Setting the scene: Digital Innovation in Agro-Insurance
Agro-Insurance depends on trustworthy data to ensure smooth operations and maintain client trust. Precise information allows insurers to evaluate risks, determine premiums, and design coverage plans that reflect farmers' unique needs. This data also speeds up claims processing, ensuring farmers are compensated without unnecessary delays. Transparency and accuracy are key in building strong relationships between insurers and their clients.
In an earlier blog 'Recent trends in Earth Observation for agro-insurance' we already discussed a great example of satellite-based data use for insurance.
But what additional value can drones bring to the table?
Through the VLAIO Coock OpsDrone project, we've explored how drones provide highly detailed, real-time data that enables faster and more precise damage assessments.
Case 1: Drought damage for a maize field
In June 2023, Flanders faced significant drought conditions, severely impacting crop growth despite heavy rains at the end of the summer.
In September, we joined an insurance expert to assess drought damage in maize fields. Using a lightweight consumer drone (<250g), we conducted multiple flights and processed the data with VITO's MAPEO software. The results contained detailed field maps, including maize plant height measurements that revealed zones with reduced biomass.
This data enabled us to calculate the affected area where plant height fell below a critical threshold, providing a quantifiable measure of drought damage. Combined with expert yield quality assessments, such as corn cob analysis, we gained a comprehensive understanding of the total crop loss.
Case 2: Flood damage for Potato fields
The autumn of 2023 and spring of 2024 were exceptionally wet, making it difficult to cultivate agricultural fields and delaying the planting of potatoes and other crops. In the lower parts of fields, water also accumulated, resulting in the rotting of the planted potatoes and causing substantial losses.
We worked with the Colruyt Group to map a 4-hectare potato field on one of their experimental sites that had been affected by flood damage. Through MAPEO, we conducted crop cover classification to identify areas of low, high and no crop emergence. The results showed that approximately 35% of the field was flood-damaged.
For a farmer, these maps can be used as a basis for task maps and save costly fertilizers, pesticides or fungicides.
For crop insurance companies these maps and statistics can be used as a basis to calculate the damage caused by a specific weather event.
The final yield is certainly affected by various factors, such as weather conditions and diseases. However, obtaining a clear understanding of the circumstances right after the flooding event is essential for assessing its impact on overall yield loss.
Reducing Costs with Innovative Drone Sampling
One standout advantage of small commercial drones is their low operational cost and ease of use, thanks to limited regulatory constraints. The VITO Drone Sampling method, introduced in the Coock OpsDrone project, takes this efficiency even further. By reducing the overlap in drone imagery from 80% to near-zero, this method further optimizes both flight and data processing times without compromising accuracy.
In the potato field example, this innovation cut flight time from 21 minutes to just 3 minutes, and processing time from 1 hour 44 minutes to 17 minutes, while delivering nearly identical results to traditional mapping methods.
Conclusions
Reliable information is the cornerstone of modern agro-insurance, enabling effective risk management and strengthening trust between insurers and farmers. Drones are proving invaluable for a rapid crop damage assessment, while innovative methods like drone sampling further reduce costs and enhance efficiency.
Register here to get more general information on this and other agricultural cases and technologies for the agro-industry.
