Need
A crop monitoring system is a fundamental tool for agricultural management as it facilitates decision-making processes from the governmental level to the producer level; by offering precise, objective, reliable, and timely information on estimates of the extent, yield, and productivity of crops of interest.
Importance
A monitoring system, by offering precise, objective, reliable, and timely information on estimates of the extent, yield, and productivity of crops of interest; facilitates decision-making to guide policies and actions on food security, land management, price markets, insurance, etc.
Characteristics
A national or regional scale crop monitoring system requires, for the measurement of productive area and its changes, data from remote sensors that have wide geographic coverage, high temporal resolution, spatial resolution appropriate to the scale of the landscape to be analyzed (i.e., average plot size) and at the same time low cost to ensure its sustainability and appropriation.
In order to identify and develop alternatives that contribute to improving conditions for sustainable agricultural planning and production, aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the crop monitoring system will develop a methodology based on remote sensors and digital image processing in a cloud computing environment.
This will allow the integration of multiple types of data that, through analysis and classification techniques based on Artificial Intelligence, will generate maps and reports that will be used, distributed, and appropriated through the IDE by people and communities in the region.
The methodologies and results of the monitoring system should:
- Be robust to ensure the accuracy of the generated statistics.
- Be transparent to generate trust among all stakeholders.
- Be timely to meet local needs and contribute to agricultural planning and production.
- Be sustainable to guarantee long-term operation, maintain, and continuously improve to achieve its objectives.
During the reporting stage, the Monitoring System will deliver precise maps and statistics on the productive areas of the crops of interest, as well as the results of multitemporal analyses that allow determining the temporal evolution of these areas in terms of change and stability. These data will be essential for modeling processes, prospective analysis, monitoring and control of policy results, planning and improving the productive systems in the region.
