Harvest advisory modeling using field-level analysis of weather conditions and observations and user input of harvest condition states and tool for supporting management of farm operations in precision agriculture

• US 9,292,796 B1
• Filed: 06/13/2015
• Issued: 03/22/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 01/23/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: DTN, LLC (TBG AG)
• Original Assignee: Iteris Incorporated
• Inventors: Mewes, John J., Salentiny, Dustin M.
• Primary Examiner(s): Holmes, Michael B
• Application Number:
  US14/738,836
• Time in Patent Office: 283 Days
• Field of Search: 706/46
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 20/00 Machine learning
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 5/04 Inference or reasoning models
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0631 Resource planning, allocation, distributing or scheduling for enterprises or organisations
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/067 Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/02 Agriculture; Fishing; Forestry; Mining
• CPC Class Codes: Y02A 40/10 in agriculture

Abstract

A modeling framework for evaluating the impact of weather conditions on farming and harvest operations applies real-time, field-level weather data and forecasts of meteorological and climatological conditions together with user-provided and/or observed feedback of a present state of a harvest-related condition to agronomic models and to generate a plurality of harvest advisory outputs for precision agriculture. A harvest advisory model simulates and predicts the impacts of this weather information and user-provided and/or observed feedback in one or more physical, empirical, or artificial intelligence models of precision agriculture to analyze crops, plants, soils, and resulting agricultural commodities, and provides harvest advisory outputs to a diagnostic support tool for users to enhance farming and harvest decision-making, whether by providing pre-, post-, or in situ-harvest operations and crop analyzes.

Claims

1. A method of evaluating agricultural conditions to support harvest operations, comprising:

within a computing environment comprised of a computer processor and at least one computer-readable storage medium operably coupled to the computer processor and having program instructions stored therein, the computer processor being operable to execute the program instructions to profile a harvest condition for an agricultural product to be harvested in a harvest advisory model configured to perform the steps of;

predicting expected weather conditions at a specific location in a temporal harvest window by applying weather information comprised of current field-level weather data and extended-range weather data to one or more predictive numerical weather models;

simulating the harvest condition by applying the expected weather conditions and crop-specific information including crop type data, relative maturity data, planting data, and harvest data to an agricultural model of one or more physical and empirical characteristics impacting harvest operations of the agricultural commodity, the agricultural model comprising at least one of a crop-specific growth model, a soil model, and a land surface model; and

modifying the simulation of the harvest condition using differences between the simulated harvest condition and additional data representing sampled observations at or near the specific location at corresponding times, to generate a prediction of the harvest condition during the temporal harvest window.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising generating one or more advisories of the predicted harvest condition in a harvest output condition profile.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising generating at least one of an estimation of standing crop dry-down rates, a prediction of anticipated temporal harvest windows, an assessment of indicators of plant suitability for harvest, an estimation of fuel costs for post-harvest drying, and an estimation of loss of field workability due to frost formation in soil prior to post-harvest tillage.

4. The method of claim 2, further comprising applying the harvest output condition profile to a diagnostic support tool configured to provide the one or more advisories representing the predicted harvest conditions to a user performing harvest operations.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the crop-specific information further includes one or more of crop relative maturity data, crop planting depth and row spacing data, crop post-maturity dry-down characteristics, targeted harvest crop moisture or temperature thresholds, facility storage dimensions data, crop storage airflow data, and fuel-based grain dryer facility characteristics.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the additional data representing sampled observations at or near the specific location at corresponding times is comprised of physical, empirical or observed agricultural information and field and soil information that includes at least one of sampled crop moisture content and metadata related to crop, seed, soil, and facility data, sampled soil temperature, sampled soil moisture content, and current and/or forecasted soil conditions.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising automatically developing or more artificial intelligence models configured to analyze the harvest condition by building a comprehensive harvest condition dataset for the agricultural model of one or more physical and empirical characteristics impacting harvest operations of the agricultural commodity, and applying the artificial intelligence model to predict the harvest condition during the harvest window.

8. A system of evaluating agricultural conditions to support harvest operations comprising:

a computing environment including at least one computer-readable storage medium having program instructions stored therein and a computer processor operable to execute the program instructions to profile a harvest condition for an agricultural commodity to be harvested in a harvest advisory model within a plurality of data processing modules, the plurality of data processing modules including;

a weather prediction module configured to predict expected weather conditions at a specific location in a temporal harvest window by applying weather information comprised of current field-level weather data and extended-range weather data to one or more predictive numerical weather models; and

a harvest condition prediction module configured to

     1) simulate the harvest condition by applying the expected weather conditions and crop-specific information including crop type data, relative maturity data, planting data, and harvest data to an agricultural model of one or more physical and empirical characteristics impacting harvest operations of the agricultural commodity, the agricultural model comprising at least one of a crop-specific growth model, a soil model, and a land surface model; and

     2) modify the simulation of the harvest condition using differences between the simulated harvest condition and additional data representing sampled observations at or near the specific location at corresponding times, to generate a prediction of the harvest condition during the temporal harvest window.

9. The system of claim 8, further comprising a diagnostic support tool configured to further generate one or more advisories representing the prediction of the harvest condition to a user.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the prediction of the harvest condition includes at least one of an estimation of standing crop dry-down rates, a prediction of anticipated temporal harvest windows, an assessment of indicators of plant suitability for harvest, an estimation of fuel costs for post-harvest drying, and an estimation of loss of field workability due to frost formation in soil prior to post-harvest tillage.

11. The system of claim 8, wherein the crop-specific information further includes one or more of crop relative maturity data, crop planting depth and row spacing data, crop post-maturity dry-down characteristics, targeted harvest crop moisture or temperature thresholds, facility storage dimensions data, crop storage airflow data, and fuel-based grain dryer facility characteristics.

12. The system of claim 8, wherein the additional data representing sampled observations at or near the specific location at corresponding times includes physical, empirical or observed agricultural information and field and soil information, wherein the physical, empirical or observed agricultural information and field and soil information includes at least one of sampled crop moisture content and metadata related to crop, seed, soil, and facility data, sampled soil temperature, sampled soil moisture content, and current and/or forecasted soil conditions.

13. The system of claim 8, wherein the plurality of data processing modules further include a module configured to automatically develop one or more artificial intelligence models to analyze the harvest condition by building a comprehensive harvest condition dataset for the agricultural model of one or more physical and empirical characteristics impacting harvest operations of the agricultural commodity, and applying the artificial intelligence model to predict the harvest condition during the temporal harvest window.