Since 2012, the rice crop monitoring initiative RIICE – Remote Sensing-based Information and Insurance for Crops in Emerging Economies – has been helping governments and farmers in South East Asia and India to better forecast harvests in the face of an increasing number of extreme weather events. The initiative has been collecting satellite-based data for land under rice cultivation in Cambodia, India, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. Real-time monitoring and forecasting enables government authorities to take action and implement emergency measures long before harvests fail. The data collected is also used by insurance systems, for example in India, to make crop insurance more efficient and payouts more transparent.
RIICE is implemented by a public-private partnership of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, the International Rice Research Institute, the software company sarmap SA, the Swiss Re and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).
Further information: https://www.giz.de/en/workingwithgiz/43933.html