In this paper, we present a novel methodology to solve the problem of delineating homogeneous site-specific management zones (SSMZ) in agricultural fields. This problem consists of dividing the field into small regions for which a specific rate of inputs is required. The objective is to minimize the number of management zones, which must be homogeneous according to a specific soil property: physical or chemical. Furthermore, as opposed to oval zones, SSMZ with rectangular shapes are preferable since they are more practical for agricultural technologies. The methodology we propose is based on evolutionary computation, specifically on a class of the estimation of distribution algorithms (EDAs). One of the strongest contributions of this study is the representation used to model the management zones, which generates zones with orthogonal shapes, for example, L or T shapes, and minimizes the number of zones required to delineate the field. The experimental results show that our method is efficient to solve real field and randomly generated instances. The average improvement of our method consists in reducing the number of management zones in the agricultural fields concerning other operations research methods presented in the literature. The improvement depends on the size of the field and the level of homogeneity established for the resulting management zones.

中文翻译：

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使用分布算法的估计来划定特定地点的管理区域

在本文中，我们提出了一种新的方法来解决在农业领域划定同质特定地点管理区 (SSMZ) 的问题。这个问题包括将字段划分为需要特定输入速率的小区域。目标是尽量减少管理区的数量，这些管理区必须根据特定的土壤特性（物理或化学）是均匀的。此外，与椭圆形区域相反，具有矩形形状的 SSMZ 更可取，因为它们对农业技术更实用。我们提出的方法基于进化计算，特别是基于一类分布估计算法 (EDA)。这项研究的最大贡献之一是用于对管理区域进行建模的表示，它生成具有正交形状的区域，例如，L 形或 T 形，并最大限度地减少描绘场地所需的区域数量。实验结果表明，我们的方法可以有效地解决真实领域和随机生成的实例。我们方法的平均改进在于减少了与文献中介绍的其他运筹学方法有关的农业领域管理区的数量。改进取决于油田的大小和为由此产生的管理区域建立的同质性水平。我们方法的平均改进在于减少了与文献中介绍的其他运筹学方法有关的农业领域管理区的数量。改进取决于油田的大小和为由此产生的管理区域建立的同质性水平。我们方法的平均改进在于减少了与文献中介绍的其他运筹学方法有关的农业领域管理区的数量。改进取决于油田的大小和为由此产生的管理区域建立的同质性水平。