Abstract

THEOS, a Tool to Support Agricultural Policy in Thailand and in Neighbouring Countries

Patrick Houdry Pilot Projects Manager
ASTRIUM/Infoterra,
France
Email: patrick.houdry@astrium.eads.net

Dr. Darasri
GISTDA

Pr. Visharn
Naresuan University

Khun Tanittha
Dept. of Fisheries

Khun Walaiporn
Dept. of Agriculture

Khun Charin, Asset Capitalisation Bureau

Sustainable development of environmental-friendly agriculture requires operational tools to:
- Help farmers to better manage their parcels and get more revenues
- Predict yields to anticipate export market capacity
- Better monitor agricultural practices and assess environmental stress (pollution, irrigation)
- Etc.
To positively respond to these key requirements, actors involved in the decision & policy making process (i.e. agronomists, public authorities, cooperatives) need to be provided in real time with spatial information at different scales, ranging from the parcel (e.g. crop status assessment) to the regional scale (e.g. inventory, pressure on environment).From several years, satellites like SPOT have demonstrated their potential to regularly cover agricultural areas and to provide valuable information at a resolution well suited to address the above mentioned topics. The near-future Thai Earth Observation Satellite (THEOS) has been designed to be a key source of data for organisations willing to target agriculture applications.However, whatever the quality of the satellite images, to turn images into information and indicators require to process images with robust and scientifically sound methodologies.The service and application subsidiary of ASTRIUM (THEOS satellite manufacturer) called Infoterra has been very active in the development of RS-based applications for agriculture for several years. This led to set-up one of the main success story in EO-business, the "FARMSTAR" (precision farming) service, which relies on very innovative methodologies allowing to derive agronomic information from satellite images. Those methodologies are implemented in a tool called Overland fully developed and owned by Infoterra.On the basis of this expertise, GISTDA, EADS ASTRIUM, Infoterra and several Thai organisations agreed to start a collaborative work through the implementation of the THEOS Agriculture Pilot Project with the aim to set-up service provision capacity in Thailand targeting priority issues in the domain of agriculture.Second objective is to anticipate the future delivery of THEOS images and Value-Added-Products in prototyping priority applications with SPOT images so that services be operational when THEOS will be so.Concretely the THEOS agriculture pilot project encompasses four sub-topics addressing very important economic sectors: rice yield prediction, shrimp farm management, orange plantation damage assessment and land value assessment. For each targeted topic, one Thai organisation (so-called user focal point) is responsible to bring his expertise and his knowledge of local conditions, to collect requirements from all the other organisations interested in the project, and to make the evaluation of the information product as produced by GISTDA & ASTRIUM / infoterra.The different sub-projects are structured as follows:
- "Rice" sub-project aims to develop a RS-based methodology targeting yield prediction, to support Thai organisations such as Office of Agricultural Economics and Royal Irrigation Department to better manage the rice crop: market, water demand, diseases.

- A collaborative work has been undertaken with GISTDA (delivery of SPOT images) and Naresuan University (Pitsanulok, Thailand), research centre with a long experience on rice monitoring and also regional centre of GISTDA.

- "Shrimp" sub-project aims to support Department of Fisheries to monitor shrimp farms & shrimp ponds along time, mainly to assess whether farms are active, not active or abandoned.

- "Land" sub-project aims to support Asset Capitalisation Bureau to monitor land cover / land use and possible changes.

- "Orange" sub-project aims to support Department of Agriculture to monitor orange plantations with a strong focus on plantations affected by the green disease.

It is worth noting that :
è The different sub-projects are based on the exploitation of Overland software
è to foster the development of agriculture applications and to prepare the provision of operational services in Thailand, ASTRIUM & Infoterra have supplied GISTDA with the software package Overland and the relevant training program.

The proposed conference will focus on:

(i) the outcomes of the agriculture pilot project
(ii) the future perspectives in Thailand and in the region with THEOS