Mobile application for reporting information on the illicit crops’ eradication process

Abstract

This paper presents a mobile application called SIREG, which is part of a bigger concept of a management system called SIREG (for its acronym in Spanish) for digital information management of eradication of illicit crops. Hence, the app is considered as the first step in developing the concept. Specifically, the app supports capturing and sending relevant information about the eradication process. This process is usually manually collected and reported by voi-ce, which can result to errors in the reports. To this end, the main components of the process were identified, such as patrol information, crop characteristics, photographic record, and georeferenced information of the eradicated areas. These components were used to define the application’s functionality through modules associated with each component. The implementation was performed on a Trimble TDC100, an Android device with suitable features for challenging field conditions. Preliminary tests show good performance in positioning, with an error rate below 0.3%. The application transparently supports information reporting, allowing traceability of the process and monitoring. Likewise, this is valuable information for decision-makers, such as military commanders or authorities. In addition, this digitized information would provide reliable data on areas affected by the growth of illicit crops, such as forests or protected natural areas.