Monitoring Crop Health from Space; Improving Drought Resilience for Farmers in Kenya

A high-resolution Vegetation Health Index (VHI) is proposed as an indicator of the water stress condition
of vegetation cover. This index integrates satellite-derived vegetation and thermal information; it is a
function of NDVI (Normalised Difference Vegetation Index, derived from Sentinel-2) and LST (Land
Surface brightness Temperature, from MODIS). The VHI has already been tested experimentally for
African environments (Rojas et al., 2011), exhibiting good performance, making it potentially suitable for
insurance purposes.

This index informs a new satellite-based insurance scheme for Kenyan smallholder farmers. The proposed
service is based on an online tool enabling rapid decision-making for compensations due to farmers. The
tool shows VHI multi-temporal plots, tables and maps at 20m resolution, refreshed every 5 days. The
service is undergoing an in-country trial for deployment to insurance providers, farmer cooperatives and
Ministries in Kenya. This project is supported by grant funding within the UK Space Agency’s
International Partnership Programme.