“The National Union of Agricultural Insurers continues to explore the possibilities of introducing new technologies that help insurance companies in obtaining independent objective data for underwriting and simplifying claims settlement procedures. One of the new areas of this work is the development of an agricultural monitoring system using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in agricultural insurance. This is a necessary addition to the space crop monitoring technologies already widely used by the NSA in domestic agricultural insurance,” said NSA President Korney Bizhdov, commenting on the results of testing a hardware and software complex with an UAV developed by the Agromonitoring Center.
Testing was carried out by NSA experts during June-July on the basis of a number of farms in the Southern Federal District. Experts positively assessed the possibility of using the developed tool for assessing the state of crops using high-resolution images obtained from UAVs in the fields, including the facts of emergencies in the insurance area.
The list of capabilities of the hardware-software complex includes the creation of an electronic field map with precise dimensions, a digital elevation model, an assessment of soil quality, as well as the density, germination and quality of crops. Also, the technology can be successfully used to count the number of garden plants and assess the condition of perennial plantations.
And another important aspect of the use of UAVs is the possibility of a clear assessment of damage from natural phenomena, even in those areas that are not accessible to employees of insurance companies after an emergency without risk to their health.
“NAIA introduces innovative methods, focusing primarily on the requests of participants in the agricultural insurance system - insurers, farmers, subsidizing bodies of the agro-industrial complex. Photo and video shooting from UAVs is a reliable alternative to satellite images when they cannot be taken, for example, due to stable and low clouds. The capabilities of hardware and software systems with drones can be successfully used not only to assess damage to crops in the event of an insured event, but also to determine the condition of crops and predict crop yields in specific fields and territories of individual farms,” emphasized Korney Bizhdov, President of the NSA.
According to Federal Law No. 260-F3 "On State Support in the Field of Agricultural Insurance", in Russia, within the framework of a centralized system, state support is provided for insurance of risks in crop production, livestock farming and commercial aquaculture. Since January 1, 2016, a single all-Russian association, the National Union of Agricultural Insurers, has been operating on the agricultural insurance market with state support. Only insurance companies-members of the union have the right to conclude insurance contracts with state support; insurance is carried out on the basis of uniform standard rules for each insurance program.