VAIS Soil Moisture Monitoring (SMM) technology is a satellite-based product that provides surface level SM data for any point on Earth by fusing active and passive microwave sensing. The technology employs the advanced analytics provided in VAIS Virtual Field Probing to deliver high-accuracy surface soil moisture at up to 10m resolution. Unlike existing soil moisture products, our high-resolution data enables us to enable valuable solutions that cater to the requirements of numerous farmers globally, particularly smallholder farmers residing in arid and semi-arid regions.
The connection between rootzone and surface level soil moisture is conventionally achieved through data assimilation techniques that extrapolate surface level information to lower depths via flow models, empirical models, or correlation models. The majority of these methods need vertically dense soil profile measurement or simulation, rely on prior knowledge that is hard to acquire in practice, or make assumptions regarding soil temperature gradients along the optical depth. To solve this complex problem, VAIS SMM technology offers a unique approach that enables accurate estimation of rootzone soil moisture using deep learning models that combine surface level moisture data with soil information, in-situ measurements, elevation data, hydrological models, and meteorological models to compute actual soil moisture at depths up to 100 centimeters with accuracy comparable to ground SM sensors.
Timely prediction of irrigation requirements is crucial for optimizing crop yield and minimizing water and energy resources. The information generated by VAIS SMM technology is employed by sophisticated irrigation-focused analytics that model the complex underlying processes affecting crop water needs. These analytics provide farmers with hourly irrigation recommendations with exact water requirements (when, where and how much) that are dynamically changing to accommodate the varying field and crop conditions, thus leading to irrigation water savings of up to 40% and improved yield.