Article Towards Climate Smart Farming—A Reference Architecture for Integrated Farming Systems Georgios Kakamoukas 1 , Panagiotis Sarigiannidis 1,* , Andreas Maropoulos 1, Thomas Lagkas 2 , Konstantinos Zaralis 3 and Chrysoula Karaiskou 1 1 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Western Macedonia, 50100 Kozani, Greece;
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[email protected] Abstract: Climate change is emerging as a major threat to farming, food security and the livelihoods of millions of people across the world. Agriculture is strongly affected by climate change due to increasing temperatures, water shortage, heavy rainfall and variations in the frequency and intensity of excessive climatic events such as floods and droughts. Farmers need to adapt to climate change by developing advanced and sophisticated farming systems instead of simply farming at lower intensity and occupying more land. Integrated agricultural systems constitute a promising solution, as they can lower reliance on external inputs, enhance nutrient cycling and increase natural resource use efficiency. In this context, the concept of Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) emerged as a promising solution to secure the resources for the growing world population under climate change conditions. This work proposes a CSA architecture for fostering and supporting integrated agricultural systems, such as Mixed Farming Systems (MFS), by facilitating the design, the deployment and the management of Citation: Kakamoukas, G.; crop–livestock-=forestry combinations towards sustainable, efficient and climate resilient agricultural Sarigiannidis, P.; Maropoulos, A.; systems.