Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year (2017-2018 to 2018-2019).

Mission Geospatial (MGeo) is a company with extensive experience in providing professional and technicalx000D
consulting services in different domains of surveying, remote sensing, and geospatial information systemsx000D
(GIS). They are seeking a feasible, affordable and sustainable solution for monitoring the health status ofx000D
potato crops. Therefore, MGeo has contacted Dr. Shahbazi to conduct a research project; the aim of this projectx000D
is using techniques of data mining for detecting water-stressed and disease-infected crops. The input datax000D
includes imagery captured at multiple spectral bands and three-dimensional (3D) models reconstructed fromx000D
images. The advantages of this solution are fourfold: i) it does not attempt to establish a direct mathematicalx000D
relationship between spectral information and biophysical attributes of plants; ii) the characteristics of stressedx000D
or diseased plants and the soil in which they are growing are learnt indirectly using data-mining techniques; iii)x000D
the effect of soil features on the plants is acknowledged during this learning process; and iv) by utilizing 3Dx000D
information, the impact of canopy structure and height on the results is considered as well. The developedx000D
solution for MGeo will meet their clients' needs in terms of efficiency (applicable in large industrial scales),x000D
affordability (accessible to both large industry groups and smallholder farmers) and precision (reliable andx000D
repeatable with known accuracy limits). Also, this solution for automatic crop disease detection offers ax000D
promising step towards sustainable agriculture which promotes both economic stability for Canadian farmersx000D
and food security for Canadian citizens.