We said that a system is a set of members that are related to each other in a specific way and pursue a specific goal.

A change in any of the components or relationships can lead to a change in the entire system. We also talked about the theory of chaos or the butterfly effect and that in systemic thinking, to understand phenomena, instead of breaking them down into constituent elements, it is used to combine and look at the whole phenomenon.

1

The first part - peeling or bleeding

Part 2 - Playing with Fire: Power-hungry and deceitful artificial intelligence

The third part - artificial intelligence, death and existential concerns

Part 4 - Artificial intelligence, a systemic revolution

The fifth part - artificial intelligence and system thinking

The sixth part - System and systemic thinking

Part 7 - Digital forest and artificial intelligence

One of the interesting things about systems is their multiplicity even in our daily life. The number of systems we deal with in life is much more than it seems. There are hundreds of systems in each person's body. On the other hand, phenomena and concepts such as market and economy are also considered as systems. There are hundreds of systems in a modern kitchen. From refrigerator and freezer to gas stove and oven and microwave device, water and gas piping, each is considered a system.

System and Internet of Things

Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the technologies that deals with many different systems. The term Internet of Things refers to the connection between processing and computing devices (actually systems), mechanical and digital machines in an automatic form on the Internet. In these systems, there are intelligent parts whose task is to establish and communicate with the central system and send the collected data to it. For example, it can be said that in the Internet of Things related to environmental temperature regulation, systems try to collect environmental data, such as the amount of heat and cold, through sensors, so that the central system can decide on air temperature regulation. But all the work of the Internet of Things is not limited to functions like this.

In fact, the Internet of Things is a system of systems. That is, several systems with different functions are connected to each other through the Internet, which itself includes billions of systems, and exchange information so that they can make a set of decisions to achieve a specific goal or goals.

But the important point here is that the Internet of Things systems can make the most appropriate decisions due to their intelligence and with the least amount of human intervention. Such a thing requires the existence of the Internet as a communication platform; Especially the new generation of mobile internet, which is known as 5G, as well as machine learning technology, which is an important part of artificial intelligence.

The architecture of the Internet of Things in a layered manner using Machine to Machine communication can place various objects and technologies such as sensors and other devices in different layers and assign a specific task to each one. In other words, equipment using network communication (Internet) and using special software to control and manage objects and equipment in the environment. Sometimes this connection can be as simple as connecting a smartphone to your refrigerator, and sometimes it can be so complex that it manages all the elements in a digital forest.

Physical objects, digital identities

The Internet of Things is one of the important platforms in which digital systems are integrated with systems in the physical world and inject important elements of intelligence into objects that are not inherently intelligent. When your regular home refrigerator becomes smart through a kit, it becomes a member of the digital world and takes on a digital identity. Now you can interact with it through the facilities of this world. In fact, it becomes a node in the network that is both identifiable and can help identify and manage other digital or physical digital elements. Such a feature has many benefits, accuracy being one of them. Also, the ability to work with a wide range of tools and objects is one of its other advantages. No manual intervention, remote control and automation are other advantages of this package of physical objects with elements of the digital world. In fact, most of the world's physical objects can be converted into digital objects. When an object changes its identity in this way, it can be registered in our database, communicate with other objects and with control and management tools and be part of the Internet of Things. In this way, the Internet of Things, with the help of sensors and transducers, can significantly increase the power of human management over the surrounding environment.

In the discussion of systems, I said that many things we see around us are systems. Let's take another look at this phenomenon.

Digital jungle

Let us imagine a strange yet interesting world.

 The Hyrkani forest, full of all kinds of deciduous trees, covers the entire northern part of the country. The area of ​​this forest is about 3,400,000 hectares. There are billions of trees and shrubs of various species in this vast area. Also, this forest is home to millions of animals, from very diverse genera and species. Domestic animals such as cows and sheep are other inhabitants of Hyrcanian forests.

Since we said before that every tree or every living being is actually considered a system, we can claim that there are billions of systems in this forest, be it plants or animals. Now let's decide to turn this analog forest into a digital forest. For this purpose, it is necessary to connect some kind of converter kit (or RFID tags, integrated chip, sensor, etc.) to trees or forest animals and put them all under the management of Internet of Things software. Now we have a digital forest where each of its billions of members has its own identity card. The management software records, maintains and analyzes all the events between the birth and death of each tree or animal and gives warnings if necessary for human intervention. On the other hand, the artificial intelligence embedded in the software can extract certain patterns from the data sent from the forest. Suppose that due to the poverty of a certain element in the soil of an area of ​​the forest, its plants suffer from some kind of disease. After identifying the problem, by spraying some kind of fertilizer through the drones, we can strengthen only those areas. Today, by using precision agriculture technologies, we can monitor the areas with high accuracy. Also, by monitoring each region, we can find out the spread of infectious diseases among the birds of that region. Finding patterns in how viruses are transmitted between animals and humans in the case of zoonotic diseases is one of the functions of artificial intelligence. Also, using its algorithms, artificial intelligence can provide us with various insights about the vegetation of each region and the needs of plants and animals in the region.

For example, which of the plant species can be more useful for which of the animals can be considered as one of the artificial intelligence services. Especially since AI can use scientific research in any field from all over the internet. The benefits of using artificial intelligence in such a forest are countless.

Using artificial intelligence, we can quickly process and analyze the large amount of data sent from the forest and share the results with other collections or universities. Each of the faculties of veterinary medicine, botany, zoology, biology, meteorology and environment of different universities can conduct their research using the data provided by the digital forest. Note that the age of some trees in this forest sometimes reaches hundreds of years. What has happened to the tree in this long period can be the subject of many academic researches. Using sensors and artificial intelligence programs, researchers can have the temperature of the entire forest at every hour of the day and throughout the year. This weather archive, together with the amount of humidity and precipitation in each place, allows researchers to compare the weather conditions with previous years and provide valuable advice to forest management officials. The human mind can only consider a small number of factors affecting the ecosystem, but artificial intelligence can, through simulation, apply several factors to a huge amount of data and inform us of the benefits of a special plan or its harmful results. warn

Another advantage of digital forest systems is environmental protection, preventing the extinction of rare or endangered species. Considering that our country is located in an arid and semi-arid region, the protection of the forests in the north of the country becomes an undeniable necessity. Of course, the forests of Iran are not exclusive to the forests of the north of the country, and there are also forests in the Zagros mountains and in the south of the country, whose protection is the duty of the people and officials. Iran's forests play an irreplaceable role in adjusting Iran's dry climate as well as agriculture in these areas, and damage to these forests from various aspects can endanger people's health and the country's economy. Unfortunately, in the past decades, many parts of these forests have been destroyed, and if we do not try to preserve the rest of these forests, we, our children, and future generations will suffer the most damage. Therefore, it is appropriate to use new technologies as soon as possible in the maintenance and restoration of forests and the environment in general. Perhaps what I described above, i.e. the transformation of the current forests into a digital forest, seems very idealistic in today's conditions, but deep reforms in this area, I think, are only possible in this direction. Our scientists can start studies in this field and use the experiences of other countries.

There is a lot to say in this area. I will mention other aspects of this in the future.