Model to assess multiple peril crop losses in India launched by AIR Worldwide

AIR Worldwide has launched a Multiple Peril Crop Insurance (MPCI) Model for India to boost “probabilistic assessments” of potential losses caused by yield shortfalls for 11 major crops.

The model is event-based and has been launched to monitor the two main India crop-growing seasons, made up of a kharif season (the summer period from late spring into autumn) and the following rabi season (the winter period from autumn into the following spring).

AIR said that the model features a stochastic catalog of 10,000 simulated crop years, each containing a kharif season and the following rabi season. This describes the wide range of possible crop loss scenarios, both common and rare, in the two seasons. It also features a historical catalog of losses based on a recast of the years 1979 through 2017. Both the stochastic and historic recast yield and loss catalogs reflect current crop technology levels. For example, current crop genetics, farmer skill, availability of chemical inputs, insurable exposure by district, and PMFBY (Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana) policy conditions as revised in late 2018.

Jeff Amthor, assistant vice president at AIR Worldwide, said: “One of the many challenges in developing and testing an MPCI model for India crops is the collation and evaluation - quality assuring - of the available historical data on planted areas and yields of insured crops, which comes from various, sometimes contradictory sources.

“Our team at AIR invested significant effort in gathering data and, just as important, in screening it for quality and consistency. As a result, we produced what may be the highest-quality single data set of India’s state and district crop production statistics currently available. We also carried out a significant effort to understand the causes and consequences of the sometimes significant differences among weather data sources.”

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