Satellite data for Weather Index Insurance-AgricuLtural EaRly warning system (SatWIN-ALERT)

对于非洲2亿多依赖雨水灌溉农业的农民来说，干旱是生死攸关的问题。由于无法获得保险等风险管理工具，他们的脆弱性往往会加剧，这也限制了他们在农场承担生产风险的能力。指数保险是传统保险的一种负担得起的替代选择。指数保险的补偿是基于天气或地区收益指标，而不是测量到的损失。然而，只有当被保险的指数公平地反映了农民和保险公司的风险时，指数保险才会提高对气候冲击的韧性。利用多种数据来源和模型，索引设计过程正变得越来越复杂。然而，一定程度的基本风险(即补偿与可观察到的损失不匹配)是不可避免的，因为保险的设计并不是针对所有风险。预测气象干旱(降雨赤字)和农业干旱(土壤水分赤字)之间的复杂关系所产生的基本风险是农业保险部门面临的一项关键挑战。我们提出了一个新的系统，SatWIN-ALERT，它可以在基本风险事件发生时实时部署来检测和预测它们。因此，它可以解锁季节行动(如加强监测)，或允许及时进行季节后指数评估或行动，使援助机构和政府能够预测基本风险事件，并采取行动支持面临未补偿农业损失的农民。实际上，预测赔付和亏损的工具弥合了临时指数保险和基于预测的金融之间的差距。SatWIN-ALERT提供了一种将现有平台发布的数据合并到干旱综合评估和随后的赔偿中的手段。因此，它可以集成到成熟和可信的保险设计系统中，例如ARC Risk Viewer(ARV)或IRI Social Network for Index Insurance Design(SNIID)。SatWIN-ALERT建立在现有最先进的实践基础上，采取复杂的基本风险管理方法，使指数保险在气候风险管理和发展中发挥更好的作用。我们还汇集了新的、现有的参与性研究和气象研究，以建立适合官方发展援助国家业务使用的系统。为此，我们依靠对环境状况监测的基础研究，以及最近对预报的改进--特别是在分季节到季节性的时间尺度上，与现有的合作伙伴合作，为数十万农民带来成果。我们将重点关注对我们的合作伙伴重要的国家，特别是马拉维，用于我们的参与性研究，以及尼日利亚、塞内加尔、马拉维、赞比亚和埃塞俄比亚(等)用于我们的基本风险案例研究。总之，拟议的项目将开发一种新的运营系统(SatWIN-ALERT)，使农民能够基于最先进的模型、观察和预测从稳健的金融工具中受益。与非洲领先的从业者合作，将使SatWIN-ALERT能够在现有的保险体系内，彻底改变基础风险管理，并建立数百万农民对与天气有关的灾害的适应能力。

For the more than 200 million farmers in Africa who depend on rain-fed agriculture, drought is a matter of life and death. Their vulnerability is often aggravated by a lack of access to risk management tools such as insurance, which also limits their ability to take productive risks on their farms. Index insurance, where compensation is based on weather or area yield metrics, rather than on measured losses, is an affordable alternative to traditional insurance. However, index insurance will only increase resilience to climate shocks if the index insured fairly reflects the risk for both farmers and insurers. Index design processes are becoming increasingly sophisticated, utilizing multiple data-sources and models. A certain degree of basis risk (where compensation doesn't match observed losses) is, however, inevitable as insurance is not designed to target every risk. Anticipating basis risk that ensues from the complexity in the relationship between meteorological drought (rainfall deficit) and agricultural drought (soil moisture deficit) is a key challenge for the agricultural insurance sector. We propose a new system, SatWIN-ALERT, which can be deployed in real time to detect and predict basis risk events as they happen. As such, it could unlock in-season actions (such as increased monitoring), or allow timely post-season index assessment or action, enabling aid agencies and governments to anticipate basis risk events, and take action to support farmers who are facing uncompensated agricultural losses. In effect, the facility to predict pay outs and losses bridges the gap between post hoc index insurance and forecast-based finance. SatWIN-ALERT provides a means of combining the data issued by existing platforms into integrated assessments of droughts and subsequent compensation. As such, it can be integrated into well-established and trusted insurance design systems, such as the ARC risk viewer (ARV) or the IRI Social Network for Index Insurance Design (SNIID). SatWIN-ALERT builds on existing state-of-the-art practices to take a sophisticated approach to basis risk management, allowing index insurance to play an improved role within climate risk management and development. We also bring together novel existing participatory and meteorological research to build systems that are suitable for operational use in ODA countries. To do this, we draw on fundamental research on monitoring of environmental conditions, and on recent improvements in forecasts - especially on sub-seasonal to seasonal time scales, working with established partners to bring results to hundreds of thousands of farmers. We will focus on countries identified as important to our partners, specifically Malawi for our participatory research, plus Nigeria, Senegal, Malawi, Zambia and Ethiopia (amongst others) for our basis risk case studies.In summary, the proposed project will develop a novel operational system (SatWIN-ALERT), which empowers farmers to benefit from robust financial instruments, based on state-of-the-art models, observations and forecasts. Partnership with leading practitioners in Africa will enable SatWIN-ALERT to sit within existing insurance systems to revolutionise basis risk management and build the resilience of millions of farmers to weather-related hazard.