Aug192021
Posted by:admin
Caspian Climate Conversations | Episode 1
Featuring G. Satish Raju, Partner (India) – VanderSat
Satish Raju joined VanderSat as an Indian business partner in October 2020. Earlier, Satish was the CEO of the India Branch of Swiss Re where he spent nearly 20 years in India and across global locations- Zurich, Sydney, London, and Singapore. He has vast experience in the insurance industry across the Property & Casualty sector.
To tune into the recording, please use the available link here: https://www.mentza.com/circles/2987
Please find below a summarized transcript of this interesting conversation:
What does VanderSat do?
VanderSat is a Netherlands-based company that processes satellite-derived soil moisture data at extremely high resolution across various geographies at high-frequency time intervals. Vandersat’s detailed and accurate soil moisture maps (among other satellite data analysis services like temperature, humidity, vegetation optical depth, and biomass) aid crop insurers, agricultural producers, commodity traders etc., inaccurately predicting, preparing, and pricing their products. Through analysis on daily observations of raw satellite data, VanderSat’s products (accessed through APIs) can be used by the clients to make better, more informed decisions at any scale – whether monitoring crops, predicting the weather, performing predictive analysis, or preventing forest fires.
While the raw satellite data is available via many public domains, there are hardly any directly actionable insights that could be generated by the farmers, entrepreneurs, or even corporates using that data. This is where Vandersat’s scientific expertise and analytical acumen provide huge value addition.
What is VanderSat’s competitive advantage in analyzing soil moisture trends in India?
In July, VanderSat released the 1st version of the soil map moisture for its clients in a 100-meter resolution. This mapping called the Soil and Moisture Anomaly mapping compares the recent observation with the 19-year history to predict the deviation from the pattern, and hence serves as an early-warning system for many of its clientele. While IMD (Indian Meteorological Department) also provides the rainfall data to give an idea of soil moisture content, the comparison dataset for the analysis used by IMD is 1950- 2000 period, and hence could be less relevant considering the recent climate changes that have taken place in the last 2 decades. Moreover, the data point on rainfall could certainly be painting a different picture than the actual status since not all the rainfall does get absorbed by the ground, and a portion of it in fact runs off the ground, and some of the rainfall gets evaporated as well. Hence, soil moisture is a better indicator than rainfall to gauge the yield or productivity of crops.
Could you throw some light on any other product/services of VanderSat apart from the soil moisture analysis?
One of the great drawbacks of biomass imaging done earlier was an interruption by the cloud cover due to which real-time data would be unavailable. However, as a first, VanderSat recently launched a Biomass product combining optimal imagery, soil-moisture anomaly along active radar datasets to provide an uninterrupted version of the Biomass imaging – enabling consistent monitoring of crop growth and enhanced agronomic decision making. This optimizes crop production, saves time and money, and supports on-farm sustainability efforts through enhanced application efficiency of crop inputs. E.g., the peak water consumption for the cotton crop is during the 3rd and 4th months after sowing, therefore looking at the various soil and climate parameters of a particular topography could help farmers plan the sowing accordingly. Hence, using such advanced and intelligent satellite imagery analysis for agriculture and related businesses has led to sharper insights and enhanced precision.
Could you share some examples of use cases of VanderSat’s products?
Institutions like Swiss Re and other BFSI have found VanderSat’s products useful in areas like Index Insurance for their portfolio, where insurance companies in eastern Europe compensate the farmers according to the variance in the geoclimatic data provided by VanderSat for the portfolio geographies. In India, the same could find an application under Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) to determine the drought-prone months for specific geographies and underwrite credit risk scoring accordingly.
