conventional approaches is 
to imbibe the use of  Web- GIS and AI as panacea for 
agriculture development in Nigeria. It will efficiently 
enable complex, socio-economic, and environmental 
issues confronting agricultural advancement in the 
country to the next level be shared and discuss on the fly. 
 The role that internet, World wide web (www) and GIS 
on the web will play when deploy as a platform where 
issues relating to soil characteristics, farmers challenges 
and Government endeavors would be unprecedented 
in the history of  agricultural practices in Nigeria. The 
availability of  affordable smart android cell phones and 
broad band internet access across the nook and cranny of  
Nigeria will act as the vehicle for the dissemination and 
transformation of  Nigeria agriculture. 



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Proposed Basic Components of  Web GIS
The deployment of  agricultural practice in Nigeria on 
the web will invigorate the present deplorable methods 
if  metadata access, electronic mail service, real time data 
analysis and field note capabilities are provided. It will 
enhance farmers and non-farmers ability in the modern 
way of  practicing agriculture. The components will make 
agriculture practice in the country thick, result oriented 
and provide potential for exports of  goods and services 
to African Sub-regions and beyond leading to foreign 
exchange earning. 

Metadata Access
It is envisaged that metadata about agriculture in Nigeria 
will be contributed from various regions. Hence, it will 
be huge and space-consuming. The rise and awareness 
of  distributed processing, World wide web and internet 
should be annexed to distribute the data to the farmers in 
their remote locations. Many GIS packages on the web can 
efficiently use metadata in a multiuser approach regardless 
of  data accessing technology. Farmers can download 
agricultural data and information on demand or simply 
viewed on a locally displayed client web browser. The 
metadata could be on offline mode once downloaded to 
minimize the inherent and insistent fluctuation in Global 
Satellite Mobile communication network.

Electronic Mail Service
The ubiquitous ways though which electronic mail can 
support and contribute to the development of  agriculture 
in the Country cannot be over emphasis. For instance, 
farmers can be notified by e-mail service the instant 
metadata updater discovered that new maps, referents 
lands, soil characteristics, high yield crops types from 
latest research are available online. It is also possible for 
farmer to exchange idea, request assistant from farmers 
in any part of  the World, and to also share pertinent 
latest agricultural data stored in standard structures that 
is accessible through on-line clearinghouse via electronic 
mails. This approach would tremendously enhance farmers 
in the Country to favorably compete and collaborate with 
their colleagues in other nations. It will also promote 
seamless agricultural resources visualization via the web.

Real Time Data Analysis
Recent advancement in computing has initiated the plan 
of  computing cyber infrastructure which is also known 
as grid or cloud computing on the web (Al-Bayari, 2019 
). Cyber infrastructure will provide great capabilities by 
allowing farmers to linkup through a network with system 
where data, programs, information and knowledge on 
agriculture new initiatives domicile. Also, it will enhance 
easy access and communication with the researchers 
to garner the procedure of  how to carryout real time 
analysis on available data. The availability of  open-
source software and online spread sheet will provide 
the necessary leverage the farmer required for real time 

analytical operations on the fly. For example, soil sample 
derived from a generalized soil sample database can be link 
with a digitized local Government boundary to generate 
web-based soil suitability location map analysis in real 
time. The possibility of  simple online based agricultural 
land analysis will revolutionize agriculture practice in city 
to limitless possibilities. 

Field Note Capabilities 
The United State department of  Defense’s GPS, 
the European Space Agency’s Galileo, the Russian’s 
GLONASS, and the China COMPASS Navigation(Clarke, 
2011) system has the capability to provide reliable 
centimeter accuracy of  any location in the World. Also, 
the availability of  cheap java, Symbian and android 
phones that has been incorporated with GPS tools in 
Africa will allow farmers to record the position and image 
of  infested crops on the field to be transmitted online to 
any agency for identification and treatment actions.  
These devices can be pre-programmed to precisely 
navigate farmers to the point of  diseases infestations from 
farmstead. Never again would any farm assistance ask for 
the location of  diseased crops when these technologies 
with its inherent flexibility are incorporated into daily farm 
operations. Also, these devices become handy and useful 
tools to capture various data relating to advancement of  
agriculture for uploading into web GIS directly in line with 
Clarke (2011). The highest precise location determination 
of  these portable devices constitutes a benefit to web 
GIS and agricultural advancement in real time

Spatial Data Capture for Agriculture
Spatial data relating to agriculture advancement in Nigeria 
need to be capture and downloaded into web GIS. The 
data include soil characteristics, spatial pattern of  land 
use types, settlement, roads network types, water bodies 
etc. Landsat imageries, Quick bird, and Lidar imagery are 
natural repository of  these data. Drone, an airborne device 
can also be used to capture real-time spatial data of  the 
farmland.  The data need to be downloaded from the link 
and device containing them and geo-rectified to WGS84 
or International Terrestrial Reference System (ITRS). The 
WGS84 has received unprecedented acceptance and usage 
throughout the nook and cranes of  the World but ITRS 
is the most precise, better maintained and acclaimed to 
be of  international standard (Clarke, 2011). Also crowd 
sourced mapping approach can be deployed to enhance 
speedy real time data acquisition from the field (Capineri, 
et al 2016). This involves the construction of  a crowd 
source platform and a ground truth data submission 
platform with cloud computing application (Al-Bayari, 
(2019 ) using any of  the free online GIS software. The 
data submission system will be utilized for generating 
ground truth data by digitizing the Country  agricultural 
boundaries based on ecological zones with the capability 
of  visual interpretation of  satellite images (Haklay & 
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Data Processing
The image processing can be executed using two basic 
approaches namely image processing in GIS environment 
and image processing using artificial intelligence approach. 
The former involves a procedure to extract various classes 
in each ecological zone and matched with the digitized 
regional map of  smart cities. Specifically, training sites 
would be created and digitized in the imageries based 
on verified land uses from the field. Here, hard classifier 
would be done using the Maximum Likelihood classifier 
algorithm and Land use/cover mapping of  each ecological 
zone on regional basis would be analysed to reveals the 
most suitable land for a particular crop. Also, Idirisi Selva 
and, ILWIS software plus other sophisticated  image 
processing software can be used to achieve this laudable 
objective. The resultant spatial map will be vectorize /
polygonise to allow further analysis. 
Similarly, the latter involves the deployment of  artificial 
intelligence image processing procedure according 
to Holzinger et al (2023) and (Nivanya, 2024). and AI 
image-processing Python libraries or image recognition 
platform such as Nanonets can also be used. Specifically, 
artificial intelligence approach will significantly improve 
the potential and ability to understand, interpret, and 
manipulate visual data that may escape the human 
eye by utilizing sophisticated algorithms and machine 
learning strategies classification process. Given that a 
large number of  supervised classification methods such 
as random forest, artificial neural networks, support 
vector machines, Bayesian decision rules etc are available 
for image classification process and geospatial mapping. 
The overall objectives of  the AI image processing are to 
obtain a better and definable vector map products that 
will be serve online for users.

Web GIS Technology
The choice of  mapping, database creation and standards 
are the necessary steps towards the development of  web 
GIS and AI application for agriculture advancement 
in Nigeria. Web GIS is essentially an integrated web-
accessible software, a 2-D database comprising one or 
more base maps and an associated collection of  services 
(Longley et al., 2011). An important part of  every web 
mapping application is its mapping or visualization 
technology, which makes it possible to show data in the 
form of  web map (Adnan et al., 2010). 
The defining characteristic of  a web GIS and AI approach 
to map suitable soil and agricultural resources of  any 
Nation are significantly the quality of  the base map. The 
visualization of  data as maps has become increasingly 
popular, with hundreds of  websites presenting geographic 
data while the popularity of  web GIS applications and 
the entrant (AI) arises in large part through the wide 
dissemination of  software that makes it easy for users 
and developers to publish map data (Adnan et al., 2010; 
Nivanya, 2024). 
The visualization and publishing of  soil suitability map 
for agriculture development should be based on genuine 

cartographic concept and reliable principle. The accepted 
principle involves map compilation; map designing; map 
visualization and production of  hard and soft copies of  
multivariate land use and land cover maps to communicate 
soil suitability characteristics information to farmers. The 
basic GIS data processing steps to successively transform 
a database of  geographic information into a web map 
are: data collection, editing and maintenance, data 
management, analysis, visualization and web publishing 
shown in figure 1.

Figure 1: Basic GIS data processing steps
Source: Adapted and Modified from Longley et al.(2011)

The improvements in usability through non expensive, 
portable, improved and interactive user technology 
interfaces inform of  LED-backlit glossy widescreen, 
multi touch display with IPS technology, high pixel 
resolution, fingerprint-resistant oleo phobic coating, 
support for display of  multiple languages and characters 
simultaneously, couple with Wifi, Bluetooth and high 
storage, camera, photos and video recording capability. 
These qualities explain the reasons for the increased 
worldwide acceptance of  visualization techniques (Aoidh 
et al., 2008). Flash maps techniques (FMT) based on vector 
images, slippy maps techniques (SMT) implemented on 
tile-based maps, and Static Map Renderers techniques 
(SMRT) are some of  the basic ways in which visualization 
functionality can be implemented (Adnan et al., 2010)
SMRT has the capability to render maps to an image 
formats such as PNG , Jpeg, GIF etc. and then re-send 
the image back to the farmer or other user who then view 
it with the help of  web browser or desktop applications. 
Alternatively, Web access is provided in the SMRT via 
user interactive accessible open interfaces and typically, 
a request can be issued from, and responses processed 
and visualized in a standard web browsers of  farmer’s 
viewing device (Adnan et al., 2010; Longley et al., 2011). 
This is the ideal web GIS technology that should be use 
for agriculture advancement in the Country base on IOT.

Web Application Development Standards 
These are basically divided into two great categorical 
standards: design standards and development standards. 
The former involves the pre- development organization, 
configuration and capability of  a web application, 
decided by the web designer prior to starting the 
development of  the web application for agricultural 
advancement using web wire-framing- i.e., ‘simple line 
drawing’ to show the placement of  elements on the web 



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page thereby showcasing how the web page will look like 
after development. Some of  the tools that are available to 
design web wireframes include Adobe Illustrator, Visio 
and ProtoShare.
The development standard would essentially be used to 
determine the choice of  an appropriate development 
technology for the web application. For instance, Dot 
NET (.NET) is a development technology that can be 
used to develop software or web applications while, SQL 
Server is a database server which can be used as the back 
end of  web applications. Other notable development 
technology includes ASP (Active Server Pages), JSP (Java 
Server Pages), ASP.NET (Active Server Page dot Net), 
PHP (Pre-Hypertext processor) (Adnan et al., 2010).  Also  
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Cascading Style 
Sheet (CSS) (W3C, 2016 )and python (Charles, 2009). The 
choice of  developmental standard to use depends upon 
the developer’s operating environment. However, the 
combinations of  PHP, HTML, and CSS should be used 
as the development technology standard for agriculture 
advancement on the web.

Web GIS for Agriculture Development and 
Management
The internet of  things serves as a tool for extending the 
capabilities of  GIS to multi-users and for multi-tasking 
around the globe. These capabilities will be use to present 
the output from agriculture resources in Nigeria to the 
Global community.

GIS Modeling of  Data and Integration into the Web
In other to model data and integrate into the web in GIS 
environment, the vectorised / polygonised soil suitability 
maps obtained after hard classifier in section 4.0 will be 
exported to ArcGIS environment where it will be converted 
into a Shapefile format and stored in a geo-database. 

Geo-database Design
The geo-database creation involves a three phase 
procedure: design/conceptual phase, construction phase 
and the implementation phase. The design phase involves 
the selection of  either Tessellation data model, vector 
data model and object-oriented data model (Worboys, 
2005) to model the reality e.g. Modeling the reality 
essentially involves symbols and color determination 
(graphic symbolization), configuration of  graphical and 
non-graphical files, active layer definition, layers scale, 
visualization of  web GIS products (report generation 
format), access and file restrictions. 
The construction phase conspicuously involves: the use 
of  logical and physical design models to set up the geo-
database; provision of  ways of  converting data source 
into geo-database and providing the methodology of  
maintaining the geo-database after creation. Any of  the 
following specialize database management system (DBMS) 
software which guarantee data integrity and longevity 
can be used to implement the geo-database: relational 

(RDBMS), object (ODBMS) and object-relational 
(ORDBMS). Others includes – DB2 Spatial Extender and 
Informix Spatial Database(IBM); SQLServer(Microsoft); 
OracleSpatial(Oracle) and PostGIS(Open source) 
(Longley et al,. 2011). The following add-on fields could 
also be a necessity: URL, addresses of  farmer’s home 
page, remarks, e-mail subscription window etc.
However, the most popular DBMS are Oracle and 
SQLServer. The  SQL (Structured or Standard Query 
Language) is the standard database query language 
adopted by all mainstream databases, and so: it may be 
used directly via interactive command line interface; 
it may be compiled in a general-purpose programming 
language such as C/C++/C#, Java, or Virtual Basic; or it 
may also be embedded in a graphical user interface (GUI) 
(Adnan et al., 2010 and Longley et al., 2011). SQL Server 
by Microsoft should be use to perform analytical query in 
the geo-database for agriculture advancement in Nigeria 
because of  easy of  availability. Similarly, the procedure for 
the development and implementation of  a web mapping 
application for agriculture advancement is presented in 
the following subsection

Implementation 
In other to implement a web mapping / display service 
aspect for agriculture advancement, the following steps 
should be taken: 

i. A map server application e.g. ASPMAP.net ARCIMS, 
Arc Server, Python, etc should be installed on the 
mapping server machine to drive the application on the 
web in other to enable the application to work. This 
aspect will be handled by a web hosting company;

ii. A scripting language should be used to write basic 
scripts program that the map server software will work 
with to display the maps on the browser or to perform 
some basic custom applications as may be desired e.g. 
PhP.net  language – this is an open source application 
package or a more robust application may be use;

iii. Web wireframes should be used to: show the placement 
of  elements in the web page, provide a visual guide to 
the website and demonstrates the links between different 
pages in the website (Miller, 2008). For instance, HTML 
and CSS application package should  be used to produce 
the wireframe(skeleton) and provide color  and graphical 
appearance while Java scripts for interactive display;

iv. An amount of  money in American Dollars will be 
paid to the web hosting company for web hosting service 
to allow the service provider install the choice web 
mapping software on the server;

v. A domain name should be paid for and registered. 
The domain name is the platform from which the web 
service will be accessed. The domain name and the 
hosting service can be obtained from one source.

vi. Maps / data to be display on the web mapping 
service will be prepared by experience programmer in the 
formats that the mapping server software will implements 
– example is the ArcGIS Shapefile format.



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Web GIS Revenue Driven Approach and Job Creation
Huge capital is require to fund agricultural research 
oriented viz: designing, hosting  and maintaining of  a 
robust dedicated website for agriculture advancement. 
Ordinarily, Government agency should finance the 
new concept but where this is not the case interested 
private organization initiative can saddle herself  with 
the responsibility. The operation of  the web GIS for 
agriculture advancement should be based on the principle 
of  indirect beneficiary payment and an outright online 
user’s payment syndrome. 
The former payment system is base on the concept 
of  pay per viewing. For instance, each time any user 
around the globe accesses the dedicated website for 
either information, viewing a smart cities Agric products 
through unsolicited pop–up advert on a Google webpage 
or downloading contents, such user is indirectly making 
payment without actually realizing it through his/her 
online activity. 
The latter would be based on the purchase of  online 
scratch card from Banks, Post Office, online media, and 
major business outlets in Nigeria. Both approaches will 
yield high revenue and a self-sustaining system.
The system when operational has the potential to create at 
least one million jobs at it take off. For instance, in 2012, 
Agric Employers in Nigeria was 7,858,161 males and 
5,277,961 females while Agric employees were 5,226,561 
males and 4,609,050 females (Kale, 2013). The youth in 
agriculture employment figures was when the employer 
had no access to real time information on soil suitability 
data, planting methods, fumigation time, harvest and 
storage of  farm products. 

CONCLUSION 
Web GIS and AI for agriculture advancement 
applications will empower individual farmers as well as 
farmers organizations to have access to soil suitability 
spatial maps seamlessly, integrate information, visualize 
scenarios, present powerful and motivating ideas about 
cropping, and develop effective and efficient knowledge 
base solutions to inherent agricultural problems. The 
soil suitability maps of   Nigeria digitally generated and 
cartographically rendered and serve on the web will 
enhance comparative analysis between soil suitability 
maps for agriculture advancements base on the ecological 
zones to be quantitatively determined. Also, solutions to 
agricultural problems militating against high yield from 
the six geopolitical zone of  Nigeria can be published on 
the World Wide Web for multi-user access and updating. 

RECOMMENDATION
The research recommends that, Governments in Nigeria 
both Federal and State  should as a matter of  urgency 
adopt and execute this research in other to put to an 
end hunger, unemployment and   poverty. Also, there 
must be a policy issue to be approved by Nigeria Senate 
on sustainable agriculture practices driven by modern 
technology. In addition, Nigeria Government should 
collaborate with other Nations in the World to proffer 

solution to any problem confronting agriculture practices.

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