Scott Nicholas
OmniEarth has received a contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop a mapping technology for military personnel to assess, manage and predict soil conditions.
The company said Monday it will fuse information from commercially-available synthetic aperture radar and multispectral imagery in a push to develop a precision soil moisture mapping model to aid tactical decisionmaking.
DARPA awarded the contract under the first phase of a Small Business Innovation Research initiative related to software/analytics exploiting commercial satellite imagery.
“Accurate and precise knowledge of soil moisture impacts many military activities– from IED detection to advanced weather forecasting,” said Lars Dyrud, OmniEarth president and CEO.
OmniEarth noted that better soil moisture understanding can impact applications beyond military use such as boost accuracy in weather forecasting as well as develop agricultural and water products.
The company previously applied similar techniques in its commercial water product through the combination of multiple satellite and aerial sources with customer-specific information and parcel data.
