Enhancing farm security: A stochastic approach for understanding the performability of electric fencing systems

The aim of this paper is to analyze the performance of the crop protection electric fencing system (CPEFS). Crops are vulnerable to many external and internal factors. Internal factors like pest, insects, crop diseases, soil nutrition deficiency and improper water management may completely destroy the crops. External factors like earthquake, wildfire, hurricane and storms, deforestation and animals attack on the crops may partially or completely destroy the crops. Some external factor like earthquake and hurricane and storm are not in farmer’s control but factor like crops protection from animal attack is in farmer’s control. Farmers have adopted various technological solutions for the protection of their fields from the animal attacks. One of such solutions is the electric fencing. This fencing system is cost effective and requires only low installation cost as compared to the traditional fencing, barbed wires, or wooden fences. The main subsystems of this electric fencing system are power supply subsystem, conductive subsystem, support and insulation subsystem, grounding subsystem and safety and protection subsystem. Each of these subsystems proper functioning is very important for the proper functioning of the whole system. The failure of the subsystem/subsystems may lead to the failure of the whole system. In this paper, authors have considered one field whose perimeter is secured with the electric fencing. The authors’ goal is to construct a continuous time Markov model, which is a specific instance of stochastic modelling. The various system performance parameters such as reliability and MTTF of the system have been determined. In order to find the critical components of the system sensitivity analysis of the reliability and MTTF is also performed. This research will be of great usage for others who are using the same system to identify the critical component/components of their system.