February, 2023 – The professional team YMS brings another announced service on the platform ySpace, the so-called space translator, which monitors the condition of crops on Slovak fields during their growing season.
“After analyzing satellite images for monitoring the condition of forests we developed other relevant know-how to help the agricultural sector. For those interested in interpreted satellite data about the growth of crops on agricultural fields, we have the so-called agroreport, or a summary of the state of a selected field at regular and sufficiently frequent intervals,” says YMS Business Director and Space Technology Expert, Radovan Hilbert, to introduce the service. (You can also watch the interview with Radovan Hilbert in the Experiment show on STV 2 – in Slovak language).
Thorough monitoring of fields is possible thanks to the automatic processing of freely available images from the Sentinel-2 and Landsat satellites by the ySpace solution. Sentinel-2 is made up of two sister satellites that scan the same area every 5 days, with spatial resolution of the multispectral image up to 10 meters, therefore providing sufficient accuracy and staying up to date. On the other hand, Landsat satellites allow us to step into the past, up to the year 2004, giving a historic perspective to the output.
The data combined in this way represents the most comprehensive possible view of our fields today. “The preparation of agroreport takes several steps. In the first step, we automatically download satellite images of the requested area. Next, we remove the clouds, the so-called “cleaning” of the point cloud image that could degrade the final results. The process continues with the automatic generation of comprehensive map outputs that describe individual crops and their condition,” explains YMS business analyst and expert in monitoring land via satellite projects, Peter Golej.
Satellite data are available online thanks to the Copernicus project of the European Space Agency. “Cleaning and analyzing data and their outputs into the form of a comprehensive map has significant value for farmers. They provide immediate and intelligible information about whether their plants are healthy, have enough water, what spots need to be watered or fertilized more, where the earth erodes the most, and so on. Based on this information the farmer can then decide what crop to plant where. They can evaluate which areas of the field are fine, and which parts have adverse effects on the crop. They can then check these areas personally and apply the necessary corrective measures,” continues Radovan Hilbert
Project agroreport is second in the line of projects created by YMS in cooperation with the European Space Agency. “It is unusual for the European Space Agency to provide two projects in a row to the same company. However, YMS demonstrated a high level of expertise and competence. After the signing of Slovakia’s associate membership in the European Space Agency in October 2022, we, as a company, enter the next level of cooperation and plan to be involved in even more significant partnerships and projects as leaders or subcontractors directly to the ESA,” concludes Radovan Hilbert on the topic of satellite monitoring and cooperation with the European Space Agency.