Journal Article

Preliminary Field Evaluation of a Low-Cost IoT Workflow for Dissolved Oxygen Monitoring and Short-Horizon Forecasting in Nile Tilapia Aquaculture

Al-Badri, Mohammed Ahmed, Dhandapani, Ragavesh, Al-Khaldi, Ahmed Mohammed

2026

Overview

Short-term fluctuations in dissolved oxygen are difficult to capture in warm outdoor Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) ponds using periodic manual measurements, yet they strongly influence fish performance and farm management. This study presents a preliminary field evaluation of a low-cost IoT workflow for dissolved oxygen monitoring and short-horizon forecasting in pond-based tilapia culture. An ESP32-based sensing node continuously measured dissolved oxygen, temperature, and pH, transmitted readings to a cloud backend, and generated short-horizon forecasts from 5 min aggregated windows. During live validation from 1 to 10 April 2026, the 30 min forecast achieved a mean absolute error of 0.783 mg/L and directional accuracy of 60.23%, with only modest improvement over a persistence baseline. The 6 h forecast achieved 1.109 mg/L and 53.82%, respectively, indicating limited predictive value at the extended horizon. An extended 47-day field deployment (May–June 2026) captured four sensor-recorded low-DO events and two documented power outages, causing sensor downtime and providing additional field-deployment evidence. These results demonstrate the engineering feasibility of the integrated workflow, but they do not establish robust operational forecasting validity because the data were collected from one pond, high-frequency records were temporally correlated, and independent reference-meter validation was not available. The study is, therefore, best interpreted as a proof-of-concept field evaluation that identifies practical requirements for future low-cost aquaculture forecasting systems.