35th AIAG Congress, Bordeaux, October 2019
The 35th AIAG Congress took place at the Palais des Congrès in Bordeaux from 6 to 9 October 2019, organised by the International Association of Agricultural Production Insurers (AIAG).
The EO4I project was presented by Johann Fank, the Director of Loss management at the Österreichische Hagelversicherung, in the frame of a joint presentation on ‘Loss adjustment of drought damages on crops (Österreichische Hagelversicherung) and on maize (Schweizer Hagel). Both, the Österrreichische Hagelversicherung and Schweizer Hagel, as well as the Vereinigte Hagel are key users in this ESA funded activity. Eva Haas (Head of Agriculture Services, GeoVille) was present as technical expert on behalf of the project team as well as the project consultant Yan Shynkarenko (agroinsurance.com). The program showed state of the art topics in the world of agro-insurance and the high interest in Earth observation based solutions.
EO4I @ ESA Φ-week Frascati, September 2019
From 9 – 13 September 2019 the Φ-week, organized by the European Space Agency (ESA), took place in Frascati with a focus on EO Open Science and FutureEO. Some of the EO4I partners were present there to discuss the latest developments and trends. Amongst other projects, the EO4I team was invited to join the ESA-EARSC Joint session “Modernising Farming: Earth Observation to Support Crop Growth Cycle” on September 10th. Nikolaus Neugebauer (Austrian Hail Insurance) and Ralf Ryter (GeoVille) presented the project in Session 1 “Earth Observation Supporting the Farming Cycle”.
Agro-Insurance user workshop, Milan, May 2019
On 16th May 2019, the first user workshop was organized at the ESA’s 2019 Living Planet Symposium in Milan, Italy to find out more about the Agro-Insurance geo-information needs. Representatives of the Agro-Insurance sector were invited to share their experiences with EO usage. The presentations were followed by a productive discussion about the industries’ current use and perception on EO capabilities, a Live Poll and a Panel Discussion. Results of this session were gathered and are a first step towards the EO best practice roadmap and insurance industry guidelines.