Towards a Machine Learning-based Model for Automated Crop Type Mapping

In the field of smart farming, automated crop type mapping is a challenging task to guarantee fast and automatic management of the agricultural sector. With the emergence of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and geospatial technologies, new concepts were developed to provide realistic solutions to precision agriculture. The present study aims to present a machine learning-based model for automated crop-type mapping with high accuracy. The proposed model is based on the use of both optical and radar satellite images for the classification of crop types with machine learning-based employed to classify the time series of vegetation indices. Several indices extracted from both optical and radar data were calculated. Harmonical modelization was also applied to optical indices, and decomposed into harmonic terms to calculate the fitted values of the time series. The proposed model was implemented using the geospatial processing services of Google Earth Engine and tested with a case study with about 147 satellite images. The results show the annual variability of crops and allowed performing classifications and crop type mapping with accuracy that exceeds the performances of the other existing models.