Vesper 1.5 – Spatial Prediction Software for Precision Agriculture

VESPER 1.5 is a shareware software program, written to provide rigourous spatial prediction techniques for the precision agriculture industry. It offers a range of options to deal with data sets of varying data density, spatial distribution, and observation uncertainty. Such data sets are now gathered from a range of realtime yield, soil and crop sensors and through manual sampling regimes. Specifically, the program provides the flexibility to calculate global and local variogram models, undertake global and local kriging in either punctual or block form and output the parameters and estimates in an ASCII text format. The program provides control of the semivariogram calculation and choice of models that may be fit to the input data. A boundary and prediction grid may be generated in the software or supplied as an external file. VEPSER 1.5 allows user defined neighbourhood and prediction-block sizes, along with a number of more advanced controls. It provides a real-time graphical display of the semivariogram modeling and a progress (and final) map of the kriged estimates. The value of the local variogram/kriging process in dealing with data sets generated for precision agriculture operations is shown here with a statistical comparison of the standard prediction techniques over a 100ha field. A comparison using a small portion (~1ha) of another field is also provided to illustrate both the visual impact of each technique and introduce the benefits block kriging of estimates brings to many of these data sets. Having the ability to tailor the prediction process to individual data sets is essential for Precision Agriculture (PA) where data quantity, density and measurement quality varies.