For efficient and effective pest management, the monitoring system (investigation using trapping tools such as light trap, wandering insect trap, and rat trap) plays an important role. Unless we establish the appropriate monitoring system, we can’t get accurate information about insects or rats intrusion or inhabitation, leading the customer’s complaints or the loss of products related to insects. On the other hand, there is also the possibility that excessive plan might lead to an increase the burden on the site. Therefore it is necessary to understand the importance and the role of the monitoring system in the whole managing system in order to select the right trapping tools or where to place them, based on the risk-based approach.
In this paper, several key points for monitoring systems to achieve efficient and effective pest management were mentioned. First of all, we have to understand the total structure of pest management (Pest management program), including annual plans, organization, the way of communication, inspection/investigation, countermeasures, and training. Monitoring system is a part of pest management program, related to other elements. The meaning of “monitoring” is to analyze the sampling data and to utilize it for the root cause analysis, corrective and preventive actions, and verification, therefore we need to choose the suitable monitoring method based on the possible risks (characteristics of insects/rats and the importance of the zone in the factories).
As for the selection of trapping tools toward flying insects, we have to select light trap model based on the properties of area and to make a decision for places of installation on the hypothesis that we suppose flying insects’ pathways of intrusion, considering not only the effectiveness to trap flying insects, but also the risk for attracting insects more than necessary. While, we select types of wandering insect trap and rat trap based on the characteristics of insects/rats or the environment around the place of installation (e.g. the floor which got wet), and we install them on the places where wandering insects/rats can intrude or inhabit. In this manuscript, several risk-based viewpoints were provided. In addition, I introduce the latest rat-monitoring on-line system called “Pescle”, which we developed in partnership with Ryoden Trading Co., Ltd. We can only get accurate information using our original AI techniques for Pescle in order to formulate a sustainable pest-control systems.
Finally, several points to remember concerned with monitoring system, such as the interpretation of the monitoring data was provided here.
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