H2020 BEACON Project: Promoting agricultural insurance based on Earth observation data
- Type Project
- Status Filled
- Execution 2019 -2022
- Assigned Budget 2.351.700,9 €
- Scope Europeo
- Autonomous community Madrid, Comunidad de
- Main source of financing Horizon 2020
- Project website https://doi.org/10.3030/821964
BEACON’s uniqueness lies in its holistic approach, integrating several technological and methodological innovations at every step, offering a novel and versatile tool for all AgI providers to utilize. BEACON, by leveraging EO data, goes beyond the current state of the art in using EO data for crop and weather monitoring, risk and exposure assessment, making claims and management processes more efficient, fraud detection, index development, EO service development, etc., while transforming traditional AgI into innovative EO-enabled AgI services and processes. Specifically, BEACON advances the inclusion of EO satellites within AgI processes by offering a solution that facilitates the adoption of EO data, maximizing the use of derived value-added services without the hassle of prior implementations; It develops a fully automated operational processing chain for EO data, including downloading, preprocessing, generating standardized EO-based products, and storage, providing efficient information delivery to both value-added services and end-users. It adopts smart contract and blockchain technology that will reduce operational and administrative costs by transforming traditional processes into automated ones.
During previous reporting periods, significant efforts have been made to develop, calibrate, and validate services to deliver satisfactory results through a set of automated and/or semi-automated EO processing workflows and advanced crop growth simulation models. BEACON successfully engaged 17 AgI stakeholders in the co-creation process, leveraging the development of guidelines and requirements from the AgI sector on a global scale. Furthermore, BEACON successfully completed two pilot implementation iterations testing and validating the BEACON toolbox. Specifically, BEACON-derived results have been monitored through alerts/notifications generated by the toolbox and displayed to end-users and validated based on feedback collected by the scientific and technical teams.
The main outcomes of this process are that BEACON managed to increase risk assessment accuracy by 60% and achieve 100% acceptance of data speed and information availability. Regarding the AgI process cycle time, it is clear that the BEACON toolbox could offer a significant cycle time reduction, especially for contracts covering calamities such as frost, floods, fires, and windstorms, where AgI actors could now complete a farmer's assessment and compensation within one week (compared to the traditional period of 1, 3, and 6 months).
For plots insured by hail, BEACON provided a more accurate damage assessment less than 40 days after the extreme weather event, resulting in time savings, even for smaller areas. On average, the reduction in AgI process cycle time is estimated to range between 95% and 70%. Similarly, the automation achieved at the AgI company level reached over 90% and could be further increased when the BEACON toolbox is directly integrated with the ERP and SAP systems already in use.
Overall, BEACON offers 9 products (Health Monitoring, Crop Yield Estimation, Crop Burn Detection, Standing Water Flood Detection, Drought Assessment, Biomass Estimation, Historical and Real-Time Climate Data, Weather Forecasts/Weather Hazard Probability, Seasonal Yield Prediction), formatting the core elements of BEACON’s toolbox; those services included: Crop Monitoring, Damage Assessment Calculator, Damage Prevention/Forecasting, Early Warning System, Weather Forecast, Anti-Parcel Fraud Inspector, Blockchain/Smart Contracts.
The agricultural insurance sector is the most weather-dependent of all insurance services. Premium calculations and new product development depend heavily on the constantly changing climate and the high variability of extreme weather events, for which historical records are either unavailable or insufficiently accurate. Furthermore, damage assessment and claims processing are quite costly, including high operational and administrative costs, as verifying a claim requires on-site inspections.
The results of such inspections are often controversial, as the final estimates are made by inspectors who, by human nature, are less objective and less independent, resulting in partially substantiated assessments, resulting in higher costs for AGI companies.
BEACON is a commercial services toolbox that combines cutting-edge EO technology with meteorological intelligence and blockchain technology, providing AgI companies with a robust and cost-effective suite of services that enables them to mitigate the impact of weather uncertainty by estimating the risk of AgI products; reducing the number of on-site visits for claims verification; reducing operational and administrative costs for tracking insured rates and processing contracts; and designing more accurate and personalized contracts.
The objective of the BEACON project is to develop a package of commercial services that enables insurers to exploit the untapped market potential of agricultural insurance, leveraging innovations in Earth observation, weather intelligence, and ICT/blockchain technology. BEACON will enable insurers to mitigate the impact of weather uncertainty by estimating the risk of agricultural insurance products, reducing the number of on-site visits for claims verification, reducing operational and administrative costs for monitoring insured indices and managing contracts, and designing more accurate and personalized contracts. Through an early warning service, they will be able to inform their clients (farmers) about potential weather-related crop risks and advise them on taking the necessary measures to mitigate the impact of climate change on their crops.
Earth observation (EO) data from the Copernicus Sentinel missions, as well as from missions contributing to Copernicus, will be used to develop data products that complement the information used by insurers to design their products and assess natural disasters. Meteorological intelligence based on data assimilation, numerical weather prediction, and ensemble seasonal forecasting will be used to verify the occurrence of a catastrophic weather event and predict future risks.
ICT/blockchain technologies will be used for smart contract services, providing insurers with an automated method for paying policyholders. BEACON services will be implemented in the operational environments of more than 10 companies in the insurance sector, openly demonstrating and validating their value proposition and acceptance as a commercial solution. A business model will be developed and validated using the Lean Start-up methodology, and a global implementation of BEACON will be designed.
- KARAVIAS MESITES ASFALISEON KAI SYMVOULOI ASFALISEON ANONYMI ETAIRIA - KARAVIA INSURANCE BROKERS AND INSURANCE ADVISORS SOCIETE ANONYME
- AGRICULTURAL APPLICATIONS IKE
- FACULTY OF CIVIL ENGINEERING
- ETHERISC GMBH
- INOSENS DOO NOVI SAD
- ETAM ANONYMH ETAIREIA SYMBOYLEYTIKON KAI MELETHTIKON YPIRESION
- UNIVERSIDAD POLITECNICA DE MADRID
- CORDIS project factsheet (pdf)
- Agricultural Enablers - Advisory Board Report (3)
- BEACON Promotional Activities and Participation Report, 2
- BEACON Promotional Activities and Participation Report, 1
- Agricultural Ins. Enablers - Advisory Board Report (2)
- Dissemination, Exploitation and Communication
- Agricultural Enablers - Advisory Board Report
- Risk management plan (3)
- Risk management plan (2)
- Agricultural Institute Enablers - Advisory Board Report
- Risk management plan
- BEACON training materials
- Website of the Polytechnic University of Madrid
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