Utilization of remotely sensed data for agricultural insurance as adaptation to climate change

Abstract:

Impact of climate change is not only seen on food production but also on food security, socio-economics of the poor and sustainable development of society. Adaptation to climate change is a pressing issue throughout the world to reduce the risks along with the plans and strategies for food security and sustainable development. As a key adaptation to the climate change, agricultural insurance is expected to play an important role in stabilizing agricultural production through compensating the losses caused by the climate change, meaning that the agricultural insurance can contribute to promotion of the stability in food security as one of 4 pillars defined by FOA of the United Nations.

Having the above as background, we conducted research on utilization of remote sensing data including satellite data to assess damage ratio of rice production which could be used for calculation of indemnity in the agricultural insurance. Our study site was in West Java, Indonesia.

For assessment of the damage ratio, estimation of rice yield is a key. As the result of our study, rice yield in dry season could be estimated at level of 1 % significance using SPOT5 satellite data taken in 2014, and the 10-fold cross-validation result was 0.7t/ha. Then, the decrease ratio in rice yield about each individual paddy field was calculated using data on the estimated result and the average yield of the past 10 years.

According to the Indonesian agricultural insurance, if the damage of rice reaches 75% or above, the indemnity shall be paid to farmers. In our study site, the result showed that about 80 paddy fields located in lower irrigation region were the area to be paid by the insurance.

Our study results suggest that the utilization of remote sensing data is much useful and promising for assessment of the damage ratio of rice production with precise, quick and quantitative, and also it can be incorporated into the insurance procedures.