Decision Support Platform for Cropland Management and Forecasting

The outcome of this CCRPP effort will be an operational capability to deliver high resolution, accurate, and up-to-date classifications of land cover, and forecasts of agricultural and ecological changes. The proposed system will facilitate the ease of use of multiple advanced machine learning algorithms and integrate imagery from airborne and satellite sensors and validation data from in-field sensors. The principal market opportunity for the proposed technology is the agriculture industry; specifically, farmers of specialty crops (fresh vegetables, fruits and nut crops), who need improved monitoring of in-field crop inventories and health, and improved forecasting of crop yields. GeoVisual has established a strategic partnership with the world’s largest producer of fresh cut vegetables, Taylor Farms. Taylor has already invested in GeoVisual, after we demonstrated machine learning-based capabilities to determine accurate, in-field crop inventories and indicators of health and yield. We did so on a relatively small, pilot scale, and Taylor is prepared to purchase our services once we demonstrate we can deliver them on an industrial scale. The proposed effort will enable us to operationally deliver our services at scale to Taylor Farms and other large specialty crop farms.The secondary market for our innovation is the broad set of additional commercial industry sectors, government agencies, and NGOs that will benefit from improved, routine land classification and ecological forecasting. The specific secondary market customer we are focused on in the short term is the Ecological Forecasting (EF) Laboratory at the NASA Ames Research Center. More »