Innovation Challenge Fund (ICF) d.com



Innovation Challenge Fund (ICF)Concept Note Template 1.Name / Organisation SatSure Analytics India Pvt. Ltd.2.Email address / Phone numberprateep@+9177600183493.Title of ProjectAI based Crop Water Management Support for small & marginal farmers to combat frequent droughts due to climate change4.Application for ICF ClusterAI/Data Science, Karnataka5.Co-Members of the Consortium *(Type – Indian Academia, Indian Business, International Academia, International Business, Indian non-commercial organisation, International non-commercial organisation, Other - specify)* Information not mandatory for the concept note stage.#OrganizationType1.Indian Institute of Management, BangaloreIndian Academia2.University of Liverpool International Academia3.4.6.If you do not already have agreed consortium members, please indicate here the kind of partners you would like to hear from. 7. Are you content for us to publish your concept note on our web platform in order to encourage potential consortium members to reach out to you? Yes(But we already have the consortium members, so we may not need this support)8.Funding Requested (up to ?250k)Up to ?200,0009.Co-funding provided (if any) and sourceUp to ?25,000 from SatSure10.Please summarise your Innovation Challenge Fund research project in one sentence. 350 character limitClimate risk mitigation through small-holder farm insurance product using high-resolution satellite 11.Please describe your project further. What problem does your pilot seek to address? Who are the potential beneficiaries and other stakeholders? What are the inputs and activities, and what are the outputs? What does success look like after 12 months of funded research? How will your solution reach the market place? 2500 character limitAgriculture in India is spread across two broad seasons, Kharif and Rabi. Out of the total agricultural land in India about 65 percent of the irrigated land is watered using ground water. India's per capita water availability has fallen from 1,816 cubic metres in 2001 to 1,545 cubic metres in 2011. Almost 89 percent of the water in India is being used for irrigation, which is 3-5 times more compared to countries like China. Extensive cultivation of cash (cotton, sugarcane) & major crops (rice, wheat) which are also water intensive soaks up all the available water resources, leading to rapid groundwater depletion, stressing surface water and also other non-replenishable water resources. We are proposing an Integrated Crop Water Requirement and Management Advisory product addressing policy makers, farmer groups, and individual farmers. Our product shall provide region-wise Crop Water Advisory based on existing and estimated water resource requirements to facilitate increase in crop yield and cropping intensity, while making sustainable usage of the natural water resources and irrigation facilities, mitigating the effects of Drought intensity due to climate change. We arrive at this product as a culmination of three components - estimation of existing irrigation resources based on satellite-based rainfall, groundwater, and surface water estimates. The potential beneficiaries would be small holder women farmers and farmer producer groups, who are located in the arid and semi-arid regions of north Karnataka. The inputs for this research would be the following – initial studies on climate impact in the district of Gulbarga and Dharwad, followed by field surveys to conduct research on both the environmental and socio-economic aspect of the research. Extensive use of satellite data would be made for this study to create a historical database of groundwater, surface water and rainfall estimates, while machine learning algorithms would be trained to identify patterns between water usage and crop yield. The statistical analysis at different spatial scales would then be done to arrive at a correlation between the water use efficiency, considering the biases in the sample datasets and the same shall be validated on the field through in-situ measurements. The final output would be creation of a nice information service on sustainable usage of available water as an advisory sent through text messages and a mobile app (for smartphone users) that could help farmers conserve water t\o prepare for long spells of drought like conditions, without compromising on their production quality. The business model here will be B2B2C, with the final target customer being the farmer, while the way in which farmers are acquired are through Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs), or large Contract Farming or Food & Agri enterprises under their ESG initiatives. The project consortium shall also partner with National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture, in which special provisions exist for incentivising women involved in farming towards soil & water conservation, water use efficiency, Soil health management and Rain-fed Area Development. The outputs of the research shall be developed initially at a regional (gram panchayat) level and extended up to farm level water score. The success of this research would be if we can get financial institutions like insurance or microfinance partners to support the incentivisation of water conservation by using our product to create a parametric trigger for payouts to subscribed farmers based on early detection of water stress, transferring financial incentive for farmers to adopt sustainable water management practices.12.What is ‘technological’ about your proposed solution and why might this be appropriate to the challenge areas?1000 character limitThe proposed advisory of Crop Water Requirement based on hyperlocal cropping patterns assessed through historical satellite imagery, crop stage detection using high temporal resolution near real time satellite imagery and data science techniques, optimization of irrigation resources and water management practices aimed. What sets us apart is our innovation in terms of leveraging Machine learning and Artificial intelligence to synchronize and increase the frequency of satellite imagery from different sources which significantly reduces the need for high cost sensor infrastructure to get the same spatial and temporal resolution of information. This is a particularly scalable approach in the event of a post COVID-19 world, where frequent travel is inhibited. The technology component is the key part of this research, since water studies at such small spatial scales (up to farm level) hasn’t been yet attempted with a successful scaling up approach, as per our best knowledge. Availability of public satellite images from the European Space Agency and cloud computing makes the AI component of the research achievable and scalable, due to the high amount of training datasets and data crunching that would be required to arrive at a solution that has both precision and accuracy. 13.Is your proposed solution a response to the impacts of COVID-19, or an effort to contain the pandemic? If so, please explain. 1000 character limit Indirectly yes, since remote monitoring of water-use and cropping patterns for farmer advisory is going to be one of the key ways to using technology to connect with farmers as well as build transparency for other stakeholders in the farmer’s ecosystem without having to visit the farms. 14.Does your proposed solution contribute to combatting climate change or promoting a greener planet? If so, please explain. 1000 character limitYes, the proposed solution is targeted at adapting to the effect of climate change and promoting a greener planet. Karnataka state alone has more than 27,000 villages are inhabited with 123,100 km? of land being cultivated, which is 64.6% of its total geographical area. However, only 31,000 km? is under irrigation, excluding the majority of the 37.5 million rural population of the state from access to water for their personal, community, and agriculture needs. The use of satellite imagery and AI is a critical element in helping create plans for better water management practices in drought prone areas and overcoming expensive and error prone field based data gathering exercises. 15.How is your proposal relevant to the development challenges of India? 1000 character limitThe proposed research is highly relevant to the development challenges in India, whose population is three times the size of the United States but one-third the physical size. As India is a large producer of food grains globally, excess water consumption for food production has been depleting the overall water table and the brunt of such practices in conjunction with climate change effects such as higher frequency of droughts and untimely floods have eroded farmers income and capacity to alleviate their livelihoods. By creating such scientifically derived advisories and linking them to financial incentives, the output of our research stands a chance to address the critical water security needs of the nation. 16.What consideration have you made of gender in developing your concept? Could your project address gender inequality or other kinds of inequality? 1000 character limitA major socio-economic issue in the agriculture sector is the gender disparity, especially in irrigation activities and water conservation efforts. Even though a large population of rural women are involved in the agricultural activities, they are at a disadvantage in irrigation scheduling, procurement of irrigation equipment and enabling non-traditional irrigation methods. This in turn leads to their participation in the crop water management not being incentivized. Our innovation through this research aims to aid water conservation in agriculture by providing a single stop advisory for water requirement and water budgeting from farm level to regional scale, while incentivizing farmers to adopt sustainable water management practices, and levelling the cultural biases against women to access water and subsequently financing for water usage in farming. Notes: Please be kindly reminded of the primary criteria: relevance to the environmental and/or C19 agenda. See boxes 13 and 14. Except box 5, all boxes require mandatory response.In the interests of fairness, proposals that exceed the character limits will not be considered. ................
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