A pioneering climate insurance system, developed in association with ESA’s Business Applications and Space Solutions (BASS) programme, is transforming the livelihoods of farmers across the developing world. Created by Luxembourg insurtech company IBISA, the index-based solution uses satellite data to provide accurate and affordable insurance to cover farmers against climate-related risks. 

The challenges presented by climate change are considerable, and no more so than for smallholder farmers in developing countries, where livelihoods are heavily dependent on the whims of the weather. Adverse weather events significantly impact farmers and associated businesses, leading to diminished or even lost harvests with consequential financial distress, and often require time-consuming and resource-heavy physical loss assessments. Insurance models have traditionally fallen short in providing precise, transparent and fair coverage for these vulnerable farming communities — until now. 

Through the ESA BASS Demonstration Project, IBISA set out to develop an end-to-end index-based insurance platform using satellite data to monitor critical weather parameters such as rainfall, wind speed, and temperature, in-situ measurements and bespoke risk modelling software to create informed and realistic insurance policies. This cost-efficient and scalable approach eliminates the need for traditional physical assessments, offering farming communities unequivocal protection against climate risks and ensuring their financial stability. These benefits extend across the wider ecosystem, offering added security to input dealers, food companies and financial institutions.  

IBISA firstly presented a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to assess customer needs and demands, running a field-test with DHAN Foundation, a non-governmental organisation in India. A series of further successful programmes in India, the Philippines and Senegal validated the IBISA solution across diverse conditions, such as drought and excess rain, and affirmed the real-world utility of the service. IBISA continued to improve its offering, while converting pilot users into commercial clients. 

“This project, made possible through our collaboration with the European Space Agency, has truly been a catalyst, bolstering our technological and commercial capabilities,” said Maria Mateo Ibora, Founder and CEO at IBISA. “As we look ahead, we see a landscape rich with opportunity, and IBISA is ready to rise to the challenge.”  

IBISA has now secured contracts with each of its pilot users, including the DHAN Foundation, CLIMBS Cooperative in the Philippines and CNAAS in Senegal. A pilot with dairy cooperative MILMA in Kerala, India, resulted in more than 14,000 farmer enrolments in a week, and a collaboration with Indian AgriTech firm Nurture Farm expanded IBISA’s reach into 77 new districts, home to millions of smallholder farmers. IBISA’s solution is already providing insurance services to more than 200,000 policy holders across these three countries, generating widespread tangible impact.  

Gaelle Jimenez, National Delegate for ESA BASS at Luxembourg Space Agency (LSA), said “IBISA is a very good example of how space can help tackle the consequences of climate change and benefit Earth-based activities. LSA is proud to have supported this initiative in its first steps and eager to see IBISA thrive in its mission.”

Beatrice Barresi, Technical Officer at ESA, said “We are very pleased to have supported IBISA and to witness the progress made during its implementation. We are excited by the potential IBISA’s solution has demonstrated and we look forward to seeing it continue to support small communities around the world, combating the impacts of climate change.” 

Facilitated by ESA’s expertise and space-based technology, IBISA’s offering and client base continue to expand and evolve, fostering a new era of agricultural resilience, protecting the livelihoods of farmers across the world, and paving the way for a more sustainable future. 

Calculating accurate water levels in rivers and reservoirs is not always straightforward, especially when the rivers in question are ungauged or the reservoirs are managed by third parties. WatAspace is a Feasibility Study led by Waterjade and funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) under the ESA Business Applications and Space Solutions (BASS) programme. The project uses satellite data to estimate water levels and was successfully completed within twelve months. 

Currently, river flow monitoring still relies on data which is collected and analysed from in situ stations which are installed at selected points of interest. Maintaining and supporting these stations is difficult and costly and is especially challenging in remote areas. As a consequence, their numbers have decreased in recent years, just as climate change has made the need to understand water flow in these more remote areas all the more urgent. Recognising the need to find a solution, WatAspace set out to tackle these limitations by using a multi-model, multi-data approach. 

The first step was to take satellite images from different sensors to supplement and enrich the information from the in situ sensors and to improve the update frequency. At the same time, meteorological data provides valuable ancillary information which can be used in tailored machine learning algorithms and physical models.

WatAspace technology uses three different sets of satellite data to create a unique picture of the status of a waterbody: radar altimeters provide a direct measurement of water level in rivers or reservoirs, optical sensors provide multi-band images containing different information about the water extent and shape of the water body, and Synthetic Aperture Radars provide images in which water bodies can be easily identified in dry areas. 

By using these three techniques together, WatAspace merges the best of the different technologies and uses a dedicated AI infrastructure to provide a robust and comprehensive dataset. Once calibrated, the EO-retrieved hydrological quantity shows a high level of alignment with the gauged signal.

Federico Di Paolo from Waterjade said “The funding from ESA Space Solutions has been key to the success of the project and the team gave us their full support with regular mentoring sessions. We received vital feedback on the processing chain for the satellite images from the technical team, and ESA also helped us to better refine our value proposition.”

Francesco Feliciani, Head of the Company-Led Projects Section at ESA Space Solutions said, “This has been an exciting and complex project highlighting the value of space in monitoring water flow in remote areas. We look forward to continuing our collaboration with Waterjade in this area.”

The study has so far focused on test sites in Italy, with a view to extending the trials to water body sites around the world. A commercial validation exercise produced a range of positive interest and requirements from industry, in particular from the water utilities and irrigation services, hydropower companies and government agencies. 

Waterjade now plans to develop prediction services using the techniques developed in the Feasibility Study. The modelling chain would be trained on historical river level data extracted from satellite images, representing a unique data source with the potential to be made available on a global scale. The prediction service will supply water inflow forecast for several days, based on numerical weather prediction. Eventually, Waterjade has the potential to be able to predict water flow in rivers and water level in reservoirs for longer periods, up to months in advance, taking into account the meteorological forecasts and the current status of the upstream catchment.