Indonesia : End of the G4INDO project marks the start of the G4INDO IT platform
Wageningen, Jakarta, 25/07/2018 - Over the last 3,5 year the G4INDO team has worked on the implementation of the G4INDO IT Platform.
G4INDO is part of projects started under G4AW. G4AW stimulates sustainable food production in developing countries. The basic idea is that better informed decisions makers are needed to achieve this goal and that remote sensing can provide accurate and timely information to assist the decision-making process. G4INDO is a project that responded to the ambition of the Government of Indonesia to bring crop insurance to Indonesia’s farmers to remove part of the risk of weather related crop failure.
G4INDO is a collaboration of JASINDO, BMKG, LAPAN, SarVision, Terrasphere, KNMI, Deltares, Syngenta Foundation, NDI, and Wageningen UR.
Smallholder farmers growing irrigated rice are important for local and national food security but at the same time these farmers vulnerable for extreme events. Extremes events have the potential to destroy part or an entire harvest and could spiral farmers into poverty. To provide a financial safety net for an insurance system was put in place.
Assessing damage and compensating farmers for their losses requires a system that is fair, accurate and transparent. PT. Asuransi Jasa Indonesia (Persero) or JASINDO provides this service to millions of smallholder farmers in Indonesia. Improving this service in terms of speed without compromising the accuracy and transparency is a major step in taking the insurance system to the next level.
G4INDO provided technical support to design and implement an IT platform to enhance the service delivery of JASINDO to smallholder rice farmers in Java. Via a unique cooperation of experts in insurance, remote sensing, weather, hydrology and agronomy from Indonesia and Europe the project was able to assist in enhancing the workflow of JASINDO. Training workshops for JASINDO, LAPAN (Indonesian National Institute of Aeronautics and Space) and BMKG (Meteorological, Climatological, and Geophysical Agency) staff were an important aspect of G4INDO the last training workshop was held end May 2018. The official hand over of the IT platform to JASINDO took place after the last training workshop.
During this event JASINDO represented by Ibu Ika Dwinita Sofa indicated that the use of the platform is an official part of the work flow of JASINDO. With this decision the use of the platform will contribute to deliver services to the clients of JASINDO: the small holder rice farmers, for Java this was 1.176.563 farmers in 2017. The use of the platform and provision of information to JASINDO is in the hands of two key Indonesian institutes: LAPAN and BMKG. A service agreement with the Dutch institutes working on G4INDO also secures the continuation of the support.
Although the platform was designed for wetland rice expanding to other (including not irrigated) crop is possible. So, with a strong technical and institutional basis the G4INDO IT platform is ready to be used in other projects and programs the G4INDO consortium is already looking for ways cooperate and continue support and development of the G4INDO IT platform.
For more info, contact Jan Verhagen, jan.verhagen@wur.nl
