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

对于依赖雨水灌溉农业的2亿多非洲农民来说，干旱是一个生死攸关的问题。由于无法获得保险等风险管理工具，她们的脆弱性往往更加严重，这也限制了她们在农场承担生产风险的能力。指数保险的赔偿是基于天气或地区产量指标，而不是测量损失，是传统保险的一种负担得起的替代品。然而，指数保险只有在投保的指数公平地反映了农民和保险公司的风险时，才能增加对气候冲击的抵御能力。索引设计过程越来越复杂，使用多种数据源和模型。然而，一定程度的基本风险（赔偿与观察到的损失不匹配）是不可避免的，因为保险并非针对每一种风险。预测气象干旱（降雨量不足）和农业干旱（土壤水分不足）之间关系的复杂性所带来的基础风险是农业保险部门面临的一个关键挑战。我们提出了一个新的系统，SatWIN-ALERT，它可以部署在真实的时间检测和预测的基础风险事件，因为它们发生。因此，它可以解锁季节行动（如增加监测），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，预测赔付和损失的工具弥合了事后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结合到干旱综合评估和随后的补偿中的手段。因此，它可以集成到完善和可信的保险设计系统中，例如ARC风险查看器（ARV）或IRI指数保险设计社交网络（SNIID）。SatWIN-ALERT建立在现有的最先进的实践基础上，采取复杂的基础风险管理方法，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参与性和气象研究，以建立适合ODA国家业务使用的系统。为此，我们利用对环境状况监测的基础研究，以及最近在预测方面的改进-特别是在亚季节到季节的时间尺度上，与成熟的合作伙伴合作，为数十万农民带来成果。我们将把重点放在对我们的合作伙伴来说重要的国家，特别是马拉维，我们将进行参与性研究，加上尼日利亚，塞内加尔，马拉维，赞比亚和埃塞俄比亚（以及其他国家），我们将进行基础风险案例研究。总之，拟议的项目将开发一个新的操作系统（SatWIN-ALERT），使农民能够从强大的金融工具中受益，基于最先进的模型，观察和预测。与非洲领先从业者的合作将使SatWIN-ALERT能够在现有的保险系统中进行革命性的基础风险管理，并建立数百万农民对天气相关灾害的复原力。

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.