Near-Real-Time Integration of Soil State Information

The Army requires methods of resolving soil state characteristics that can be integrated into geospatial analysis efforts related to land surface modeling, terrain reasoning, vehicular mobility, and dismounted mobility. To address this need, Creare is developing the SoilMAP software framework. SoilMAP is intended to enable Army geospatial analysts to ingest, fuse, process, and visualize soil moisture, soil characteristics, and vehicle mobility in an integrated and timely manner. During Phase I, we demonstrated the feasibility of our overall approach by defining soil moisture sensor calibration techniques, geospatial data sources, and communication protocols required for real-time monitoring of mesoscale soil moisture studies; implementing a high-fidelity prototype version of our SoilMAP software; and demonstrating our prototype software in application to pertinent use case studies. During Phase II, we will finalize our methodology for soil moisture sensor site-specific corrections, encapsulate additional geospatial data sources, implement additional geospatial processing algorithms, develop easy-to-use graphical user interfaces for performing domain-specific analyses of high interest to the Army, perform field testing, and deliver the SoilMAP system to the Army for technology demonstration and evaluation.