Top Stories
Maps Made for Disaster Management
For more than 5 years now, disaster managers at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies have been using an online "maproom" custom-made by IRI to help them get a quick and clear sense of what’s to come–information such as the likelihood the next 3 months will be unusually wet or dry, or where exceptionally heavy rainfall is expected in the next 6 days. Armed with such easy-to-use interactive data maps, humanitarian professionals are able to take action before disasters strike, ultimately saving lives and property. Read the full story.
Insuring 37,000 Rwandan Farmers Against DroughtThe Kilimo Salama index insurance project is a partnership between the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture, Rwanda’s Ministry of Agriculture, Rwanda’s SORAS Insurance and Swiss Re. IRI, supported by the US Agency for International Development, helped Kilimo Salama navigate the challenges of using satellite data for developing index insurance contracts and learn how to query IRI's Data Library in order to scale up the project. As a result, more than 37,000 low-income smallholder farmers in Rwanda have already been able to purchase a satellite-based index insurance product as part of a larger effort to increase farmers’ ability to make productive investments. Read the full story.
Published & Noteworthy
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Improving Crop Yield Prediction
A new paper published in Remote Sensing of the Environment shows how remote sensing data such as soil moisture and leaf area index can increase the accuracy of maize yields predicted by crop models.
"The next step is to combine this methodology with seasonal climate forecasts to improve lead time and accuracy of the predictions," says IRI agricultural scientist Amor Ines, lead author of the study.
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