skyclaim: using drones for crop insurance
TRANSCRIPT
How Drones are Changing the Crop Insurance Industry
Presented by
Cassidy Rankine, PhD
Agri-Trend Farm Forum Event 2016, Calgary, Alberta Dec. 7, 2016
Overview
• Crop Insurance: Why it can be controversial• Opportunities and Challenges for Remote Sensing
• Consumer Drones on the Farm: Technology Review
• Mapping Crop Damage with Drones: the Why and the How• Benefits to Farmers and Insurers• Current Challenges
• The SkyClaim System: Detailed Crop Loss Analysis Made Easy• How you can use your drone• Case Study
Crop Insurance: Grand Challenges and Opportunities for Innovation
Canadian Crop Insurance Trends
Natural hazards have a major impact on crop yield locally and regionally
Crop insurance coverage and costs are increasing across the nation
Source: Zulauf, C. "Why Crop Insurance Has Become an Issue." farmdoc daily (6):76, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, April 20, 2016.
Crop Insurance and the National Debt
‘Water availability is the most critical factor for sustaining crop productivity in rain-fed
agriculture.’
HarvestChoice, 2010. "Rainfall Variability and Crop Yield Potential." International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC., and University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN
Climate change will significantly affect the average crop yield and inter-annual variability for most farms…
‘An Assessment of the Canadian Federal-Provincial Crop Production Insurance Program under Future Climate Change Scenarios in Ontario’. Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Guelph, 2013
…will production insurance be too risky for insurers or too expensive for farmers as climate uncertainty rises?
Despite technological improvements that increase corn yields, extreme weather events have caused significant yield reductions in some years. Source: USGCRP (2009)
The problem: labor-intensive crop insurance claims process
Bad weather Crop loss……… Manual Loss Inspection
The current process is NOT readily scaled-up
Alberta Provincial Claim Volumes
Insurance providers must work around the clock to tackle claim volume
…but manual processing services are hard to scale-up during disaster periods
AB Hail Storms
Remote Sensing of Crop Damages
Going from satellite or aerial imagery to meaningful maps can be difficult!
Powerful tool for regional damage detection and mapping
Remote Sensing: Hail Damage
Reference: Peters, A.J., S.C. Griffin, A. Vina and L. Ji. Use of Remotely Sensed Data for Assessing Crop Hail Damage, Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing Vol. 66, No. 11 November 2000, pp. 1349- 1355.
‘Hail damage in corn and soybeans can be detected and mapped with remotely sensed imagery.’
Remote Sensing: Estimating Yield
Yield measured by combine harvester (left), yield estimation based on multiangular CHRIS data (hyperspectral and multidirectional satellite sensor; middle) and AVIS data (Airborne Visible Infrared Imaging Spectrometer; right). Both images were taken around 6 weeks before harvest (June). Source: Vista GmbH
Satellite Imagery: Atmospheric Interference
• 70% or more of the Earth’s surface is covered by cloud at any given time
A major limitation to remote detection of farmland productivity
Remote Sensing for Crop Loss Estimation
Advantages• Large areas surveyed quickly
• Hard objective evidence of damage extent and severity
• Data can easily be shared and validated collaboratively
• Readily Scaled-Up for disaster scenarios
Challenges• Quality data acquisition can be
difficult or expensive -> Not On-Demand
• Requires advanced understanding of remote sensing biophysics
• Image interpretation and information extraction is not easy and can be subjective
• Humans are good at pattern recognition but not quantification
• Computers are good at quantifying large information, but still not as good at visual interpretation as humans
Consumer Drones on the Farm: Technology Review
How are UAV’s better for field surveys?
FlexibleA huge advantage of smaller, more
flexible UAVs is that they can go places manned aircraft never could
Safer Replacing large manned aircraft with small high-tech machinery
cuts down on accidents and liability
FasterWith quick setup and launch as well as easy transport, UAVs are faster than any surveyors on the ground
Cheaper With the lower operational costs of
UAVs, manned aircraft are not as cost effective as their unmanned
alternatives
• Consumer drones now come packed
full of high-tech features and are
ready to fly right out of the box
Field Surveying with Drones
Obtaining a good drone map of your field is easier than ever before but still requires some expert practical knowledge and a bit of luck
• Known Issues or concerns:Uneven lighting and cloud shadows, image overlap, moving objects, bad weather, signal interference, birds of prey, no drone zones, etc.
1. Plan your mission → 2. Fly the field → 3. Process imagery
How drones are being used for agriculture
• High Res Mapping/Imaging• Field Problem Scouting
• Plant stress detection with RGB, NIR, and Thermal Cameras
• Drainage Issues
• Irrigation/Machinery Failures
• Variable Rate Prescriptions
• Spot Applications• Pesticide/herbicide and
nutrients
Farm Drone Use
Beyond NDVI: UAV Vegetation Metrics
• Vegetation greenness index maps like NDVI measure photosynthetic pigments….period.
• These maps can tell you where there may be a problem, but not what the problem is!
Return on Investment: UAV crop scouting
ROI Case 1: Early Weed Detection• Soybean grower was able to detect the mid-field weed problem before it
spread, treat it precisely to optimize input costs, and prevent a 13% crop loss.
· Total acres: 110· % of Crop Loss Avoided: 13%· Crop Loss Avoidance Savings: $5,297· Savings from Precise Herbicide Application: $1,925· Total Benefit: $7,222
Source: http://agribotix.com/casestudies/#earlydetection
Mapping Crop Damage with Drones: Ideal for insurance
Crop damage inspections and loss assessments require both the farmer and adjuster to work together in a timely manner to inspect as much of the damaged area as possible and come to an agreement for each claim…
…this rarely happens quickly and efficiently
No more than 30% loss out here
I think I’ll lose at least 50%
Eye-Level
Aerial View
Severe Weather Damages
Ultra-High Res ImageAnalysis
1-5cm resolution enables high accuracy
measurements of:
-Plant Count and
Plant Area Index
-Canopy Closure
-Plant Defoliation
Ultra-HD Orthomosaics
Example of wheat lodging with excessive rainfall.
58 acres wheat field - 3.5cm pixels
As seen from 400ft using 16MP UAV camera
Lodging Damage Classification
Skymatics Case Study: Canola Hail Damage
• Severe hail storm in Okotoks AB June 28 2016
• Hail swath moved to the southeast across the fields with very localized damage
• 100% damage at 6th leaf stage
Hail damage gradually increases from SW to NE
No Hail Damage
Hail Damage
Image enhanced for damage visualization
Hail Damage
No Hail Damage 62% field damage based on bloom density
55% reduction in canola yield
Normal Bloom Density
Damage AreaBloom Density
Hail Simulation StudiesAlberta Innovates Technology Futures Ag Research Plots – Vegreville, AB
Heavy Damage
Heavy Damage
No Hail Damage
Hail Damage
>75% fewer seed heads
3D Digital Canopy Surface ModelsUsing UAV photogrammetry
RGB Elevation Point Cloud
SimulatedHail Damage →
‘Ultimately, they came up with a crop loss of almost 50%, compared to the 34% offered by the insurance adjustor.’
‘This amounted to an additional $1,100 more per acre above the original claim amount.’
Why don’t farmers & insurers use this already?
• Little incentive for innovation in crop insurance industry
• Drone technology was too immature even 2 years ago
• High level of technical knowledge required for proper image collection and analysis
• Most drone companies provide only imagery and no interpretation
The SkyClaim System: Detailed Crop Loss Analysis Made Easy
Field damage is quickly assessed using cutting-edge consumer
drone technology
Imagery is processed by our cloud-based machine learning
algorithm
Detailed damage report with full-field measurements delivered
that same day
What is the SkyClaim System?
SkyClaim uses high definition aerial photos to generate precise crop damage reports and yield loss estimations for crop insurance claims
Our goal is to save both farmers and insurers time and money while increasing the precision and repeatability of crop loss reporting
Our mobile software solution is ideal for fields that are difficult to access or too large to thoroughly inspect using traditional means
Broad Overview of the SkyClaim System
Weather Related Event
• Crop damage or failure occurs
On-Demand Field Mapping
with UAV
• Cloud-based data processing and analysis
Online Reporting
• Includes damage delineation and/or crop yield loss estimation
SkyClaim
image classification and problem area
delineation
Topographic and multi-spectral analysis for crop health and yield mapping
Automated Analysis
Interactive Damage Maps and Intuitive Reports
▪ Using human-supervised machine learning algorithms to estimate crop damage area and yield loss potential
▪ Automated report generation with simplified maps and statistical results
▪ Mobile map for interactive ground validation
Integrating SkyClaim Into the Claims Process
Adapted from Chandler 2001 – Remote Sensing and GIS Framework for Crop Insurance
CROP DAMAGE AND LOSS REPORT
Optional service
SkyClaim
Key Benefits: Farmers and InsurersBenefits For Farmers Benefits for Loss Adjusters
• Fly and capture your own imagery
• On-demand full-field damage summary• Precise measurements of damage extent• Independent second opinion for your claims
• Fast overview of large field
• Assess hard to access areas• Better target your sample locations• More accurate loss extrapolation
Example ReportWheat Lodging
• Hassle-free analysis
• Detailed yet intuitive information
• Scalable to any size field and any number of claims
Wildlife Damages: Deer or Cow Trails• Study in the US found deer along induce an average loss of 10% to croplands
• Loss cost ranged from $10-$30 per acreEx. 12% track area in Canola
Elk trail damage in canola near Red Deer Alberta,
Canola Herbivory
•Northern Scotland•Rabbit and bird damage
Skyclaim Beta App on Drone Deploy
• Skymatics Crop Damage Analysis
• Submit map with location annotations and photos
• Will be releasing our own app for this spring 2017
Reverse Innovation: Drones for Indian NCIS
• Reverse innovation or trickle-up innovation is a term referring to an innovation seen first, or likely to be used first, in the developing world before spreading to the industrialized world
Thank You
Presented by Cassidy Rankine, PhD
Agri-Trend Farm Forum Event 2016, Calgary, Alberta Dec. 7, 2016
How Drones are Changing the Crop Insurance Industry
