Agricultural Natural-Damage Assessment From the Air
Agricultural damage assessment is traditionally done by walking the field and sampling points, and that is exactly what creates disputes over extent. A drone maps the entire plot in a single flight and quantifies how many dunams were affected and how severely, instead of extrapolating from a few points.
โBack to Damage AssessmentHow it works
Point sampling vs. full mapping of the plot
A ground assessment checks a handful of points and generalises from them across the whole area. On a large plot, and especially where damage is uneven, that generalisation can miss whole dunams in either direction. A drone flight covers the entire plot and produces a continuous map of the damage, so the affected area is measured rather than estimated. At the compensation scales common in agriculture, that gap translates directly into money.
Multispectral mapping quantifies damage the eye cannot grade
A multispectral camera produces a vegetation-health map that distinguishes a lightly affected zone from a severely damaged one and from a total loss, not merely damaged from undamaged. After hail or a storm this makes it possible to grade damage intensity across the whole plot and submit a well-founded assessment. The same technology serves ongoing crop monitoring, see crop monitoring and NDVI mapping under precision agriculture.
Farm structures, greenhouses and covers
Natural damage in agriculture does not end at the crop. A storm tears greenhouse sheeting and shade nets, distorts structures and brings down canopies, and each of these is insured property in its own right. Aerial documentation shows the condition of covers and structures from above, where tears and collapses are visible in a way that cannot be documented from the ground. In Israel the principal insurer of natural damage to agriculture is Kanat, the Fund for Insurance of Natural Damage in Agriculture, and damage assessments are carried out through visits to the affected plots.
What you receive
- Damage map of the entire plot, not a point sample
- Quantification of the affected area in dunams and by severity
- Multispectral mapping to assess damage intensity
- Documentation of greenhouses, shade nets, canopies and structures
- An orderly field report for submission to the insurer