In this episode of a series of CAPTE videos, Alexis and Wenjuan from Hiphen discuss the value behind the fusion of satellite and IOT data.

Wenjuan notably explains that data fusion allows us to provide daily satellite imagery of the fields during the entire crop growing season. This is particularly important for farmers who want to monitor their fields in near real-time in order to best manage their crops – especially during key phenological stages.

Satellite imagery from Sentinel-2 is typically available every five days, unless clouds are present in which case you could have several weeks without data. This issue makes you ‘data blind’ during this period, which might be okay if you monitor a handful of fields located in the same region, but definitely not acceptable if you have to monitor hundreds of large fields spread across one (or more) country.

To fill in the data gaps for the periods where clouds made us ‘data blind’ we use IOT Field Sensors manufactured by Bosch in order to get a real-time eye in the field. The IOT sensors are placed in strategic stationary locations in the field (dependent on the pre-study of the field heterogeneity), and these IOT data inputs are extrapolated to be spatialized at the entire field level using satellite data. Thus, delivering a daily map of the fields.

Several biophysical indicators can be derived such as Leaf Area Index, NDVI (a proxy linked to the quantity of vegetation), CIgreen (a proxy of chlorophyll content) and others. The direct inputs from the satellite-IOT data fusion are then used for different applications ranging from crop management (fertilization, irrigation), yield assessments, and early warning systems inclusive of disease symptoms detection and phenologycal events detection.

As always, we would be delighted to tell you more about this type of solution and how they could potentially fit your agtech strategy. We look forward to hearing from you.