VIPMET: New real-time data filtering-based automatic agricultural weather station

Agricultural weather stations are normally utilized to register weather variables (e.g., temperature, relative air humidity, solar radiation and wind speed). These data can be used to estimate daily and hourly reference crop evapotranspiration (ETo), which can provide important information for water resources optimization in irrigation scheduling. However, data captured by actual agricultural weather stations are not filtered, which may lead to a bad estimation of the parameters and consequently a deficient water management, endangering the horticultural crops. This paper presents the validation and filtering process for automagic agricultural weather stations (VIPMET), a new station that is endowed with a real-time data filtering process to ensure validation of the acquired data. In addition, the station can be remotely controlled for automatic data collection and management tasks through a 3G mobile router. A comparison between data registered by the station and data supplied by the nearest Murcian Agricultural Information Service (Spain) was carried out for evaluation purposes. © 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.