Journal of Computer Scine and Information Technology
Volume 7 Issue 4 (2021): JCSITech

Towards Food Security: the Prediction of Climatic Factors in Nigeria using Random Forest Approach

Charity Ojochogwu Egbunu (Department of Computer Science, Joseph Sarwuan Tarka University, Makurdi)
Matthew Tunde Ogedengbe (Department of Computer Science, Joseph Sarwuan Tarka University, Makurdi)
Terungwa Simon Yange (JS Tarka University Makurdi)
Malik Adeiza Rufai (Department of Computer Science, Federal University Lokoja, Lokoja, Nigeria)
Habibat Iye Muhammed (Department of Computer Science, Federal University Lokoja, Lokoja, Nigeria)



Article Info

Publish Date
11 Sep 2021

Abstract

With the explosive growth in the world’s population which has little or no corresponding rise in the food production, food insecurity has become eminent, and hence, the need to seek for opportunities to increase food production in order to cater for this population is paramount. The second goal of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (i.e., ending hunger, achieving food security and improved nutrition, and promoting sustainable agriculture) set by the United Nations (UN) for the year 2030 clearly acknowledged this fact. Improving food production cannot be achieved using the obsolete conventional methods of agriculture by our farmers; hence, this study focuses on developing a model for predicting climatic conditions with a view to reducing their negative impact, and boosting the yield of crop. Temperature, wind, humidity and rainfall were considered as the effect of these factors is more devastating in Nigeria as compared to sun light which is always in abundance. We implemented random forest algorithm using Python programming language to predict the aforementioned climate parameters. The data used was gotten from the Nigerian Meteorological (NiMet) Agency, Lokoja, Kogi State between 1988 and 2018. The result shows that random forest algorithm is effective in climate prediction as the accuracy from the model based on the climatic factors considered was 94.64%. With this, farmers would be able to plan ahead to prevent the impact of the fluctuations in these climatic factors; thus, the yield of crops would be increased. This would dwarf the negative impact of food insecurity to the populace.

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Journal Info

Abbrev

jcsitech

Publisher

Subject

Computer Science & IT Control & Systems Engineering Electrical & Electronics Engineering Engineering Materials Science & Nanotechnology

Description

Journal of Computer Science and Information Technology is a threetly journal published by Universitas Putra Indonesia YPTK, Padang. It publishes scientific and technical papers describing original research work or novel product/process development. The objectives are to promote exchange of ...